Voices From The Coca Fields Women Building Rural Communities Bautista by Bautista, Ana Jimena, Capacho, Blanca, Cruz, Luis Felipe, Martínez, Margarita, Pereira, Isabel, Ramírez, Lucía 9789585597587, 9585597586 instant download after payment.

Colombia’s response to the country’s drug problem has been based on the repression of the weakest links in the drug chain—namely consumers and small farmers—which has led to disproportionate rates of imprisonment and has involved a heavy focus on forced crop eradication. Not only has such an approach failed to effectively control the cocaine market, but it has also unleashed harmful side effects in terms of security, social development, and human rights as they concern communities in coca-growing areas. Moreover, although scholars and practitioners have analyzed Colombia’s drug problem from a variety of perspectives, these efforts have tended to overlook women’s experiences. This report explores the ways that rural norms, gender structures, the armed conflict, and illegal markets have played out in the lives of women coca growers in Colombia’s Andes-Amazon region, an area distinguished by the presence of illegal armed groups, violence, poverty, and weak state institutions. In this region of Colombia, coca cultivation has offered an important source of income for rural families, which in turn has affected women’s roles in society and has placed them in a vulnerable position vis- à-vis armed actors.