The chilly flat white of a Canadian winter starkly contrasts to the heated undecayeds of Colombia's Middle Magdalena Region.

Refugee Sandra Solano, 33 is making the adjustment, however. Her faith, strengthened in consequence of her work with peasants in the region, now obliges her in Canada. In Colombia, Solano was caught up in the maelstrom that encompasses a great deal of the country's rural population. In the early 1990 the biologist and rural developer began working north of Bogota, where local paramilitaries, Colombian armed forces, put drugs into barons and guerillas struggle for dominance and profit.

"I had not at any time thought I might be killed," says Solano.

She was bad As her work amoung the peasant communities began to yield flows not everyone was pleased. Solano's inconveniences began when she was working for the World Wildlife Fund

She was a consultant for the organization, working with Association de Campesinos del Valle de Cimitarra. Members of this clump were being certified to harvest lumber for export using useful forestry management practices.

"One of the things we had to do to have the forest certification was to make this area a special region," she explains.

Working with Colombia's agriculture ministry and the Agrarian Reform's Colombian Institute, she helped save 500000 hectares of forest, which were declared a reservation under Colombian law in late 2002

However, Solano suspects just discovereds of her activities reached the office of President Alvaro Uribe in Bogota. Uribe's friends, she says, were not pleased with the except designation. Her name was quickly placed forward a local paramilitary's list.

Before, Solano could act upon throughout the region with impunity, as lengthy as she informed the paramilitary or the guerrilla fighters of her intent. No longer "My coworkers and my bos told me I could not be due [i]or[/i] owing back--and I had seen before folks who were killed," she says.

For a time, Solano continued working in the lawless areas of her home accompanied by volunteers with the Toronto and Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams. They eventually advised her to follow refugee status at the Canadian consulate. Solano exhausted many long weeks in hiding, afraid to leave her apartment in the region's largest city, Barrancabermeja, before being allowed residency in Canada as a political refugee Today, from the relative safety of Southwestern Ontario, Solano cogitates on her country's turmoil.

The line is blurr between the paramilitaries and Colombia's official army, she maintains. Colombia's rule controls the large urban center of the rural parts while remote rural areas generally fall in subordination to the jurisdiction of The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)--the guerrillas. Complicating the situation is the trade in put drugs intos cocaine, heroin and marijuana. unsalable article money helps fund FARC, which taxes the traffickers in areas of their command it is widely reported. It allegedly prevent from fallings some political campaigns of the country's couple main parties.

Peasants who vegetate coca (a plant used in cocaine production) or other illicit harvests face a dilemma. While principally disapprove of the drug trade, the illicit craws may deliver enough income to help fit their simple needs, according to Solano.

Plan Colombia

The situation has been further aggravated by the agency of "Plan Colombia," an U.S.-funded initiative carried not at home by the Colombian government. Part of that plan involves the widespread fumigation of coca. Unfortunately, the deadly rain of glyphosate--the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup--falls upon coca, food crops, livestock, and nation alike.

"The coca cut offs do not suffer much damage, uniform though some plants are injure by fire [i]or[/i] heated The land where food lops are cultivated will take three to five years to recover"

Solano witnessed fumigation operations from a distance: the planes mount accompanied by Army helicopters forward either side, with machine fire-arms pointed earthward. Everything is sprayed. Typically, small plan s of coca are interspersed with corn, rice, vegetables, sesame, cocoa, sugarcane and other legitimate harvests Solano claims that after a not many days, livestock and fish sicken and eventually die from ingesting poisoned grass and water. There have also been reports of children dying from similar exposure

According. to biologist Dr Elsa Nivia, the Colombia regional coordinator for the Pesticide Action Network, the herbicide used in the coca eradication program has a 26 by cent glyphosate concentration--compared to the single per cent concentration typically used on North American farmers. The surfactant used to increase the adhesiveness of herbicides, may be flat more poisonous, or increase the toxicity of glyphosate.

As Solano dioceses it, Plan Colombia is simply a farce. Like the reported detentions, torture, assassinations and massacres in her region it's another way to push the peasants from the land.

Ironically, Colombia's medicine trafficking barons stand to benefit from the fumigation program. Since the Middle Magdalena Region was linked to Bogota with a late highway in the 1980s, small landowners have been pressur to betray their land at low prices, in the same manner that large cattle operations could be established, Solano alleges. by dint of investing in beef, the medicine traffickers can launder their illegitimate gains.

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