Andean Group - 8 March 2005

Peru's anti-drug police scored a series of notable victories over international drug-traffickers in February and March. It has now impounded nearly 4,000 kilos of pure cocaine since the turn of the year and dismantled a number of gangs. However, these successes have been somewhat overshadowed by two recent revelations: one, coca plantation outstripped eradication in 2004; two, the local drugs industry is no longer involved solely with the early stages of processing, but is moving ahead with the production of pure cocaine.

On 3 March, Peruvian police seized 550 kilos of cocaine from a refrigerator truck that was seized in the port of Callao, just north of Lima. This followed days after a massive drug bust in Lima on 28 February when police arrested 26 people, seized 875 kilos of cocaine hydrochloride ready to be shipped abroad, plus 817 kilos of cocaine base, 57 tonnes of paste and 3.5t of coca leaf. The gang, which was made up of Colombians, Mexicans and Peruvians was apparently linked to the Tijuana cartel.

Rather than trumpeting the successes the anti-narcotics agency, Devida, sombrely pointed out that the war on drugs is not going so well on other fronts. Nils Ericsson, head of Devida, said on 11 February that 17,000 hectares of coca had been planted in the central highlands and the south of the country, bringing Peru's total volume of coca plantations to 48,600 hectares. This time last year Ericsson buoyantly announced that Peru had less coca than at any other time over the last 20 years. He said then that Peru had 31,150 hectares of coca crops. If this figure was accurate, and Peru eradicated 10,400 hectares in 2004, as Ericsson now claims, then more than 27,000 hectares of coca were planted last year.

Ericsson added that the government was concerned that Peruvian coca growers had started to produce cocaine in the last three years, meaning that they no longer had to send coca to Colombia to be processed. He appeared to be vindicated weeks later after the Lima drug seizure when the head of the police anti-drug unit, General Eduardo Montero, announced that 45 cocaine processing labs had been discovered in the north-central department of San Martí­n, from where the base, paste and leaf had been collected. This discovery seemed to confirm the suspicion that the intense anti-drug campaign in Colombia has led to some operations setting up in Peru instead. It also raised questions about why Washington decided in February to announce that it would be cutting anti-narcotics aid to Peru from US$50m to US$32m in 2006.

Coca protests
The government's uneasy truce with coca growers was also broken on 21 February when the coca growers of Tocache province in San Martí­n launched an 'indefinite strike' against alleged fumigation of their plantations by the police. They were soon joined by other coca growers from Huánuco and Ucayali.

The government reacted by trying to discredit the national coca organisation, Confederación Nacional de Productores Agropecuarios de las Cuencas Cocaleras del Perú. The prime minister, Carlos Ferrero, released a video on 27 February in which Nancy Obregón, the leader of CONPACCP, which is based in Tocache, said that coca in Peru goes "directly or indirectly" to maceration pits, used for the production of coca paste. Obregón added: "this is something that the government, the police, mayors, we all know." The government plans to eradicate 8,000 hectares of coca in 2005. With its coca-eradication policy exposed as ineffectual, it might decide to focus more on supporting economic and social development in rural areas.