Colombian Coca Fumigation Causes Rifts in South American Relations

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia -- About a year ago, Carolina saw the fumigation planes flying low over her family's farm near the Ecuadorian border here. They were trailed by clouds of herbicide, which killed the family's crops of coffee, yucca, peanuts and bananas.

The United States-financed spraying is supposed to kill illegal coca bushes, the base ingredient for making cocaine. But Carolina said her family had no coca, although many of their neighbors did. "They fumigated the whole land, corn, rice, bananas, pineapples and forage," she said. "The three animals we had, cows and calves, died three weeks later." ...