>> anthony, this is the major. >> julio cesar gonzalez is the current mayor of miraflores, which has how many people in this town? >> there's around 1,500 to 2,000 in the municipality. the farc were here for 20 years, and they were the central authority here. >> you're running a subsistence farm growing plantains and not much else. you're not eating particularly well, you're not particularly happy with the government. somebody comes along and offers you a nice machine gun and a cool scarf -- >> yeah. >> especially if you're 15, 16 years old, that's a pretty attractive offer. >> of course, it is. >> even if they say you'll probably be dead by the time you're 25. >> it is. >> come on. >> it is, and they offer you a salary. >> so what is the future of this town? [ speaking spanish ] >> they're providing free education, but there's a lot of potential in biodiversity and ecotourism as well. >> what a lot of people say is, without the customer, there's no cocaine trade and there's no violence, right? so if the united states and europe stopped buying cocaine? >> that's so impossible that i

we land in the jungle outpost of miraflores in the southern province in the amazonian forest reserve.l police is a result of its strategic location and recent history as a one-time center of coca production. farmers here would grow the stuff and make leaves into paste. traffickers would come and buy it. the farc had this area under its sphere of influence for years. nine years ago, the government moved to expel the farc, the traffickers and any paramilitaries, with apparently much success. overnight, however, its population shrank by 85%. and what remains struggles to survive. so, the people here, you're telling me, either were born here -- >> yeah. >> -- or? >> most of the people came from elsewhere. in the beginning in the 1950s and '60s they were -- they were escaping from the violence, from the political violence between the two parties in colombia. >> so, if you were having problems in the city or wherever you were from, you came out here? >> yeah. >> so what did you do for a living out here? >> cattle and some agriculture, and after that the drug trade began and everything with