Fight Breaks Out After Pair Who Were 'Like Brothers' Reportedly Took Psychedelic Drug Ayahuasca

A spiritual retreat in Peru turned deadly when a 29-year-old Canadian allegedly stabbed a British man after the pair took a hallucinogenic brew.

Local police allege Canadian Joshua Andrew Freeman Stevens killed Unais Gomes, 26, after Gomes attacked him with a knife Wednesday night.

The incident occurred during a retreat near the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian jungle where the pair - who were reportedly "like brothers" - both ingested ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic drug also known as "the vine of the soul."

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LIMA, Peru - An Organization of American States study commissioned in response to calls by some Latin American leaders for rethinking the war on drugs advocates serious discussion of legalizing marijuana.

"Sooner or later decisions in this area will need to be taken," the study released Friday says, although it makes no proposals or specific recommendations on any issue.

The $2.2 million study also notes that "no significant support" was found among any of its 35 member nations for the "decriminalization or legalization of the trafficking of other illicit drugs," including cocaine, which most directly affects the region.

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LIMA, Peru Peru's struggle with a resurgent cocaine trade is in the spotlight as it hosts nearly 60 nations in a conference on illicit drugs beginning Monday.

The Andean country's cocaine production likely now exceeds Colombia's, making it the world's No. 1 source of the illicit drug, the United States and United Nations say.

President Ollanta Humala said when he took office a year ago that he'd make the drug war a priority, and his government announced an ambitious anti-narcotics plan in March.

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But new techniques have given this Ticuna Indian village near the banks of the Amazon River in Peru a surprising distinction in the global drug trade: It is now home to some of the world's fastest expanding plantations of coca, the raw material in cocaine. The United Nations' annual drug report, to be published Tuesday, is expected to document the big changes in the global cocaine business that are helping drive coca cultivation and cocaine consumption deep into Peru's Amazon near its border with Brazil.

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TINGO MARIA, Peru -- Coca cultivation is surging once again in this country's remote tropical valleys, part of a major repositioning of the Andean drug trade that is making Peru a contender to surpass Colombia as the world's largest exporter of cocaine.

Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking rings are expanding their reach in Peru, where two factions of Shining Path guerrillas are already competing for control of the cocaine trade.

The traffickers -- fortified by the resilient demand for cocaine in the United States, Brazil and parts of Europe -- are stymieing efforts to combat the drug's resurgence here and raising the specter of greater violence in a nation still haunted by years of war.

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LIMA, Peru--Surging cocaine production is rattling Peru after years of relative calm, raising fears that the associated increase in violence and corruption could derail one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America.

The cultivation of coca, and the capacity to make cocaine from it, have been steadily rising in Peru, while neighboring Colombia has been aggressively cracking down on production. Peruvian cocaine exports, according to one study, have overtaken those from Colombia, though Colombia remains the world's leader in cocaine production.

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After a lull, production is rising, feeding demand in Brazil, Europe and East Asia, officials say. With flashy cartel men replaced by a piecemeal network, the trafficking is harder to combat.

SANTA LUCIA, PERU -- Rustic mule trains ferry vital chemicals to clandestine jungle labs.

Booby-trapped fields ward off intruders.

Trekkers never seen on the Discovery Channel backpack the prized finished product on epic journeys from steamy Amazon hideaways to chilly highland distribution depots.

And a shadowy remnant of the notorious Shining Path rebel army, led by a charismatic man named Artemio, uses its muscle to pocket a fortune in a sinister protection racket.

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Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are importing a far more brutal operating style to Peru, say authorities.

This message chilled Sonia Medina the most: "Listen, we know who your daughter is," the anonymous threat came via text message over her cellphone. "And we think she is good-looking."

As Peru's top drug prosecutor, Ms. Medina, a former judge who stands just 5 feet tall, is confronting the nation's increasingly violent drug-trafficking problem head on. She is whisked around by bodyguards - - sometimes one, sometimes three - and never rides in a car without tinted windows.

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LIMA, Peru - He was a strapping and fearless reporter originally from Tallahassee who wanted to earn his stripes to become a foreign correspondent.

So Todd Smith headed to the drug-trafficking hub of Uchiza in central Peru and photographed the small planes loaded with semi-refined cocaine bound for Colombia.

Smith did not leave Uchiza alive. His body, tortured and with a sign denouncing him as a U.S. undercover agent, was found in a Uchiza playground on Nov. 21, 1989. He was 28 years old and worked for the Tampa Tribune. He is the only U.S. reporter who has been killed while covering Peru's drug trade.

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Tribune Journalist Was Abducted There

Peru's president has promised to try to reopen the investigation into the 1989 slaying of Tampa Tribune reporter Todd C. Smith.

Alan Garcia's pledge followed a meeting with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on Thursday and came without reporters' prompting at a subsequent news conference in Lima, Peru's capital.

"We'll work with the justice system to bring to light the truth and so at least his parents will have the consolation of knowing the truth," Garcia told reporters.

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A New Program Aims To Help Coca Growers Raise Paiche, A Huge, Endangered Fish Known For Its Flaky Meat.

Pucallpa, Peru -- Teofilo Tapullima knows first hand the dangers that lurk beneath the muddy waters of Peru's Amazon jungle: Piranhas, fresh-water rays, and the giant paiche fish, to name a few.

He recently found out just how tricky a paiche can be when he had to net one at the research institute where he works outside Pucallpa, in northern Peru.

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Peru's president is promoting the virtues of legal coca, but the country's defense minister said Wednesday that Peru remains committed to eradicating the illegal portion of the crop that is the raw material for cocaine.

"Should illegal coca leaf crops disappear? There is no doubt. That is the objective," Defense Minister Allan Wagner told Radioprogramas radio. "How to achieve that requires a lot of intelligence and political sensitivity to know how this can truly advance."

Eradication is a touchy -- and deadly -- issue in Peru, the world's second-largest producer of cocaine after Colombia.

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LIMA, Peru -- The polls have closed and the ballot count is underway. But Peruvians will have to wait at least a month until they know who will be their next president.

With more than 80% of the votes tallied Monday, Ollanta Humala, 43, a retired army officer supported by many of the country's indigenous and mixed-race poor, led with 30.3%, Peru's election authority said. Alan Garcia, 56, a center-left former president, was second with 24.9%. Conservative congresswoman Lourdes Flores, 46, was close with 24%. No candidate had the majority needed for an outright victory. A runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held in late May or early June.

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Runoff for Top 2 Vote-Getters Likely in May

LIMA, Peru -- Peruvians headed to the polls Sunday in presidential elections that pitted a populist military man against a hard-talking congresswoman and a former president who left the country in shambles 20 years ago.

Political newcomer Ollanta Humala, 43, a retired lieutenant colonel with support among the country's Indian and mixed-race poor, held a narrow lead, according to early election results.

No candidate was likely to win a majority in Sunday balloting, meaning Peru would need to conduct a runoff between the top two vote-getters next month. A poll Saturday by local polling firm Apoyo showed 27% of Peruvians backing Humala. Lourdes Flores and Alan Garcia were tied for second place with 23%.

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Any unannounced 'gringo' visitor to this tiny village is a dead man. As endless coca fields spread into the forests of Peru's Apurimac jungle, mountains of coca leaves dry in the sun of Llaruri's dirt streets, at the heart of one of the world's largest cocaine-producing areas.

'Last time, I came here with a Canadian engineer and coca farmers thought we wanted to eradicate their crops, so they blocked the road, drove us away at gunpoint and threatened to shoot us,' said my driver as we approached the village. 'A local teacher saved us at the last minute by suggesting that they should check our identities first.'

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LIMA, Peru -- If Ollanta Humala, a retired army officer with no governing experience, wins Sunday's presidential election, he may become the South American leader who most worries Washington.

"He falls in the same league" as Latin America's two left-leaning leaders: Venezuela's Hugo Chvez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, says Dennis Jett, U.S. ambassador to Peru from 1996 to 1999. "He is just as wacky as Chvez and Morales, and perhaps more unpredictable, because, basically, his only experience is an attempted coup d'etat and as a human rights abuser."

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Front-Runner Could Be the Latest Unorthodox South American Leader

In most professions, reaching the top requires a stellar track record of experience and achievement. But in Latin American politics, a barren resume can serve as a ticket to the presidential palace.

The latest example may turn out to be Ollanta Humala, the front-runner heading into Peru's April 9 presidential election who is waging his first political campaign.

A former lieutenant colonel, Humala led a failed military uprising in 2000 but was otherwise unknown to most Peruvians until just a few months ago. Yet Humala paints his inexperience as an endowment.

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Peru's brutal rebel movement, the Shining Path, long thought to be all but extinct, is on the warpath again, boosted by an alliance with drug traffickers.

Its Maoist guerrillas almost vanished after the capture of their founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1993, with only a few hundred left sheltering in remote highlands.

But those mountains are now the setting for a dramatic growth in cultivating coca to produce cocaine, and veteran fighters are now serving new masters, the drug barons.

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Coca Leaves Are Not Cocaine

Leaving Listuguj and Campbellton for a journey to South America is always exciting, as is coming back. With a grant from the Quebec Art Council, I went to Peru to do a research about coca leaves, a plant that Andean people have used for more than 5,000 years. They call it Mama-Coca or Mother-Coca and I brought three leaves with me. Arriving at the Montreal airport, the custom officer was unequivcal. "There are drugs and we have zero tolerance for drugs," she said before seizing the leaves.

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LIMA - Fifteen years ago, Florida journalist Todd Smith was slain after he ventured into Peru's jungle to investigate links between Shining Path guerrillas and the cocaine trade.

At the time, Peru's Interior Ministry said the 28-year-old Tampa Tribune reporter had been captured by the Maoist rebels and possibly sold to drug traffickers for $30,000, the bounty then offered for anyone suspected of being a U.S. drug enforcement agent.

A secret counterterrorism court in April 1993 sentenced Shining Path guerrilla Jose Manrique to 30 years in prison for taking part in the murder.

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