SANTA ROSA DEL GUAMUEZ, Colombia - Villagers vividly recall the planes swooping in at treetop level, trailing a fine mist of herbicide over fields of coca, corn and banana, with combat helicopters clattering overhead.

For the governments of the United States and Colombia, the aerial spraying mission in the Indian village of Santa Rosa del Guamuez was among the first in a controversial counterdrug effort in the world's largest cocaine-producing region.

But already the strategy is running into problems and fueling deep resentment. The planes killed not only coca - the base ingredient of cocaine - but the food crops and pasture.

''The helicopters came with a great noise. They were heavily armed. You could see the machine guns,'' recalled resident Virgilio Queta of the morning of Jan. 6.

Government investigators are inundated with complaints from farmers, and are finding that some complaints of non-drug crops being sprayed are true.

Juan Martinez, of the government ombudsman office, confirmed that some pasture sprayed with herbicide had died. Even the pasture of the mayor of La Hormiga, the main town where the missions have centered, was fumigated.

A three-hour hike by Martinez and Associated Press journalists around Santa Rosa showed that the herbicide landed mostly on the coca crops, many of them on farms smaller than an acre. The government and U.S. officials had given assurances that mainly large-scale ''commercial'' plantations would be targeted.

The fields in Santa Rosa looked like moonscapes, with only deadened branches of the formerly robust green bushes sticking above the brown ground.

Adjacent food crops were shriveled and yellowed from the herbicide, as well as some of the jungle. Tribal fish farms were also sprayed, the Indians said.

Santa Rosa's residents, members of the Cofan and Paez tribes, resent the spraying and wonder if their ancestral lands will recover.

''We are natives here,'' Angelina Queta, a 58-year-old Cofan woman, told Martinez. ''If this land is ruined, we are not going to ask the government to relocate us from our homeland - so treat it with respect.''

Plan Colombia - President Andres Pastrana's anti-drug initiative that Washington is financing with $1.3 billion including helicopters and training for Colombian troops - envisions a mass-scale fumigation of Putumayo, the state where Santa Rosa sits.


For the Drug Enforcement Administration's Web site, go to http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/.
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