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Trint is back with a new season of “A Photo A Story”, sharing more behind the scenes of expectational events that our founder and CEO, Jeff Kofman, was fortunate to witness during his 30+ year journalism career.
In this episode, Jeff recalls his first visit to Colombia during the elections of 2002. The U.S. “War on Drugs” was well underway at this time and billions of dollars were being funneled through Bogota in an effort to eradicate cocaine production.
To uncover this story, Jeff flew to the city of Cúcuta near the Venezuelan border, to meet the Colombian anti-narcotic police who were being trained by the U.S. He even joined them on a Blackhawk helicopter heading into the jungle, with the mission to find and destroy coca-paste labs.
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Jeff: I felt very secure with these men. I felt that they really did take their job seriously. They were very well trained.
Jeff: I didn't want to take any outrageous risks, but there wasn't going to be a story if we just sat in a helicopter watching other people land.
Jeff: This is in Colombia, in the city of Cúcuta, near the Venezuelan border. It's 2002.
Jeff: I was actually there covering the Colombian elections that really changed the destiny of the country after civil war. The change of government had just happened, but the U.S. financed war against drugs, against the production of cocaine, and Colombia was well underway.
Jeff: I was given access to U.S. financed Colombian army anti-narcotics police and that's what this image shows. It's an interview with a bunch of young soldiers just before they're about to go on a mission to blow up cocaine labs. And that's what we went to do.
Jeff: We would fly in squads of three Blackhawk helicopters, and they had designated on the map where they were going to land to blow up these coca paste labs. Coca paste being the base element of cocaine production. And it all had to be done very quickly in this kind of almost a video game like choreography of one helicopter hovering above. Another one going down to secure the area, and then the third landing and deploying the troops who would actually go and blow up the lab.
Jeff: It was intense and so fast. It was just hard to keep up with the action, which I think the cameraman. This brilliant guy out of Mexico City, who is a staff cameraman for ABC News and the sound man, didn't stop rolling the entire time because we were on the ground for about 12 minutes.
Jeff: And I just remember the words, vamos, vamos, vamos. And we were followed the troops as they jumped out of the helicopter into the mud. We slid down on our butts to the valley floor a couple of hundred yards down. The sound engineer was about five foot five and the river was probably five feet deep. And we just had to go through in our clothes and carry all the equipment. I remember grabbing Javier the sound engineer with the cameramen and helping him across the river and grabbing his sound mixer, which was going to get wet and holding it above the water as we went to the other side.
Jeff: We ran up the banks and I ran a couple of hundred yards and there was this grass thatched shelter where they were producing coca paste. There's one image here. It's quite grainy because it's a very early digital camera. It's 2002.
Jeff: But if you look, you can see a flame in the distance. And what's happened there is that one of the Army guys, one of the commandos has thrown a grenade into the shelter, which with gasoline all over it, and exploded. It really was dramatic and it happened so fast. And then the whole thing burst into flames.
Jeff: I quickly shot mine own camera while this is happening. We shot footage of it all going up and it was vamos, vamos! Back to the river. Back through the river. Back up the hill. The helicopter lands and we're on. And literally it was 12 minutes from landing to destruction to back in the air. And that was the story.
Jeff: One of the things that I learned while I was on this assignment is that the economics of extreme poverty in a place like Colombia really push people into growing coca. And the reason is that it has three crops a year. Bananas, coffee have one crop a year. And so in a country where you have to pay a few dollars to send your child to school, a few dollars for the books, where everything costs money that is very scarce and you're living a subsistence life. You just need you need as much as possible just to scrape by.
Jeff: So for me, there is zero glamor when I hear people talk about cocaine. The association of cocaine and cool just doesn't connect for me because I've seen up close what the consequence is.
