Peru's Maoist guerrilla movement, the Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path, is reinventing itself as an international drugs gang, police say. The group, dormant for almost 10 years, is regaining momentum in the rugged highlands. Last spring, Colombian drug barons, who lose acres of supplies each time US-donated helicopters spray their crops with herbicides, were quick to seize an unexpected opportunity to move into Peru. Washington had stopped using its aircraft to prevent drug flights between Colombia and Peru after a CIA blunder led to the shooting down of an American missionary's plane. Border surveillance was badly affected, and within months world attention turned to Afghanistan. [continues 534 words]
U.S. drug patrols over Peru will resume in 2002, the Peruvian government said. "There's no fixed date, but we do know that they will resume next year," Vice President Raul Diez Canseco said. The flights were suspended in April after a Peruvian military jet, acting on intelligence provided by Americans, mistook a hydroplane for a drug-running aircraft and shot it down. Two Americans were killed. [end]
As Coffee Prices Keep Plunging, Many Farmers Are Looking To Their Only Viable Cash Crop. APURIMAC-ENE VALLEY, Peru - For 10 hours a day in a field in Peru's southern jungle, Lucia Huarca strips green coca leaves off bushes with calloused hands and collects her harvest in her wide blue skirt. Her day's haul - typically 66 pounds, for which she is paid around $3 - will probably end up in the hands of drug traffickers to be transformed into cocaine. [continues 730 words]
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- On his first official visit to South America, Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Peru to help push through a pact he said would help nations learn how to behave like democracies. Peru is the first stop on a trip that takes Powell to Colombia on Tuesday and Wednesday to show support for President Andres Pastrana. Leading up to the visit, the Bush administration on Monday blacklisted a right-wing Colombian group as a terrorist organization and banned financial support for it. The administration says the group is responsible for hundreds of massacres in its war against leftist rebels. [continues 450 words]
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru plans to urge Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to resume the U.S.-backed antidrug flights suspended after the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down an American missionary plane this spring. Powell is scheduled to visit Lima on Monday and Tuesday for an assembly of the Organization of American States. Foreign Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said Peruvian officials would ask for clarification of "the dates and conditions in which aerial drug-interdiction flights could restart." The missionary plane was shot from the sky April 20 after it was initially identified as a possible drug flight by a CIA-operated surveillance plane and then fired on by a Peruvian military jet. A Baptist missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed. [continues 177 words]
LIMA, Peru - Peru plans to urge Secretary of State Colin Powell to resume the U.S.-backed antidrug flights suspended after the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down an American missionary plane this spring. Powell is scheduled to visit Lima on Monday and Tuesday for an assembly of the Organization of American States. [end]
LIMA, Peru -- Peru plans to urge Secretary of State Colin Powell to resume the U.S.-backed anti-drug flights suspended after the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down an American missionary plane this spring. Powell is scheduled to visit Lima on Monday and Tuesday for an assembly of the Organization of American States. Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said that Peruvian officials would use the opportunity to ask for clarification of "the dates and conditions in which aerial drug interdiction flights could restart." [continues 451 words]
LIMA, Peru -- An air force jet fighter carrying a Peruvian pilot and an American instructor has crashed off Peru's northern coast during a training mission, the air force said Friday. The A-37B jet went down Thursday afternoon in the Pacific Ocean between the coastal towns of Paita and Bayovar, about 535 miles northwest of Lima, the air force said. A Peruvian air force spokesman said that navy ships, air force planes and police helicopters were searching for the plane Friday and authorities were investigating the accident. The flight was being conducted under the joint U.S.-Peruvian program to fight drug trafficking, the air force said. A U.S. Embassy spokesman, citing U.S. privacy laws, refused to release the name of the American instructor. [end]
Traffickers Are Moving Outside Drug War Areas WASHINGTON -- The opium poppy, the raw ingredient for heroin, has now been found in Peru, where it has spread from Colombia, underscoring the difficulty of containing the boundaries of the drug war. "We're finding it in high altitudes in Peru," said Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and narcotics affairs. Drug traffickers introduced the poppy to Colombia a decade ago, seeking to diversify from cocaine to heroin. Drug enforcement experts now say Colombia is the source of as much as 75 percent of the heroin found along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. [continues 180 words]
WASHINGTON - The opium poppy, the raw ingredient for heroin, has been found in Peru, where it has spread from Colombia, underscoring the difficulty of containing the boundaries of the drug war. "We're finding it in high altitudes in Peru," said Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and narcotics affairs. Drug traffickers introduced poppy to Colombia a decade ago, seeking to diversify from cocaine to heroin. Drug-enforcement experts say Colombia is the source of as much as 75 percent of the heroin found along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. [continues 206 words]
I read the government's report on the shooting down of the missionary plane in the Andes (8/1, A-4, "U.S., Peru faulted for plane tragedy"). There was discussion of various procedural rules violated, implying that if we only follow the rules in the future, this would not happen again. Only those dastardly drug dealers will get shot out of the sky. Well the rule to follow was written more than 200 years ago. It is part of the U.S. Constitution where it says that no one will be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. You do not shoot a plane out of the sky, no matter what you think it is carrying, unless it is shooting at you. Shooting down a plane is premeditated murder. It also doesn't matter that we hired the Peruvian Air Force to do the dirty work for us. People who hire hit men go to jail in our country. [continues 59 words]
Washington Vows To Send $22 Million LIMA, Peru--Peru will receive $22 million from Washington to buy equipment for its anti-narcotics police, the U.S. ambassador to Peru announced on Friday. Ambassador John R. Hamilton and Peruvian Foreign Minister Diego Garcia Sayan signed the agreement to fund coca plant eradication and coca-growing prevention programs, which are run by the anti-narcotics police. These new funds come two months after Washington sent $25 million to Peru to promote alternative crops in the jungle area. [continues 601 words]
WASHINGTON -- In the black-and-white video the single-engine Cessna flies along the clouds in northern Peru, and it's easy to imagine 7- month-old passenger Charity Bowers wrapped in her mother's arms, sound asleep or perhaps crying for want of a bottle. The infant had been recently adopted in the United States. You know her folks are beaming. In fact, they're traveling by air from their houseboat on the banks of the Amazon River, where they are missionaries, to get a residence visa for their baby to allow her to stay with them in Peru. [continues 961 words]
Colombia Says Drug Lords Are Using Smear Tactics BOGOTA, Colombia -- Battle lines are being drawn over the massive fumigation of drug crops in Colombia, with opponents saying it poses health risks while the U.S. ambassador warns that aid could be withheld if the Washington-backed plan is scrapped. The country's top anti-narcotics enforcer, meanwhile, is accusing drug traffickers -- who have lost millions of dollars in profits -- of waging a smear campaign against Washington's $1.3 billion counterdrug offensive. [continues 363 words]
LIMA, Peru -- The Central Intelligence Agency paid the Peruvian intelligence organization run by fallen spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking, despite evidence that Montesinos was also in business with Colombia's big drug cartels, Knight Ridder has learned. Montesinos, 56 and in jail near Lima on corruption charges, is now dragging the CIA into his legal battles. He is asking Peruvian court officials to interrogate two CIA officers as part of his defense against charges that he helped smuggle guns to guerrillas who allegedly provided protection to big drug cartels. [continues 485 words]
Language Split U.S., Peru Crews Washington -- Peruvian officers involved in the downing of an American missionary plane did not hear or could not understand warnings from a CIA-hired crew that might have saved the lives of a missionary and her infant daughter, a videotape showed. The American pilots expressed doubts that the missionary's Cessna float plane was a drug flight, as they had initially suspected, but didn't explicitly try to stop the Peruvians until the shooting began. [continues 410 words]
LIMA, Peru - The Central Intelligence Agency paid the Peruvian intelligence organization run by fallen spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking, despite evidence that Montesinos was also in business with Colombia's big drug cartels, Knight Ridder has learned. Montesinos, 56 and in jail near Lima on corruption charges, is now dragging the CIA into his legal battles, asking Peruvian court officials to interrogate two CIA officers as part of his defense against charges that he helped smuggle guns to guerrillas who allegedly provide protection to big drug cartels. [continues 432 words]
LIMA, Peru -- The CIA paid the Peruvian intelligence organization run by fallen spy-master Vladimiro Montesinos $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking, despite evidence that Montesinos was also in business with Colombia's big drug cartels, the Mercury News has learned. Montesinos, 56 and in jail near Lima on corruption charges after his capture June 23 in Venezuela, is now dragging the CIA into his legal battles, asking Peruvian court officials to interrogate two CIA officers as part of his defense against charges that he helped smuggle guns to guerrillas who allegedly provide protection to big drug cartels. [continues 1016 words]
LIMA, Peru - The Central Intelligence Agency paid the Peruvian intelligence organization run by fallen spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking, despite evidence that Montesinos was also in business with Colombia's big drug cartels, Knight Ridder has learned. Montesinos, 56 and in jail near Lima on corruption charges, is now dragging the CIA into his legal battles, asking Peruvian court officials to interrogate two CIA officers as part of his defense against charges of smuggling guns to guerrillas who allegedly provide protection to big drug cartels. [continues 926 words]
Inside Peru
