Anti-Drug Effort Sows Bad Blood : Guatemala: Farmers complain that legitimate crops are being damaged by a U.S. spraying program designed to cut into heroin production.

Noel Galvez likes growing tomatoes and raising bees. Being a farmer gives him satisfaction and a decent living, he says. But he feels pushed toward joining Guatemala’s burgeoning heroin trade, and the force pushing him is the United States.

Galvez and the other farmers in this green and lush valley near the Mexican border say they are the paradoxical victims of an American program to destroy the very crop that many of them are now tempted to grow.

Under an agreement with the Guatemalan government, the United States has been spraying chemicals over Cuilco Valley since September, 1988, in an effort to wipe out the fields of poppies that supply the country’s multibillion-dollar heroin business.

But the program, seen as increasingly important since Guatemala is rapidly becoming one of Latin America’s major drug producing and transshipment areas, demonstrates the difficulties in the U.S. effort to solve its drug problems in other lands.

Although the spraying program has had minimal effect on the poppies, according to the local farmers, it has devastated the area’s traditional agricultural base, particularly tomatoes and bees.

“We can’t make a living,” Galvez said during an interview in the offices of the farmers’ cooperative that he also manages. “I have thought of getting into this business (poppy growing). I have kids in school, no money, and they are destroying my crops. Maybe I’d be better off.”

He said the price he gets for his tomatoes has dropped from about $18 a bushel to about $2, which is less than the cost of production, because of damage from what he insists is the spraying.

“In the first place,” he said, punching the air around him for emphasis, “we have fewer plants since the fumigation began, and the ones that are left grow tomatoes that are different in color, spotted in black, smaller and bitter in taste. I can’t pay the rent for the land.”

It is the same for beekeeping, one of Cuilco’s major cash businesses. Francisco Javiar Chavez, one of 300 beekeepers in the valley, is bitter about the effects of the spraying.

“The bees don’t always die,” he said of his empty hives. “They just go away.”

Chavez said his income was down more than 43% for the last year--a loss of almost $9,000. “This is like death,” he said.

In a country where annual per-capita income is about $1,200, such a loss is a huge sum.

Galvez, who also raises bees, said he once had 35 hives. But after March 26, a day on which he said the area was sprayed, he had only enough bees left for five.

Altogether, said Galvez, “agricultural production in Cuilco is down 60%” since the spraying began.

The immediate villain is a chemical called Roundup, originally produced by Monsanto to enhance plant growth. But, applied in large enough amounts, it causes excessive growth, ultimately destroying any vegetation it touches.

The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City says that charges of widespread crop destruction are not true. It says the spraying is applied with such accuracy that the only plants afflicted by Roundup are the illegal poppies.

“If other plants are damaged,” said one diplomat, “it is because of other things.”

He mentioned a blight caused by white flies as one possibility.

“Besides,” he added, “I would think many of those people claiming crop destruction are saying so to protect their poppies.”

However, Galvez, Cuilco Mayor Alejandro Roblero and other farmers interviewed here deny there has been serious penetration by drug traffickers in their valley. Most of the poppies are cultivated either high on the mountainsides, where traditional food crops aren’t practical, or in an area called Huispache, a 10-hour walk west of Cuilco, they say.

The U.S. Embassy implicitly acknowledges that there are few poppy fields near the town because it says that the spraying is limited to a small area far from Cuilco. Since the spraying began, one official said, “we have done very little about opium, only about 50 acres.” Heroin is derived from opium.

In addition, the diplomat said, there has been very little spraying recently because the planes have been fired on, either by anti-government guerrillas who are said to be in the area or by drug producers.

Not so, say the Cuilco farmers.

“The planes passed over every month--sometimes more,” said Mayor Roblero.

“The opium is in small plots, and I doubt that the pilots can tell them from other green areas,” said Galvez. “I don’t see why they have to fumigate the whole area. . . . We don’t oppose the anti-drug fight, we aren’t against it, but this is indiscriminate.”

What happens, by his account, is that the spray either drifts down from the mountains onto the area around the town or contaminates the water used to irrigate other crops.

In addition, the valley residents say, when the poppy growers hear the planes approaching, they place plastic sheets over their plants to shield them from the chemical. Some, said Galvez, “wash the spray off the poppies. We don’t have the equipment to do that.”

The farmers have complained to the government through their local officials and directly to the capital in Guatemala City, but the response has been evasive, at best.

Galvez showed letters written on behalf of the co-op.

“We’ve written letters and more letters, and the government speaks and speaks, but says nothing.”

Mayor Roblero said government agents also cited the white-fly virus.

“They ask us for proof,” beekeeper Chavez said, “but they don’t accept our proof.”

The farmers are particularly frustrated and incensed because they feel the government isn’t doing enough to attack the drug production on the ground.

“The guardia doesn’t do anything,” Galvez said, referring to the police force that is supposed to control the opium trade.

It is an assessment borne out by members of the 16-man guardia unit based in Cuilco. One policeman, who refused to give his name and said he couldn’t speak without permission, nonetheless said his unit had arrived only recently and had not gone into the hills where the poppy fields are planted.

Six guardia members and a guide were killed last year while destroying poppy plants.

In addition to the guardia , a company of regular army troops moved into Cuilco not long before a reporter visited the area. But according to the lieutenant in charge, the troops were there to search for contraband smuggled in from Mexico and to fight any rebels.

Mayor Roblero said there is very little smuggling into the region and that there has not been any guerrilla activity in the area for years. The lieutenant agreed that there had been no fighting, but he insisted that there are guerrillas in the area and that his job was to search for them.

To Galvez, none of that matters.

“We don’t care what happens about contraband, and we don’t think there is any problem with the guerrillas. We are only interested in staying alive, and we are afraid (the Americans) and the government won’t let us do that.”