Pubdate: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 Source: Newsday (NY) Copyright: 2002 Newsday Inc Contact: http://www.newsday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308 Author: Letta Tayler A WEEKLY LOOK AT PEOPLE AND ISSUES IN LATIN AMERICA Coca Crops Flourishing In Peru Production Soars Despite Efforts To Stop Growth San Fernando, Peru - Fifteen years ago, government workers tore up Jorge Cotrina's coca plants in this fertile jungle hamlet in central Peru. But faced with plunging prices for his other crops, Cotrina a few years ago resumed cultivation of the plants that yield cocaine. "If we didn't plant coca, we'd die," Cotrina said, gesturing at his hillside of coca plants. "I have five sons. If I didn't grow coca, who would pay for their food and shoes and clothes, and for seeds for my other crops?" Despite massive long-term efforts to eradicate coca, production has increased - or at best barely decreased - over the past year in Peru, the world's second-largest coca grower after Colombia. The stubbornness of Peru's coca crop is the most pressing issue that President George W. Bush will discuss with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo in a visit to this country Saturday. It is among several problems that arise in Peru for the U.S. counternarcotics campaign in the Andean region, which is the United States' chief source of cocaine. For the first time, Peruvian farmers are growing poppies, the source of heroin, as well as coca. Also, Peru's Shining Path leftist rebels - who authorities say earn money by protecting drug-smuggling routes - are staging a comeback. And with civil war intensifying in neighboring Colombia, officials fear more of the drug trade will spill into this country. "We are extremely concerned about the increase in Peruvian drug production," said Patrice Vandenberghe, head of the United Nations International Drug Control Program in Peru. "If demand remains stable and production in Colombia is reduced because of fighting, I would expect prices to go up and the incentive to grow coca and poppies in Peru to be even greater." Peru's growing drug commerce appears to be the latest case of what analysts call the "balloon effect," in which pressure against the trade in one country simply pushes it into another. Colombian coca cultivation began in earnest after Peruvian crops were almost wiped out in the mid-1990s by aggressive eradication, a market glut and a killer fungus. Now, ambitious eradication efforts in Colombia and record-high coca prices appear to be fueling Peru's new harvests. "The cultivation levels in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru rise and fall at different times, but total production for the three countries remains the same as it was a decade ago," said Hugo Cabieses, a top aide in the Peruvian drug czar's office. Crop substitution and other programs designed to end production "aren't working," he said. With improved techniques, Peruvian farmers are producing up to four times as much coca per acre these days. And traffickers increasingly are processing it into cocaine locally rather than exporting coca leaves or paste. Poppies - a crop authorities believe was introduced by Colombian drug traffickers handing out free seeds to farmers - are being grown under cloud cover in remote mountains too high to reach with most of Peru's helicopters. "It's very hard to detect, and it's seven times more profitable than coca production," said Vandenberghe. The United States has spent nearly $2 billion over the past three years combatting coca production in the Andes, mostly in Colombia. This year it tripled counternarcotics aid to Peru to $156 million. During his visit, Bush may announce the resumption of U.S. surveillance flights over Peru to spot drug traffickers, administration officials say. The flights were suspended last year after the Peruvian military mistakenly shot down a private plane, killing a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter. Half of the U.S. funding this year is earmarked for alternative crop development. But in communities such as San Fernando in the Upper Huallaga Valley, a region where officials estimate coca production has jumped 10 percent in the past year, coca farmers bitterly dismissed such plans as too little, too late. The local coca farmers' association is organizing demonstrations in the Upper Huallaga and in Lima, the capital, to protest Bush's visit. Many crop substitution plans call for farmers to plant cocoa or coffee. But people here said prices for those crops have fallen to record lows of about $1 per kilogram, while coca leaf prices, fueled by tightening supply and rising demand in new cocaine markets such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, are reaching a record high of $4 per kilo. Other farmers pointed out hundreds of acres of barren land where the government uprooted coca fields but offered no alternatives. "They tore out our coca plants more than a year ago and gave us nothing," fumed Isabel Claudio, a mother of four who lives in the hills above Tingo Maria, the main city in the Upper Huallaga. With no other income in this country where half the population lives in poverty, Claudio switched to buying and selling coca leaf. As Claudio sat in a line of coca vendors on a dusty sidewalk in Tingo Maria, her 6-month-old daughter, Aliyah, amused herself by grabbing fistfuls of the brilliant green leaves from her mother's sack and stuffing some of them into her mouth. Coca cultivation for medicinal purposes has been permitted in Peru since the Incas. Experts say the leaf, which is chewed or brewed, is far milder than processed cocaine. But personal consumption accounts for a fraction of the 114,000 acres of the leaf that the United Nations estimates were cultivated here last year, up from 107,000 acres in 2000. With a different methodology, U.S. statistics show coca acreage 25 percent less, and basically static last year. Jim Williard, director of narcotics affairs at the U.S. Embassy, said the statistics aren't that grim in the context of the chaos in Colombia, soaring coca prices and political turmoil in Peru. Since 2000, this country has twice changed its government: President Alberto Fujimori fled amid massive scandal and was replaced by an interim government before Toledo was elected last year. "In the future they're going to have to do better," Williard said of Peruvian counternarcotics officials, "but they did well to tread water during that period." Eradication and interdiction have been made harder by resistance from coca farmers. Around Tingo Maria, farmers boasted they'd driven eradication workers from their fields by threatening them with machetes and by blockading the main road. Villagers fight police teams that enter remote areas to destroy coca processing labs, according to Luis Enrique Gonzales, the counternarcotics chief in Tingo Maria. "It's a war," he said. Officials here say it will take a war on poverty to convert coca growers to other crops. Though many coca-growing areas yield succulent fruits, a lack of roads in the rugged jungles and soaring mountains make it almost impossible to get perishables to market. Peruvian officials are pressing Washington to lift tariffs on its textiles of cotton, which can grow in many coca-producing areas. Drug busters also are encouraging high-price specialty products such as gourmet coffee, and want to create processing plants for juices and other agricultural goods. They want to boost credit lines and build more roads and bridges. And they want to curb U.S. consumption, without which the coca market wouldn't exist. "It's a tough job, but I think we could see significant progress over the next four or five years," predicted the U.S. Embassy's Williard. That would suit Cotrina just fine. But in the meantime, the farmer said, "I'll keep harvesting my coca." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth