{"id":313458,"date":"2026-02-23T12:01:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313458"},"modified":"2026-02-22T17:23:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T17:23:56","slug":"are-we-angry-yet-the-time-has-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/02\/are-we-angry-yet-the-time-has-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Angry Yet? The Time Has Come\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

12 Feb 2026 –\u00a0The drug trade \u2013 and the \u2018War on Drugs\u2019 that polices it \u2013 unleashes a value chain of suffering on peasant communities in the Global South. You cannot explain such systematic brutality without anger.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and Cilia Flores<\/i><\/p>\n

A few months ago, I travelled with a team from our institute to Cauca, Colombia, to meet with a range of organisations affiliated with the Popular Unity Process of Southwest Colombia (PUPSOC<\/a>), a coalition of organisations that defend the land and rights of rural communities. Cauca is home to coca-growing campesino (peasant) communities, where families do not plant coca out of \u2018choice\u2019 but because dispossession and state abandonment have closed off dignified livelihoods for them. Their labour barely sustains them, yet their crops are drawn into an obscenely lucrative global value chain of suffering. Along with the Coordinadora Nacional de Cultivadores y Cultivadoras de Coca, Amapola y Marihuana (National Coordination of Coca, Poppy, and Marijuana Growers, COCCAM), we carried out the research that became dossier no. 97, The War on the Poor: Narcotics, Campesinos, and Capitalism<\/i><\/a> (February 2026). The images in this newsletter are from dossier no. 97; they feature photographs by PUPSOC with interventions by Tricontinental\u2019s art team.<\/p>\n

I began to write this newsletter in prose but could not get the words out properly. So, I turned it into a long, meandering poem. I did so because the rage I feel at the system that produces this value chain of suffering cannot be easily explained without the emotion of anger. So here goes:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), Cajib\u00edo, Cauca: clash during forced coca eradication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

They arrived,
\noh yes, they arrived \u2013
\none morning the sea opened
\nlike a blue wound,
\nand ships crawled out
\nheavy with hunger.<\/p>\n

They brought civilisation
\nin their pockets,
\nwrapped like a knife
\nin silk.<\/p>\n

Civilisation, they said,
\nas if naming a flower.<\/p>\n

But it was hunger.
\nIt was gunpowder.
\nIt was paper contracts
\nthat bit deeper
\nthan teeth.<\/p>\n

Their ships drank gold
\nfrom the ribs of the continent,
\nand exhaled chains
\ninto the bodies of men.<\/p>\n

The earth,
\nthe ancient earth,
\npatient as a mother,
\nwas forced to open her veins
\nfor strangers.<\/p>\n

They took the land.<\/p>\n

They took the labour.<\/p>\n

They took the forests
\nstill wet with birdsong.<\/p>\n

They drained the mountains
\nuntil even the stones
\nfelt poor.<\/p>\n

And what did they leave?<\/p>\n

Poverty,
\nlike a cracked bowl
\nleft in the dust
\nfor children to lick.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), Popay\u00e1n, Cauca (2020): tribute to victims of police repression in the 2019 uprising.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Later,
\nthe bandits changed costumes.<\/p>\n

They threw away
\ntheir metal skins,
\ntheir swords,
\ntheir crosses of conquest.<\/p>\n

Now they wore suits
\nthe colour of ash.<\/p>\n

Their mouths learned
\nnew words:<\/p>\n

development<\/i>,
\ndemocracy<\/i>,
\nlaw and order<\/i> \u2013<\/p>\n

perfume sprayed
\nover the same corpse.<\/p>\n

And always
\nthey declared war.<\/p>\n

War on Drugs.
\nWar on Terror.
\nWar on the poor.<\/p>\n

War, war, war \u2013
\nas if war were the only prayer
\ntheir empire knows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), Monterredondo, Cauca: campesinos welcome former FARC combatants after the 2016 peace accord.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

They tell us:<\/p>\n

The drug trade is an infection,
\na darkness outside the system,
\na criminal underworld
\nbeneath the clean city.<\/p>\n

But capitalism,
\noh capitalism,
\nhas always had sewers
\nbeneath its shining streets.<\/p>\n

Its banks are cathedrals
\nbuilt atop dirty rivers.<\/p>\n

The mafia is not outside.<\/p>\n

The narco is not outside.<\/p>\n

The arms dealer
\nis not outside.<\/p>\n

They are arteries
\nin the same body.<\/p>\n

Dirty cash rises
\nlike smoke from a furnace,
\nis washed,
\nironed smooth,
\nand returned
\nas legitimate capital
\nto sit politely
\nat the table of power.<\/p>\n

This is not an accident.<\/p>\n

It is the hidden organ
\nof the beast.<\/p>\n

Marx named it
\noriginary accumulation \u2013<\/p>\n

but it never ended.<\/p>\n

Colonial conquest,
\nenclosure,
\nthe theft of land,
\nthe trade in human beings \u2013<\/p>\n

capital was not born clean.<\/p>\n

It was born
\nwith blood on its lips.<\/p>\n

And when it hungers,
\nwhen it thirsts,
\nit returns again
\nto banditry,<\/p>\n

like a vampire
\nleaning over the neck
\nof the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), October 2020: a participant of the Social and Community Minga for the Defence of Life, Territory, Democracy, and Peace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Look \u2013
\nlook at the campesinos
\nin Colombia.<\/p>\n

The newspapers call them criminals.<\/p>\n

The state calls them enemies.<\/p>\n

But they are only
\nhumans with soil
\nunder their fingernails,
\nparents
\ncounting hunger
\nin the faces of their children.<\/p>\n

The helicopters arrive
\nlike metal locusts.<\/p>\n

Glyphosate rains down
\nlike poisoned weather.<\/p>\n

The army marches
\nthrough the crops
\nas if marching through flesh.<\/p>\n

And the campesino grows coca
\nnot from greed,<\/p>\n

but because capitalism
\nclosed every other door.<\/p>\n

Land concentrated
\ninto a few hands.<\/p>\n

Legal crops collapsing
\nlike tired birds.<\/p>\n

No roads.
\nNo markets.
\nNo schools.
\nNo hospitals.<\/p>\n

Only abandonment.<\/p>\n

Only coca
\nas the last green coin
\nof survival.<\/p>\n

At the farm gate
\nthey earn almost nothing \u2013<\/p>\n

a handful of dust.<\/p>\n

But the leaf travels.<\/p>\n

Through clandestine labs,
\nthrough trafficking corridors,
\nthrough the veins
\nof the global market \u2013<\/p>\n

and its value multiplies
\nuntil it becomes
\na monstrous miracle:<\/p>\n

from a dollar
\nto tens of thousands.<\/p>\n

This is capitalism:<\/p>\n

value extracted upward
\nlike marrow from bone.<\/p>\n

Poverty enforced downward
\nlike gravity.<\/p>\n

The campesino remains poor.<\/p>\n

The cartel boss lives violently.<\/p>\n

And the banks \u2013
\nthe immaculate banks \u2013
\nreceive the surplus
\nlike priests receiving offerings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), Santa Marta, Colombia: campesino fishing on the Atlantic coast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Occasionally
\na scandal erupts.<\/p>\n

HSBC launders
\na billion dollars.<\/p>\n

The penalty is paid
\nlike a small coin
\ntossed to silence.<\/p>\n

No executives go to jail.<\/p>\n

Too big to jail.<\/p>\n

Too sacred to touch.<\/p>\n

Because laundering
\nis not incidental.<\/p>\n

It is structural.<\/p>\n

The war does not reach
\nthe vault.<\/p>\n

It reaches
\nthe field.<\/p>\n

The War on Drugs
\nis not a war on drugs.<\/p>\n

It is an imperial weapon.<\/p>\n

A moral cloak
\nfor aggression.<\/p>\n

Plan Colombia
\nmilitarised peasant soil.<\/p>\n

Today the same rhetoric
\nis aimed at Venezuela \u2013<\/p>\n

narco-terrorism accusations
\nmanufactured like bullets.<\/p>\n

Evidence irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Narrative everything.<\/p>\n

Empire always needs
\na holy excuse
\nfor its violence.<\/p>\n

And the rainforest burns.<\/p>\n

Poisons sprayed
\nacross the Amazon
\nto destroy coca,<\/p>\n

while the North\u2019s addiction
\nto oil, money, extraction
\ngoes unnamed.<\/p>\n

They cry:
\n\u2018destroy the plant that kills!\u2019<\/p>\n

But it is their war
\nthat kills.<\/p>\n

This war is waged
\nagainst nature
\nas much as against people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photograph (PUPSOC), Cauca River basin: reforestation project by local environmental committees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Where does peace begin?<\/p>\n

Not with eradication.<\/p>\n

Not with militarisation.<\/p>\n

Not with prisons.<\/p>\n

Peace begins
\nwith dignity:<\/p>\n

land reform,
\nguaranteed crops,
\nroads,
\nschools,
\nhospitals,
\nrights.<\/p>\n

The reconstruction
\nof rural life.<\/p>\n

Because the problem
\nis not the coca leaf.<\/p>\n

The problem
\nis the system.<\/p>\n

The War on Drugs
\nis not a war on drugs.<\/p>\n

It is a war
\non the poor.<\/p>\n

And to end it
\nrequires not reform,<\/p>\n

but rupture \u2013<\/p>\n

another world
\nrising like dawn
\nover the bloodstained sea.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at<\/em> Globetrotter. He is the director of <\/em>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/em><\/a> and a senior non-resident fellow at <\/em>Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/em><\/a>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and <\/em>The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thetricontinental.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Feb 2026 –\u00a0The drug trade \u2013 and the \u2018War on Drugs\u2019 that polices it \u2013 unleashes a value chain of suffering on peasant communities in the Global South. You cannot explain such systematic brutality without anger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":186469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[867,3143,2642,2846,1113,541,3743,2137,2200,2686,1892,492],"class_list":["post-313458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-anglo-america","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-global-south","tag-hoax","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-narcotraffic","tag-south-america","tag-us-empire","tag-war-of-terror","tag-war-on-drugs","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313460,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313458\/revisions\/313460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}