I point out his crop could kill someone else’s children. Does he ever think about that, I ask.
“The truth is yes,” he says. “Sometimes you do think about that.
“But if you want to survive, you don’t. There are no opportunities with this government. I have children, and of course I think about other children who could be harmed. It’s not about whether you want to [grow coca] or not. You have to.”
He shows us his makeshift lab, down a muddy track. He cooks up cocaine paste here, when he has the chemicals and the fuels.
But these days he says the local guerrillas aren’t buying because of a turf war. When he risked a journey to a local town to make a sale he was robbed of his crop and his phone.
Javier is thinking of going back to his old job – coal mining – for economic reasons rather than moral ones. But he says the mines have also been hit hard by the government. “Insurance went up,” he tells us, “so wages went down.”
He’s had no trouble with the authorities, so far. “I believe they know what’s happening here,” he tells us, “but the truth is they don’t come around – maybe because of the armed groups.”
He has a plea for President Trump: instead of threatening Colombia, consider why farmers like him grow the coca plant, and send economic help.
Javier is 39 – just two years older than Major Cedano DÃaz. Both men are on opposite sides of this country’s drug war, and both are hoping their children will inherit a different Colombia.
Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan, Jhon Jairo Jácome, Lina MarÃa Sandoval