Colombia offers new hope for jailed women caught up in narco web

Ana Tabares was a broke and desperate single mother of two when she took a job preparing food in a cocaine laboratory, got caught up in a police raid, and found herself behind bars.

The Colombian government, which considers the United States-led war on drugs a failure, is analyzing the cases of thousands of jailed women like Tabares, some of whom have already been freed under a new law.

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Tabares was 36 when soldiers and police burst into the remote camp where she worked for cocaine manufacturers. She was arrested alongside three other people as part of a fierce war on drugs in Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine producer.

A judge ignored her pleas and sentenced her to 10 years and eight months in prison for trafficking and manufacturing narcotics.

Her boss remains at large.

“It is always us, the least involved, who pay the price,” Tabares told AFP in Buen Pastor, the main women’s prison in Bogota, where she spends her days cleaning and painting ceramics.

– A global ‘failure’ –

Colombia has spent decades battling powerful drug cartels, using the military and millions of dollars from the United States, which pushed for harsh crackdowns in the country.

But, the narco business is still thriving.

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Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro is now seeking a different approach.

“We need to decriminalize and reduce consumption through prevention, given the global failure of the war on drugs,” he said in January at the Davos Forum.

His government wants to stop going after small players such as coca farmers and other low-ranking workers and go all-in against the big bosses and those involved in money-laundering networks.

In March 2023, Petro signed a law allowing poor women who are the main breadwinners of their families to serve their sentences outside of prison, by doing community service, with the authorization of a judge.

“The diagnosis is that the war on drugs has been highly costly in financial terms, but perhaps even more so in terms of people’s lives,” said Camilo Umana, vice minister of justice.

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The Colombian justice ministry estimates that 37 percent of the 7,000 women imprisoned in overcrowded prisons were there for crimes related to drug trafficking or microtrafficking — the small-scale distribution of narcotics.

Only 15 percent of male inmates are detained for these crimes.

Thanks to the new law, around a dozen women have been freed this year.

– ‘They need me’ –

Tabares clings to the hope that she will be freed and reunited with her daughter, who is no longer a minor, and 12-year-old son who is in the care of his aunt.

Another prisoner, Angie Hernandez, has spent almost four years in prison. Her addiction to bazuco — a byproduct of cocaine production that is smoked — led her into homelessness and selling drugs on the street.

In her absence, her teenage daughters have been living with their grandmother and one has dropped out of school.

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“I feel that they need me,” said the 34-year-old. “There have been times that I called and they went to bed without eating,” she added.

She said she has “faith” that she will be freed once a judge has studied her case.

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an NGO, estimates that more than 40 percent of women are imprisoned across the region for crimes linked to drugs.

– ‘Introduced to the devil’ –

In 2019, 79 percent of women detained for such crimes had between one and five children, according to a report that year from the UN’s drug office.

Most of them had become mothers before the age of 18.

Isabel Pereira, a political scientist at the DeJusticia think tank, said there was “a Latin American tendency to criminalize ever more behaviors” with “more severe punishments.”

This hits women hard, especially those with no education, in informal jobs, and several children.

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In 2023, Estefany Villa, 30, found herself without a job and her three children were hungry.

Desperate, she agreed to hide Bazuco and marijuana in her home in exchange for money. If the new government law does not free her, she will have four more years behind bars.

She said she was “literally introduced to the devil.”

“You do what you have to out of necessity. There are small children asking every day for breakfast, lunch, and supper.”