Video: Documentary on the Failed Drug War in Colombia | Sojourners

Video: Documentary on the Failed Drug War in Colombia

In July 2007, Teresa Ortega stood solemnly in a field of wilting corn and pineapple crops in southern Colombia's farm land as tears streamed down her cheeks. She had taken it upon herself to start a farm with 100 widows - women who lost their husbands and children to Colombia's war. In their fight against poverty, they had purchased this small farm and worked it on the weekends to make ends meet. Now - after a plane sprayed chemicals over their farm - all was lost.

To bureaucrats in Washington who see Colombia as nothing more than the source of 90 percent of the cocaine on our streets, Teresa and her neighbors are simply collateral damage at ground zero of Washington's drug war in South America.

Between 2000 and 2007, the U.S. government spent over half a billion dollars spraying a chemical defoliant on approximately 2.6 million acres of land in Colombia - the world's second most bio-diverse country - as a novel new drug control strategy. This practice

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