The Lost Paradise of Colombia's Marijuana Smugglers

Abstract

Lina Britto’s book, Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia’s First Drug Paradise, spotlights the growth of the marijuana industry in Colombia’s northern Guajira peninsula and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region in response to the growing demand bred by the rise of the 1960s counterculture. Part of a longer history of agrarian modernization, the marijuana boom was a dramatic turning point in the history of Colombia, which transformed the country from a coffee republic into one of the world’s principal producers of drugs. The drug business brought with it a unique culture and greater economic integration with the United States. By the late 1970s, the Guajira peninsula and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region had also become an experimental laboratory for the War on Drugs. The consequences were overwhelmingly negative, as violent competition over control of the drug trade corrupted Colombia’s political structure, and the drug war...