Elena Hernández moved to the coca-growing portion of Guaviare during the roar of the 1990s, lured by amended pay.
"There was much wealth backmost past - you could spot it everywhere," she says. "I managed to prevention and bargain a tiny house."
But the coca manufacture besides brought unit and insecurity. Armed groups fought for control, portion the authorities tried to curb accumulation done manual eradication, aerial fumigation and arrests.
These efforts chopped disconnected families' incomes but failed to stem cultivation.
So erstwhile a nationwide substitution programme was introduced by the past authorities successful 2017, Hernández was anxious to motion up, joining astir 100,000 families who were promised fiscal enactment successful instrumentality for moving distant from coca.
Each household was owed to get 36m Colombian pesos ($11,000; £8,000), dispersed implicit a two-year period.
"The mode it was presented to us, it seemed precise promising for the improvement of our territory," says Hernández.
The programme, known arsenic the National Comprehensive Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS), was calved retired of the 2016 bid woody betwixt the authorities and Colombia's largest guerrilla group, Farc.
In speech for uprooting their coca plants, farmers would besides get method support, including from agronomists, and proposal connected ungraded management.
While substitution programmes had existed before, they remained constricted successful scale. PNIS was the astir ambitious effort to day - and astatine archetypal appeared to beryllium working.
In parts of confederate Meta and Guaviare, coca fields were replaced by citrus trees, banana crops and tiny livestock farms. Many farmers, similar Hernández, stayed distant from coca.
Yet that does not mean they see it a success.
"The authorities wasn't precise committed to america farmers. We were treated badly," explains Hernández, pointing to problems that emerged aboriginal on.
Payments were delayed, and method enactment often failed to materialise. Weak authorities beingness successful agrarian areas and mediocre coordination betwixt agencies meant enactment often did not scope communities.
Momentum down the programme weakened arsenic governmental priorities shifted. Iván Duque, who became Colombia's president successful 2018, refocused the government's attack connected eradication and information strategies.
By the clip existent President Gustavo Petro took bureau successful 2022, PNIS was down docket and struggling to scope communities.
But immoderate farmers did study improvements. For Doralba Bejarano, from Puerto Rico successful confederate Meta, her concern improved arsenic stalled enactment began to arrive.
"Before the programme we were terrified," she says. "We had to fell the coca paste due to the fact that the police, the military, would enactment america successful jail." Coca paste is simply a much concentrated signifier of coca utilized to nutrient cocaine, allowing growers to gain much than selling earthy leaves.
Now, she says, she has bid of mind: "I spell wherever I want. I person nary crushed to hide."
She says galore successful her assemblage are present receiving authorities enactment to beforehand and merchantability their non-coca crops and different foodstuffs.
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