Jeff’s recent trip to Colombia to investigate “Plan Colombia” gives us some background about what he is able to learn, trekking through areas where few others go. Plan Colombia is a multi-billion dollar U.S. aid package to fight the proliferation of the cocaine market. It encompasses “training Colombian military, upgrading hardware, eradicating coca, introducing alternative crops, building infrastructure, and developing education programs.” However, the cocaine market, kidnapping trade, and the decades old war with FARC guerillas grinds on. FARC receives funding from the narcotics trade by protecting the fields and labs where the cocaine is grown and prepared. Trying to shut these operations down creates more “violence, death, and retaliatory terrorist acts.”

Jeff is a friend with members of the U.S. Marshals Service, whose activities he photographs. He says they are the best in the business, and their training incorporates such initiatives as “safely moving a principal through crowded streets, how to protect the principal during an attack, counter-measures during an assault, situational awareness, man/team operations, and detail formation and organization.” Jeff also observes the activities of the “hired guns” in the area. They are also usually paid to protect, and have been Special Forces, SEAL, or CIA in a former lifetime. As Jeff puts it: “With all the twists, turns, and corruption associated with this ultimate cat and mouse game, having experienced operators with in-place networks is essential to eventually winning the war in South America.”

Jeff observes that FARC has sophisticated explosives equipment and the best terrorist trainers in the world, including the deadly IRA (Irish Republican Army). They play with such charming devices as book bombs, shoe bombs, large explosive devices rigged with pressure triggers, proximity switches, timers and heat sensing detonation. Jeff says that Bogotá is relatively safe as compared to remote areas of Colombia because training has worked to quell violence in major cities. A little south in Peru, where cocaine flows freely, such groups as the U.S. Special Forces and the Navy Special Boat Teams work under the radar and “some even deny their presence in the country, but they are there and working to further the goals of the U.S. Foreign Policy.

According to Jeff, the surrounding jungle “is a spider web of trails and makeshift roads” used by the cocaine producers to transport chemicals, coca paste and pure cocaine. “The leeching wells and processing labs are almost impossible to find in the dense jungle and difficult to get to once they have been located. This unforgiving terrain is ruled by those who loathe any outside influence, so booby trapping, weapons caches, and camouflage is common practice.”

“If every American citizen could see the death and destruction this business has caused on a global scale, then I doubt they would be so quick to question the resources being used to combat the problem,” observes Jeff. He says you can’t understand the magnitude of the War on Drugs unless you are on the ground with the officers and soldiers who fight it. Even though they are under funded, they are making a difference. “This war in ‘winnable’ but it will take dedication and an understanding of South American cultures to finally put an end to the age-old violence.” This is one of Jeff’s goals as a Latin American photojournalist. His theory is that we should clean up or own streets and drug culture in the process.

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