Whereas in 1994 the three countries’ governments destroyed about 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of coca,2 in 2014 they laid waste to more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres), mostly by hand. It is an extraordinary feat: to picture the scale of the task, imagine every year weeding a garden fourteen times the size of Manhattan (while occasionally being shot at). By the rough calculations of the United Nations, nearly half of all the coca bushes planted in the Andes are now eradicated.
