The Biden administration has quietly ditched a key gauge used for decades to measure success in the war on drugs, suspending satellite monitoring of coca crops in Colombia amid a surge of cocaine production in South America.
A State Department spokesperson said the move was “temporary” but gave no timeframe for data collection to resume or explain why it was suspended in the first place. It was also unclear whether satellite surveys would continue in Peru and Bolivia, which together account for about half of coca production in the Andean region.
Since at least 1987, the U.S. government has published annual estimates of coca cultivation in Colombia. The numbers soared to an all-time high in 2020, when the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy estimated that 245,00 hectares of land - an area three times the size of New York City - was planted with the illicit crop used to make cocaine. Last year’s report showed production was almost unchanged in 2021 from the same high level.
“This is Biden’s latest little favor to Petro,” Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Miami Republican who chairs the subcommittee in the House focused on Latin America, said in a message posted on Twitter this week. “They are willing to do anything to please their ideological allies.” Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, said that satellite monitoring of coca crops offers valuable insights into Colombia’s ability to assert state control in remote, economically depressed areas that have long been dominated by illegal armed groups.
The diplomatic dance has yielded some positive results. Petro visited the White House in April and spoke alongside Biden about a “common agenda” to fight climate change and address migration. A few days later, the U.S. said it would launch a processing center in Colombia to handle growing numbers of migrants from Venezuela and elsewhere in South America seeking entry into the U.S.
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