Assets Frozen: Peruvian Businessman Says Rivals Are Trying To Ruin His Name LIMA - One of Peru's top businessmen has challenged the United States to start legal proceedings against him in U.S. courts after the White House placed him on its list of overseas drug kingpins. "I'm sending a letter to the President of the United States asking that they open a trial in the United States so that I can present my case and the American justice system can decide if I am guilty or innocent," said Fernando Zevallos, founder of Aero Continente, Peru's largest airline, who also faces legal proceedings in Peruvian courts. [continues 618 words]
LIMA (AP)--About 3,000 rural coca growers marched peacefully into Lima on Monday to demand the government stop programs to eradicate their cocaine-producing crop and release of one of their leaders. Protest leader Nancy Obregon told The Associated Press that the coca farmers would remain in the capital "until they solve our problems." Obregon said coca farmers want to speak with Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero and legislators about a law that would protect coca cultivation. They also want to meet with judiciary officials to discuss the release of one of their leaders, Nelson Palomino, who has been jailed for more than a year on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda. [continues 279 words]
LIMA (AP) - It looks and tastes pretty much like the many brands of bottled iced tea that line American supermarket shelves - just don't drink it before a drug test. Kdrink is one of two new bottled beverages to hit Peruvian stores this year using a formula made from coca leaves, the base ingredient in cocaine. Each bottle of Kdrink contains a trace 0.6 milligrams of the outlawed stimulant. Although that amount of natural, unprocessed cocaine carries less kick than a cup of coffee, it is enough to create a legal headache for exporters. With the notable exception of Coca-Cola, products using coca leaves are banned in most countries beyond the Andes by strict U.S. and UN import regulations. [continues 661 words]
Lima, March 19: The Internet and cellular telephones are making drug traffickers harder than ever to catch and the job will only become more difficult as technology develops, a US anti-drug official said on Thursday. Messages in Internet chat rooms, where drug smugglers in Latin America can arrange cocaine deliveries in London or Berlin, are almost impossible to intercept and cellular phone text messages cannot be tracked by authorities, Mark Malcolm, intelligence analyst at the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, told an international drug conference in Lima. [continues 263 words]
Peruvian coca growers are meeting in the capital Lima to discuss ways to confront the government over their controversial crop. Farmers are angry that politicians have failed to come up with a financially viable alternative to the crop, which is the raw material for cocaine. The coca growers have travelled long distances from remote areas of the Andes and Amazon to voice their anger. Peru is the second biggest producer of cocaine in the world. Legal Use Much of it is smuggled to the United States - though a small amount is used legally, brewed in tea or chewed to combat altitude sickness. [continues 114 words]
LIMA (AP)--Unidentified assailants brutally beat a U.S. journalist investigating the eradication of cocaine-producing coca shrubs in the Peruvian jungle, the foreign press club said Wednesday. Sharon Stevenson, a freelance correspondent who has worked for Newsweek magazine, Voice of America and CNN, was suffering from amnesia but was in stable condition and was expected to make a slow recovery, said Mary Powers, president of the Foreign Press Association of Peru. Stevenson, 57, was beaten and strangled on Dec. 10 after she went to meet with sources. [continues 184 words]
LIMA -- Peruvian and U.S. antinarcotics officials said the cultivation of coca leaves used to make cocaine has dropped in Peru. After reporting a slight increase in overall acreage last year, Peru's counter drug agency Devida said that 21,140 acres of coca had been destroyed -- beating a U.S.-approved goal of nearly 20,000 acres this year. Also this week, the U.S. government said that Peru had slashed the total amount of coca being grown from 91,500 acres at the end of 2002 to 77,875 acres by June. [end]
WASHINGTON -- Ronald Reagan is generally recognized as the original "Teflon president." No matter what went wrong during his two-term presidency in the '80s, whether outside his control or not, he remained popular -- no allegation or bad news seemed to stick to him, as if he were treated with a non-stick coating. In Latin America, where growing disaffection toward democracy is further eroding public confidence in politicians, a new kind of Teflon presidency has emerged. Today, it is best personified by President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, but with a somewhat cruel twist: For Toledo, not even the best of news sticks. [continues 715 words]
SAN FRANCISCO, Peru -- Darkness had descended outside, and a bare light bulb illuminated Mayor Teofilo Torres in his office here as he explained the danger posed by the reemergence of the Shining Path guerrillas deep in the Peruvian jungle. "Shining Path could enter San Francisco at any time and shoot me," Torres said. "They look for the mayors first." A decade after the Shining Path was believed to have been vanquished, the guerrillas -- known in Peru by their Spanish name, Sendero Luminoso -- are making a comeback in a potentially dangerous alliance with traffickers of coca paste, the basic ingredient of cocaine, in a remote mountainous region with little civil authority. [continues 1026 words]
AGUAYTIA, Peru - Imagine being sent to war by generals who are unable to agree on the enemy's strength or where to fight. That's the case in the war on drugs in Peru, where the United States is spending more than $140 million this year to eradicate coca, the raw material from which cocaine is made, and to provide alternative crops to the desperately poor coca farmers known as cocaleros. How big is the problem? The best guesses differ wildly. [continues 739 words]
AGUAYTIA, Peru - Imagine being sent to war by generals who are unable to agree on the enemy's strength or where to fight. That's the case in the war on drugs in Peru, where the United States is spending more than $140 million this year to eradicate coca, the raw material from which cocaine is made, and to provide alternative crops to the desperately poor coca farmers known as cocaleros. How big is the problem? The best guesses differ wildly. [continues 814 words]
As U.S. Cracks Down In Colombia, It Seems Coca Production Is Shifting AGUAYTIA, Peru - Alarmed by evidence that drug trafficking is on the rise in Peru, the Bush administration expects controversial antinarcotics air-interdiction flights to resume in the Andean nation by the end of this year. "We are seeing a large increase in the number of people clearing out old coca fields, and getting back into it," explained a senior U.S. official in Peru who is familiar with antinarcotics efforts there. His agency doesn't permit him to be named. [continues 533 words]
U.S. Supporting Effort By Training The Pilots AGUAYTIA, Peru -- Alarmed by evidence that drug trafficking is on the rise in Peru, the Bush administration expects controversial anti-narcotics air-interdiction flights to resume in the Andean nation by the end of this year. "We are seeing a large increase in the number of people clearing out old coca fields and getting back into it," said a senior U.S. official in Peru who is familiar with anti-narcotics efforts there. His agency doesn't permit him to be named. [continues 512 words]
LIMA (AP)--Cultivation of coca plants rose by 1.1% in Peru last year, according to a joint U.N.-Peruvian government report, and Peru's anti-drug czar called the increase "alarming." The survey, conducted by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and Peru's government, said 115,400 acres of the coca - used to produce cocaine - were being grown by Peruvian growers at the end of 2002. That was up from 114,160 acres in 2001. "It is an alarming statistic," Nils Ericsson, the head of Peru's anti-drug agency Devida, said Thursday. "Peru maintains a worrisome second-place ranking among cocaine and coca producers worldwide." [continues 351 words]
Peruvian cocaleros (coca growers) and their sympathizers, who only last week hailed a meeting with President Alejandro Toledo and a resulting set of proposed agreements as a "partial victory," have seen their elation turn to ashes this week. Leaders of the Confederation of Peruvian Coca Growers (Confederacion Nacional de Productores Agropecuarios de las Cuencas Cocaleras del Peru, or CONCPACCP) had led thousands of cocaleros on a two-week march to Lima to protest forced eradication policies, corruption and debility in alternative development programs, and the arrest of imprisoned leader Nelson Palomino, thought they had won a victory after Toledo took an offering of coca leaf from them and pronounced it "sacred," but the accords they thought they had negotiated with the government did not appear in the Supreme Decree published by the government the following day. The discovery came only as the thousands of cocaleros were already on their way back to the coca fields of the Apurimac, the Ene and the Upper Huallaga river valleys. [continues 726 words]
In what local observers described as a "partial victory" and "relative triumph" for Peru's insurgent cocalero (coca farmer) movement, cocalero leaders met Wednesday with President Alejandro Toledo, who took some small steps to alleviate their plight and promised more. Since April 8, cocaleros from around the country had been marching on Lima to demand the government redress their grievances and the president meet with them personally. When thousands of cocaleros began pouring into the heart of the capital Monday, pressure began mounting on Toledo to heed the demand for a meeting, and by Wednesday, after preliminary meetings between cocalero leaders, Prime Minister Luis Solari, and Peruvian drug agency head Nils Ericsson, the long-awaited event took place. [continues 777 words]
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) Peruvian farmers who marched into Lima this week met with President Alejandro Toledo on Wednesday, presenting demands they hope will protect their coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, the government said. Coca farmers -- who launched a broad protest April 8 that has included strikes, blocked highways and a long march by foot and by truck to Lima -- were meeting with Toledo at his presidential palace, a palace official said. Peru is the world's No. 2 producer of coca, a leafy plant that many farmers chew to ward off fatigue or brew in tea, as well as make illegal cocaine, which is smuggled from Andean countries such as Peru and Colombia to consumers in rich nations. According to U.S. data, there are about 89,000 acres of coca in Peru, putting it second in coca cultivation after Colombia. [continues 287 words]
LIMA (AP)--Thousands of poor coca farmers converged on Lima Monday, demanding an end to restrictions on their cocaine-producing crop and the release of one of their prominent leaders. The farmers arrived in several groups, which began marching to Lima about 10 days ago from coca-growing mountainous jungle valleys to the northeast and southeast of the capital. Police arrested Nelson Palomino, head of a national organization of coca producers, on Feb. 20, days after farmers in several rural coca-growing regions began a 10-day protest of government plans to destroy coca bushes. [continues 295 words]
Inside Peru
