Coca growers near Puerto Asis use gasoline and other simple chemicle compounds to process chopped leaves into coca paste, the first part of the cocaine production process. Behind this growers shack, right along a robust stream, lies a slag heap of chemically exhausted coca leaves. The U.S. State Department rebutts charges that its spray eradication campaign is a threat to the environment, saying it is nothing compared to the damage done by the chemicals the growers dump.

Peasants in Puerto Asis wait in line to file their paperwork with a Plan Colombia corporation in order to qualify for goverment assistance to grow legal crops.

A raspachine, or coca leaf picker, in Putumayo wraps his fingers with heavy cloth before going about the hand-wrecking business of collecting the leaves by scraping them off the bushes in handfuls.