(Please have patience... we are very sorry these photos take so long to load, but they are each worth at least a thousand words.)

The following are photographs taken in Putumayo, a southern state of Colombia, in December 2001. The US and Colombian governments began a fumigation campaign on November 13, 2001. At the time of these photos, the campaign was still going on. Witness for Peace issued a report about the fumigation and joined with 61 other organizations to urge Secretary of State Colin Powell to cease this horrible policy.
 

This farmer is devastated because his peanut crops were destroyed by the fumigation. Many families in southern Colombia manually eradicated their coca crops and replaced them with legitimate crops. With the new crops (and possibly their trust in the government) destroyed, what is keeping them from re-growing coca?

Counter-narcotics helicopter circles the jungle.

Bananas destroyed by the fumigation. Many people in the area are facing imminent hunger because their subsistence crops have been destroyed.

In violation of Colombian law, the fumigation has destroyed animal pastures and fish ponds. The Roundup sold in the US explicitly warns against spraying into water or anywhere animals may feed. The "Roundup Ultra" used in Colombia is even stronger and deadlier than what is sold in the US.

These nests of tropical birds were sprayed. The Amazon is an amazing and delicate bio-diversity that contains of a wealth of animals and plants.

Children in Putumayo painted this "before and after" mural of what fumigation has done to their home.

Many pastures and fish tanks were sprayed with the deadly chemicals. Again, this is violation of Colombian law and against the warnings of Monsanto, the US producer of Roundup. The overwhelming evidence suggests that perhaps the pilots are not spraying with the precision accuracy the US embassy claims.

In this pepper field, the farmer placed a white flag to keep the pilots from spraying his licit crops. Nonetheless, his peppers were sprayed and destroyed.

Pastures, homes, and yards were sprayed. This is also in violation of Colombian Law 005.

This stream was sprayed in violation of Colombian law. In the Amazon basin there are thousands of small streams that feed into larger rivers, which eventually reach the Amazon River. While the potential for damage is largely untested and unknown, the implications for fish, birds, micro-organisms and all of the people living downstream is scary.