In a region dependent on coca-growing, Colombia's president tries to sell alternative crop program. Alba Criollo walks through a fumigated coca field in Santa Rosa del Gu mez, Putumayo.
Farmers wonder if they can make a living from legal crops.
US-trained army battalions have been deployed to take out cocaine processing labs and stop trafficking. But the farmers are skeptical as they watch Pastrana hug single mothers who will receive monthly stipends to feed their children and announce funding to pave roads to get new crops to market. The problem is that no one has ever helped us replace the benefits that coca brought us, so we doubt that it's really going to happen now. That has happened in the past, they say, in this region that has grown coca since the 1980s. At the same time, critics inside and outside the country say Plan Colombia's focus was clear in the decision to carry out the eradication phase first.