Colombia's cocaine canyon: The guerrilla turf impeding peace
Coca plantations blanket the mountains along the narrow Micay canyon, the heartland of Colombia's holdout guerrillas, who rule their fiefdom like a mini-state. In makeshift laboratories, farmers openly mix coca leaf with gasoline to extract a paste used to make the pure cocaine that is one of Colombia's top exports. Micay canyon is a major source of tension in negotiations between the government and the EMC rebels who broke away from the FARC guerilla group when it signed a peace deal with the government in 2016. Following the murder of an Indigenous woman there in March, the canyon became one of the areas where the government suspended the ceasefire, due to EMC ‘non-compliance’, and threatened to send in the army.