Going to the Source
Kawell, Jo Ann
A GRIZZLED GROUP OF MEN GATHERS EVery evening on the veranda of Tingo Maria's Hotel de Turistas to drink beer and swap tales of jungle adventure. They dress sportily in T-shirts, jeans and...
...The Huallaga Valley is said to be the most important coca growing zone in the world...
...The program was poorly conceptualized and controversial...
...An ENACO official who was present at the time says many registered growers were forcibly eradicated shortly after they had signed an agreement for a voluntary coca reduction program...
...Widely used to refer to senderistas, terruco lacks the pejorative connotations of "terrorist...
...The DEA operates in] a non-political kind of a situation which enables us to create things and do things under the law enforcement flag which we would not be able to in a military mode...
...4 (Aug.13-20, 1988...
...In Peru, as in Bolivia and Colombia, this policy has failed to achieve its goal-coca production in the Huallaga has increased steadily...
...advisers in El Salvador: Washington's policy is carried out while most of the risk is shifted to foreigners...
...For years it had stood fallow, overgrown with the few weeds that could survive in the depleted, acidic soil...
...Police destroyed 464 pits during the first five VOLUME XXII, NO...
...M AY, 1988...
...reads Sendero graffiti found almost everywhere on the road outside Tingo Maria...
...This characterization, however, misrepresents the complex and highly conflictive relationship between the two groups...
...NOR PERUVIAN officials have shown much enthusiasm about outright U.S...
...See Radl GonzAlez in this issue...
...1987, p. 3. 29...
...DEA personnel have just two key functions overseas: to gather intelligence about drug production and shipment, and, most visibly, to advise and train local anti-drug forces...
...They have been there before on non-benign missions, and that's a piece of history that will not go away for a long time...
...11,1986...
...Wrobleski hopes that an aerial eradication program will get under way in Peru during 1989...
...in mid-1988 reports circulated that a sizeable increase in military aid to Peru was under consideration...
...This momentum should be sustained...
...In the early 1980s, under U.S...
...officials, the Garcia government has enthusiastically tried to carry out a drug control program on its own...
...Several sources familiar with the operations put it this way: Who knows-and who cares-who exactly is shooting at you in a situation like that, whether they are narcos or senderistas...
...Despite the thousands of acres destroyed-1,737 in 1983...
...Different places," says De la Cruz evasively...
...During Condor IV, the most highly publicized of the series, the Peruvian air force dropped 500 pound bombs on major narco landing strips hidden deep in the Peruvian Amazon.' 5 Other operations targeted cocaine laboratories and smaller air strips...
...Many of his neighbors fled and their fields now lie abandoned, as do their sturdy cementblock houses...
...VOLUME XXII, NO...
...Outside De la Cruz's house, the guerrillas have dug narrow ditches across the road to stop passing vehicles so they can inspect them...
...They wiped out so much legal coca," says one, "that we couldn't even meet our purchase quota...
...military has played an important supporting role: The Navy provided the Coast Guard with 2,500 ship days in 1987...
...Say five or six people are found dead, and there's a note with them that says 'This is the way informers die.' That's the kind of note Sendero would leave-but any other group could have left the sign so people would think Sendero did it...
...As the primary funder of drug control operations, it has become increasingly involved in helping foreign governments carry them out...
...A growing number of people have begun to wonder whether any "supply side" drug control policy, aimed at eliminating the source of drugs, could succeed while demand continues to soar...
...One Sunday morning in 1981 they reached the De la Cruz farm: "They were police, I believe, part of a 200man team that had been arriving in the area since Friday, coming in on big Buffalo and Hercules planes...
...VOLUME XXII...
...They were far more worried that the Huallaga eradication program, the cornerstone of their policy, was going nowhere...
...The valley's economic life now depends on the drug trade and the dollars it brings...
...5 Adding to the violence in the valley are the fierce turf battles between some of the army officers in charge of the war against the guerrillas and certain police officials running the anti-drug campaign...
...ONG BEFORE FORCED ERADICATION BEgan, U.S...
...and "Strategy Report," p.20...
...2 ' The operation did succeed in driving Sendero from the town-an important victory for the Peruvian government, however temporary...
...On the simplest level, Sendero wants to keep coca prices and "tax" rates as high as possible, while the traffickers want them low...
...prodding, the Peruvian government began a series of eradication operations...
...This immediately raised the eradication rate but increased the likelihood that U.S...
...In 1987, manual eradication carried out by the 462man [CORAH team] dropped to 355 hectares from 2,575 hectares the previous year," reported the State Department...
...As a whole, the Huallaga Valley is the site of some of the most concentrated U.S...
...government and examined-inconclusively-allegations that Evergreen is closely tied to the CIA...
...Helicopters fly overhead continually, carrying troops to and from the army base next to the airport or the police base in town...
...Almost all U.S...
...3. Si (Lima), June 8, 1987...
...Many of the landing strips were back in operation a few months later...
...6 (MARCH 1989) i 1fCOCA De la Cruz still feels outraged: His coca plot was legal...
...Further up the road lies an abandoned police post...
...While the economic security of a clandestine coca farmer is virtually assured, his life is equally sure to be marked by violence...
...NO.6 (MARCH 1989) 19 VOLUME XXII, NO...
...The seven- or eight-acre plot was once planted with coca, a crop De la Cruz says his family had grown since they arrived in the valley some 50 years ago...
...Over the last two years, however, there have been signs that both Peru and the United States are easing the barriers to U.S...
...Coca eradication has always been dangerous work in the Huallaga...
...T INGO MARIA IS LOCATED 350 MILES northeast of Lima in the valley of the Huallaga River...
...Ibid...
...contract pilots flew the aircraft used to transport Peruvian drug police...
...This designation, which indicates communist-allied or influenced governments, dates back to 1968 when a progressive military government made the Soviet Union one of Peru's major military suppliers...
...At this late date there is no way to verify his claim and there is no doubt that a certain proportion of registered coca was diverted to the drug trade, but ENACO officials readily admit that large numbers of registered growers were eradicated...
...When something happens here it's almost impossible to determine who's responsible," says Guillermo L6pez Salazar, a reporter for Radio Tingo Maria...
...role-and the operation that most clearly illustrates how closely drug control efforts had come to be linked with counterinsurgency--came on July 15, 1987, the first day of Operation Condor VI...
...international drug control efforts a "war on drugs" was taking rhetorical license-the U.S...
...Coca was only one of several crops De la Cruz farmed on his 100 acres, but it was an important source of income for him and for many of his neighbors...
...S IlLE U.S...
...Information Agency (which conducts campaigns against drug abuse...
...officials vehemently deny the report...
...6. See Radl GonzAlez, in this issue and in Quehacer (Lima) No...
...Two years later Sendero turned back an MRTA guerrilla assault on the town...
...and more than $300 million worth of military equipment is on loan to law enforcement agencies...
...The State Department is the "lead agency" for drug control, and through its Bureau for International Narcotics Matters (INM), it coordinates the drug control activities of other U.S...
...In response to the guerrilla presence, the government has placed most of the Huallaga Valley under a state of emergency...
...What's more, "Peru is a 'red country' on U.S...
...6 (MARCH 1989) Current policy has fueled conflict in the region to such an extent that it is questionable whether the United States could successfully carry out any drug control plan there, even one truly focused on development and income substitution...
...6 (MARCH 1989) 22...
...In 1987, the United States paid $3.6 million to train the force, supplement its pay, and provide field equipment, supplies, and transport...
...2 7 By contrast, the DEA, which is part of the Justice Department, provides only manpower...
...military advisers have reportedly met with members of the Peruvian military to discuss guerrilla warfare techniques...
...6,365 in 19869--CORAH's labor did not reduce total coca production...
...Once again, though the program is nominally Peruvian and requires Peruvian government authorization, the strategies, funds, pilots and planes come from the United States...
...7. Wrobleski, 36, was Nancy Reagan's former "special projects director...
...U.S.AID-Project Identification Document, Upper Huallaga Area Development Project, Oct...
...military boots there...
...General Accounting Office, Jan...
...4 When the Garcia government took office in 1985 it began its own series of operations, dubbed Condor...
...Overall, the results from the Tocache operation were far from spectacular: Some 160 kilos of coca paste and over $150,000 in cash were confiscated, but, admitted the State Department, "while seizures and arrests were up significantly, trafficker activities continued relatively unimpeded...
...This was a boon to the military, and some officers began raking off their own cut from the drug trade...
...Troops on the march," is the way the newsweekly Caretas described the scene: "A group of police, bearded, long-haired, and in combat uniform, looked like replicas of Che Guevara...DEA agents took part in the operations dressed in Vietnam-style hats and armed to the teeth...
...development agencies...
...Guerrilla feuding has contributed to the death toll: The bitter rivalry between Sendero and MRTA has led to deadly battles, as have ongoing disputes between the guerrillas and the narcos...
...According to INM chief Wrobleski, INM now has title to about 20 aircraft, 19 are named in the report...
...The first thing they did was blow up the building I used to dry my coca...
...Does this mean Sendero would target U.S...
...According to De la Cruz, he was selling all his coca to ENACO...
...helicopters flown by civilian U.S...
...Most of the vehicles were donated to foreign governments and title is now held by those governments...
...DEA agents work closely with the Peruvian force in the field as trainers and "observers" of operations commanded and conducted by Peruvian officials...
...involvement...
...Rather, they are pilots-U.S...
...According to local sources, some former residents took up a less than placid pursuit-they joined Sendero Luminoso...
...The State Department's role goes far beyond diplomacy...
...Producers merely moved downriver, where they were joined by other farmers, part of a continuing influx of migrants from the highlands...
...Orchids thrive in the moist jungle heat...
...But given U.S...
...The senderistas consider that herbicide use would be an escalation of the counterinsurgency war and the group is already mounting a propaganda barrage against it...
...The conscious aim of U.S...
...State Department figures...
...David Westrate, DEA assistant administrator for operations, agreed: "The law enforcement flag in South America and around the world sells...
...Caretas (Lima), Nov...
...The town of Tingo Maria itself has become a center of both the drug war and the counterinsurgency war: Soldiers armed with automatic weapons stand next to sandbag barricades on the bridge leading to the airport...
...In fact, the U.S...
...But this new emphasis has simply been tacked on to the old supply-side policy...
...In Peru the war on drugs is inextricably bound up with the battle against an army of revolutionary guerrillas, a battle in which the United States may become deeply mired if drug control policy continues on its present course...
...Julio Carbajal, "immediately forbade anti-narcotics operations in the area...
...Many people have found work stomping coca into paste in the pits, transporting coca or coca paste, and bringing supplies from Lima...
...Some farmers did choose to cooperate--but others found another option more attractive: packing up and moving on to clear a new plot in the zone's vast expanses of virgin forest...
...Air support was provided by three INM [Bureau of International NarcoticsCOCA Matters]-leased helicopters and, later, by the INM-owned C-123 transport...
...El Comercio (Lima), Aug...
...The group had not "lain low" for long after Operation Bronco in 1984...
...UMOPAR figures...
...officials estimate that between 50,000 and 75,000 hectares of coca are under cultivation there-the raw material for at least 85 tons of cocaine a year...
...11,930 in 1985...
...But the valley is also a front line in the guerrilla conflict now raging across Peru...
...Some drug control officials now agree that the first forced eradications were misdirected...
...Drug Control: Issues Surrounding Increased Use of the Military in Drug Interdiction" U.S...
...UNTIL NOW, NEITHER U.S...
...The important thing is to protect yourself...
...This may well be a response to guerrilla advances...
...Until last year, Sendero was following a classic Maoist strategy of "surrounding the cities from the countryside," but the group is now placing more emphasis on urban activity, as discussed by the group's founder "Camarada Gonzalo"in an interview published in Sendero's all-but-official newspaper El Diario, July 31, 1988...
...OFFICIALS CONTINUE TO propagate the phantasm of narcos and guerrillas allied against democracy, the real danger is that U.S...
...6 DEA agents went along on many of the missions, and in later operations U.S...
...REFERENCES Going to the Source Coletta Youngers of the Washington Office on Latin America provided invaluable assistance in researching U.S...
...In April 1987 Sendero took on the narcos who ran the Tocache drug trade-at least 30 people died in the ensuing battle.' In May the senderistas declared Tocache a "liberated zone...
...strategic thinking undoubtedly plays a key part in determining how the operations are carried out...
...5. In March of 1988, during a major counterinsurgency push, there were reports that military planes bombed the town of Sion (La Republica, March 13, 1988...
...Should that basic policy remain unchanged, as is likely, the impetus to escalate the Huallaga conflict may become irresistible...
...6 (MARCH 1989) 19RCOCAt on AM COCA bors than the sight of U.S...
...George Bush named former Education Secretary William Bennett as his "drug czar," a new cabinet-level post...
...This deep rooted conflict of interest makes it doubtful that even a "marriage of convenience" can be consummated-and suggests that clashes between the two sides will intensify...
...involvement in counterinsurgency...
...14, 1988, in the Portland Oregonian detailed Evergreen's worldwide contracts with the U.S...
...military had scant involvement and, in fact, was impeded by law from doing more...
...It's very difficult to untangle...
...policymakers have turned to the "demand side," calling for better drug education and higher penalties for users...
...A July editorial in Sendero's semi-official Lima newspaper El Diario called the planned herbicide program "chemical warfare like that carried out in Vietnam...
...officials will not confirm them...
...Drug control officials argue that manual eradication is far too slow and dangerous for the workers who carry it out...
...According to Ann Wrobleski, more than half of the U.S...
...The report said that last September "450 paratroopers of the U.S...
...De la Cruz shrugs when he is asked about the guerrillas, and says little except, "We're between the sword and the wall...
...Washington Office on Latin America, "Latin America Update," July-August 1988...
...They are plainly not tourists, and they are not-as they might have been not long ago-drug dealers looking to do business in a town once notorious as Peru's "Snow City...
...Ibid...
...funds, equipment and personnel were being used for what was, in essence, a counterinsurgency operation...
...21...
...7,744 in 1984...
...But Sendero does not act at the behest of the narcos or in alliance with them...
...Human rights groups charge that the armed forces are responsible for a growing number of deaths and disappearances...
...While admitting that in the Huallaga no other activity could be as profitable as growing coca, project planners argued that farmers would cooperate with the program if "systematic eradication" were undertaken...
...State Department, p. 105...
...The real cause for concern is not that the United States is using its drug control program as a backdoor for involvement in Peru's civil war, but rather that Washington is already involved and may become more deeply mired because of the logic of the drug control program itself...
...Until recently, calling U.S...
...They dress sportily in T-shirts, jeans and chinos, with a few touches of khaki and camouflage...
...For anti-drug efforts in Latin America and Asia, the State Department has.created its own miniair force-known as the Air Wing-which includes 13 Thrush fixed-wing spray aircraft used in drug crop eradication programs, six Bell 212 helicopters and a C-123 transport...
...It was registered with the government's National Coca Company (ENACO), which since 1978 had been issuing licenses to Peruvian coca growers and purchasing their leaves for resale to traditional users...
...2 4 Some drug enforcement officials also caution against the kind of military involvement politiVOLUME XXII...
...On a deeper level, even Wrobleski admits that "Logic would tell you that drug traffickers-being, some people say, the ultimate capitalists-would not necessarily embrace the politics or the philosophy of, for the most part, leftist guerrillas...
...The police established a field headquarters there and commenced daily antidrug operations...
...A December 1980 memo circulated to members of Congress says a group of U.S.AID employees who saw the original planning document were highly critical of it and felt that something needed to be done quite soon to prevent the project from being approved...The basic aim of the [project] is not economic development at all...
...7, 20...
...While the Drug Enforcement Administration is the best-known drug control agency, the U.S...
...intervention...
...The Pentagon has participated in anti-drug operations in the Bahamas, the U.S...
...In Assistant Secretary of State Wrobleski's words: "I think everyone who follows Latin America, everyone who follows terrorism, everyone who follows narcotics agrees that there is linkage-unfortunately an ever stronger linkage-between narcotics traffickers and insurgents...
...of Scottsdale, Arizona...
...That month it was also reported that Peru's Attorney General was investigating 35 alleged disappearances in San Martin province (La Repdiblica and El Diario, March 2, 1988...
...But that program was largely designed and is almost completely funded by the United REPORT ON THE AMERIC S 14 -- --------- ------ -Despite large captures, coca production tiourisnes States...
...20Two months later, when the drug and other police arrived by helicopter to take back the town in what was ostensibly an anti-drug operation, all of the senderista leaders and major narcos had already fled...
...Sendero's "tax rate" has been estimated at 5%, which translates to some $30 to $40 million annually for an insurgent group with no significant outside funding...
...After his field was destroyed, De la Cruz says, he was jailed for a month, accused of drug trafficking...
...Says one Washington analyst, "You have to fly low to apply herbicides with any degree of accuracy...
...Some officials have described this linkage as an actual alliance...
...They also "tax" shipments of coca paste flown out of the area, as well as the shipments of kerosene and other inputs smuggled in for the paste processors...
...4. Si (Lima), Nov...
...Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters Ann Wrobleski, who coordinated the Reagan Administration's international anti-drug efforts, says "The primary policy focus is to stop drugs at the source...So we've focused our efforts in the fields, in an effort to eradicate the plants before they are harvested...
...Since 1983, the Peruvian government agency CORAH (Special Project for the Control and Eradication of Coca in the Upper Huallaga) has worked to eradicate coca in the Huallaga...
...9, 16, 1987...
...A State Department report offered a more staid description: [Peruvian] forces penetrated the town of Tocache, noted as the area's principal drug trafficking center...
...Though the narcos were allowed to keep their businesses, houses of prostitution were closed.'" Armed guerrillas patrolled the streets and every day the senderistas "made the entire population line up double file, and masked guerrillas gave indoctrination speeches," a town resident told Caretas...
...In Colombia, drug traffickers have already declared open war on the guerrillas who organized in that country's coca fields...
...policy-makers' equation of "trafficker" and "terrorist," such actions do not seem out of the question, even though the Reagan Administration never formally integrated anti-drug and anti-terrorist policy in the region...
...Andean Report (Lima), June, 1987...
...The bulletin of the Peruvian human rights group APRODEH for October-December 1987 reports, "Numerous cases of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearance, torture, etc...
...No matter how limited the operational role of the agents (and some Harvesting coca leaves 20Just enforcing the law accounts suggest that it is not always strictly observation) U.S...
...Still others moved to more remote parts of the valley and began growing coca under guerrilla protection...
...CORAH's] efforts for most of the year were stymied by severe security concerns, as terrorists and narcotics traffickers held sway in the area...
...the Air Force and Navy gave more than 16,000 flight hours to "the interdiction effort...
...At 2:30 in the afternoon more than 500 police occupied the city [of Tocache] without meeting resistance," reported the Peruvian news magazine Si...
...agencies began to pour in substantial amounts--$167 million was budgeted for the first five years...
...The results were poor," according to the account published by the Lima-based Andean Report, "and only weeks later Sendero Luminoso seemed on the verge of overrunning the countryside even in the semi-urban [Tingo Maria] zone...
...drug control funds are channeled to foreign governments through the INM...
...The earliest eradications "were successful in causing fear among coca producers," said a planning document...
...They were probably responsible for the 1987 assassination of Jaime Pardo Leal, the leader of the Uni6n Patri6tica political party in which some of the insurgents participate.8 In its war on drugs, the United States government finds itself face to face with Sendero Luminoso...
...wants to toughen up its eradication policy by using coca herbicides [see "The Magic Bullet...
...That means I was one of the first to register...
...Instead, they are trained and equipped for jungle warfare...
...It was the planners' unspoken assumption that growers who had been eradicated would have no choice but to cooperate with the program if they wanted to survive...
...Southwest, and-the largest scale participation to date-Operation Blast Furnace in Bolivia in 1986.23 The Pentagon itself, however, is staunchly opposed...
...Drug police detain suspected narcos 13 VOLUME XXII, NO...
...Strategy Report," pp.18-19...
...policy has provided the guerrillas with a ready base of support among the farmers affected by the U.S.-sponsored eradication program...
...civilians hired by their government to wage the war on drugs.' Local people call the men los vietnamitas because the pilots' appearance leads people to believe they took part in the Vietnam war...
...agencies, including the DEA, U.S.AID (which funds income-substitution projects in drug producing areas) and the U.S...
...Most of those who supervise the local drug business, known as narcos (from the Spanish narcotraficante), are Colombians, representatives of the traffickers who run the international trade...
...1. In May, 1988 the group included three pilots, three maintenance men and two supervisors, all employees of Evergreen International Aviation of McMinnville, Oregon...
...One month after the Senate voted 83-6 to make drug interdiction an official military mission, Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci told Congress, "The primary role of the Department of Defense is to protect and defend this country from armed aggression...Adding another mission at this time will come at the expense of the Department's primary mission-unless additional resources are made available...
...Some have gone to look for a more peaceful place...
...1988 and the company has been replaced by Corporate Jets, Inc...
...military maps," says a former intelligence analyst...
...The majority of the Condor efforts, however, were directed at smaller targets like the coca paste pits that dot the Huallaga Valley...
...2 2 Since then, the U.S...
...Evergreen's State Department contract ran out in Oct...
...Tingo Maria was once the center, but now much of the action has been pushed north to Uchiza, Tocache, Juanjui and other small towns...
...6 Sendero has also executed local officials and residents who refuse to cooperate or who are suspected of collaborating with security forces...
...General Accounting Office, April 1988, p. 20...
...U S. OFFICIALS OFTEN SPEAK OF "NARCO. terrorists" or "narcoguerrillas...
...In 1981, U.S.AID and other U.S...
...personnel on the scene is relatively small: the civilian pilots, a few DEA agents-the exact number has not been made public-and representatives of the State Department or other agencies...
...The interests of Sendero and the traffickers contrast sharply...
...What fuels the growing guerrilla presence in the Huallaga is not the drug traffickers, but U.S...
...During the last decade, the valley has been a testing ground for Washington's drug policy overseas...
...247, No...
...4 million was budgeted to do the same in 1988...
...La Repdblica (Lima), April 30, 1987...
...How would the United States respond to the downing of one or more of its planes...
...Unpublished memo...
...planes used in the herbicide program...
...drug control policy itself...
...So does coca, the plant from which cocaine is made...
...Says another: "Small, low flying planes are pretty easy to shoot down with a highpowered rifle...
...The farmers needed protection against exploitative, dishonest coca buyers, and, of course, protection against being eradicated again...
...B Y 1984, WHEN THE PERUVIAN GOVERNment began a series of drug control efforts called REPORT ON THE AMERIC S 16 -- - -- _ - - -0 n Policeman burns jungle lab in Peru Operation Bronco, the guerrillas had already become an important force in the valley...
...Although most of the unregistered coca in the zone was cultivated on the steep slopes of the hills surrounding the valley, the eradicators refused to distinguish between legal and illegal coca, and concentrated on more accessible plots on the valley floor, like that owned by De la Cruz...
...4 President Alan Garcia was reportedly shaken when a TV report revealed Comandante Rolando, the leader of the column, to be Victor Polay Campos, a political ally and an old friend from the two men's university days...
...agencies worldwide...
...Peru's special anti-drug police, known as UMOPAR (Rural Mobile Patrol Unit) though it was officially changed to the Civil Guard Drug Police last year, is a 500-member combat-trained force currently armed with North Korean AK assault rifles...
...El Diario (Lima), June 21, 1987...
...The men eye strangers suspiciously...
...MRTA guerrillas have largely faded from sight in the wake of government counterinsurgency operations, although MRTA supporters reportedly still work quietly in the area...
...Since April 1986 Wrobleski has headed the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, which coordinated the drug control activities of other U.S...
...Testimony of June 15, 1988, ibid...
...Drug Control: Issues Surrounding...
...20, 1980...
...many constitutional guarantees are suspended...
...The report says net coca production (total minus hectares eradicated) increased from 96,865 hectares in 1984 to 104,925 hectares in 1986, but others contend the increase in production was much greater...
...That bill earmarks $2 million for training foreign anti-drug forces and an additional $3.5 million in "military assistance"-the wording of the bill itself-for South American police forces involved in drug control...
...officials spoke of the need to provide coca farmers with other means of survival...
...More seriously, U.S...
...In Peru, as elsewhere, these forces bear little resemblance to what we know as police, and they seldom engage in Miami Vice-style shootouts with designersuited drug lords...
...and statement by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci to a joint hearing of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, June 15, 1988...
...We're certainly seeing it in Peru...
...The DEA's role is analogous to that of U.S...
...Wrobleski called it "pure nonsense...
...The Miami Herald provided one clue when it reported that "Select Army units are training to intervene should trouble arise...
...2 6 THESE DAYS, "THE LAW ENFORCEMENT flag" shields an ever-wider range of international drug control activities that would fit better in a war movie than a police novel...
...Coca-paste exports boomed, though narco-related gang violence grew considerably...
...after the state of emergency was imposed in San Martin province...
...7 What the report does not say is that Tocache was almost completely controlled by Sendero Luminoso at the time of the operation...
...During Bronco, air force helicopters were used to attack narco landing strips, but the operation became intertwined with counterinsurgency and the helicopters were used to track down Sendero units...
...Sendero is now active across the Peruvian highlands and, increasingly, in urban areas...
...Tocache was a 'red city'-the people liked the terrucos [terrorists] better than the police, because they let them work their coca...
...Sendero has made U.S...
...MRTA briefly dominated Peru's news in November 1987 when a large column armed with automatic rifles and rocket launchers made daring takeovers of Juanjui and several other Huallaga towns...
...Rhetoric aside, Sendero has so far seemed reluctant to make major attacks on targets that would risk massive U.S...
...The men themselves make no comment, though several look too young to be Vietnam vets...
...Then they started in on the coca field...
...anti-drug efforts will become ever more closely linked to counterinsurgency and draw the United States inexorably into a vast and bitter guerrilla war...
...By 1987 the number had risen to thirty...
...9. State Department, "Peru: Status of Illicit Narcotics Production and Trafficking," (1987) p. 115...
...Nearly every day, small planes appear in the valley skies and land on makeshift airstrips cut in the jungle, or on roads that have been temporarily closed to transport the paste to large laboratories in Colombia or more remote parts of Peru for final processing into cocaine...
...But in 1982, the law was amended to allow the Pentagon to assist in drug operations, and in April, 1986 President Ronald Reagan authorized the use of military resources and personnel in drug control activities...
...policy has forbidden outright grants of aircraft to other governments, and vehicles are now "loaned" for drug operations...
...Truckloads of soldiers and police, at first glance indistinguishable in their camouflage fatigues, roar in and out of town...
...embassy's work in countries like Peru and Bolivia is drug control...
...Nineteen CORAH workers were killed in 1984...
...That Sunday, about seven in the morning, they arrived here...
...Army counterinsurgency units patrol the region...
...Whatever their past, they are now participants in a new kind of jungle war-one of the most violent and complicated in Latin America...
...UMOPAR has five Bell helicopters and a C-123 transport on loan from the State Department's Air Wing...
...Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"), currently the dominant guerrilla group in the country, is able to control parts of the valley at will and has become the de facto political authority in some towns...
...military in the war on drugs-hugely popular in Congress and the media-would seem to make that prospect ever more likely...
...International Narcotics Control Strategy Report," March 1988, U.S...
...Since the insurgents were the only group effectively protecting the farmers' livelihood, they continued to gain strength as eradication progressed, drawing supporters from organizations representing local farmers.' 0 Less than ten miles outside Tingo Maria, abandoned houses are covered with senderista slogans...
...16, 1987...
...Well-armed Sendero guerrillas have made frequent attacks on police outposts...
...With the rise of the cocaine industry, violence has become an integral part of the valley's daily life: Bulletridden, mangled bodies are often found floating in the Huallaga River or lying near the roadside...
...contract pilots and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents are frequently seen accompanying the Peruvian drug police on their missions...
...The analogy with El Salvador should not be oversimplified...
...The populist and nationalist government of President Alan Garcia has said-at least publicly-that it can wage the war against Sendero on its own...
...Army's 82nd Airborne Division descended on Fort Stew- art" in Georgia for a simulated rescue of Americans held hostage by drug traffickers...
...With dynamite...
...Where did my neighbors go...
...So far, the number of U.S...
...Since his farm was larger than some of his neighbors and he felt he could survive without coca, he decided to stay in the area...
...But Huallaga farmers and narcos may not exercise similar restraint...
...Even if the herbicide program never gets off the ground, the United States is unlikely to abandon manual eradication, which to date has only nurtured the seeds of war...
...A nine-part series, beginning Aug...
...According to U.S...
...VOLUME XXII, NO...
...6 (M ) phases of Condor and seized some 74,000 kilos of paste...
...3, 1986...
...They wanted to just pull it up, but they couldn't so they started to use their machetes...
...Many of these deaths are the work of drug traffickers or their underlings, the result of vendettas and rivalries...
...officials seemed unconcerned that U.S...
...The most dramatic demonstration of the U.S...
...Police seized eight small planes used by the narcos and destroyed 12 others...
...personnel would run into senderistas in the field...
...anti-drug activity in the world...
...involvement a primary focus of its local propaganda efforts: "Down with the imperialist coca eradication plan...
...An atmosphere of paranoia reigned...
...Drug Control: International Narcotics Control Activities of the United States," U.S...
...See Fort Lauderdale News/Sun-Sentinel June 6, 1988...
...6 (M )COCA The first steps in turning the leaves into cocaine also occur in the valley, in hundreds of plastic-lined pits where coca leaves and chemicals are mixed to form a paste...
...pilots have been used to airlift the CORAH teams along with police guards to their worksites...
...drug policy in Peru is not to fight guerrillas-even though the official view that they are "narcoterrorists" in league with the traffickers means that the lines between counterinsurgency and drug control are easily blurred...
...Miami Herald, Oct...
...Since November of that year, in an effort to protect the workers, U.S...
...The participation of the U.S...
...It is the State Department's job to persuade foreign governments to go along with drug control policy as formulated in the United States...
...Strategy Report," p.105...
...11, 1988...
...The report says the INM "supports operations and maintenance for over 150 aircraft...
...U.S.-Peruvian military ties have improved since then, but Soviet ties are still considerable...
...During one of the bloodiest, in June 1987, 300 guerrillas destroyed the Uchiza post with grenades and automatic weapons, killing six police and four civilians.' Another group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) has also been active in the region...
...Sendero Luminoso does play a role in the Huallaga drug trade-despite the group's zealously moralistic ideology, which denounces "vices" ranging from rock music to prostitution...
...A red hammer and sickle and graffiti protesting the coca eradication program are scrawled on the government telephone office...
...8. Merrill Collett, "The Myth of the 'Narco Guerrilla'," The Nation, Vol...
...Since 1986 U.S...
...Besides struggles over authority, Peruvian sources allege some officers also compete for lucrative payoffs from traffickers...
...There have been reports that such confrontations have occurred, though U.S...
...De la Cruz can still recite his license numbers: "It was 82 on one side and 35 on the other...
...officials in countries around the world...
...2 In Washington, no one talks of "losing" Peru to the Sendero insurgents, but there is a great deal of talk about "winning" the drug war by whatever means necessary...
...Si (Lima), June 1, 1987...
...Peruvian officials say Huallaga coca production is double that...
...Sendero had to retreat or lay low...
...Report of the Defense Policy Panel and Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives: Narcotics Interdiction and the Use of the Military: Issues for Congress"-Proceedings of a seminar held by the Congressional Research Service, June 7, 1988, pp...
...EDUARDO DE LA CRUZ Ramirez, a fifty-year-old Peruvian farmer and father of four children, is plowing his field outside Tingo Maria...
...Wrobleski refers to it as a "marriage of convenience...
...Rather, it is a drug control and eradication scheme....The use of development assistance monies for purposes other than the meeting of basic human needs, especially when such monies are so closely tied to police and military efforts...threatens to seriously undermine the credibility of U.S...
...Says De la Cruz: "It was a stupid thing to do, something that never should have happened...
...But the U.S.-funded development program turned out to be merely a thin glove padding the iron fist of eradication...
...and military authorities are in control...
...The presence of all these armed groups-narcos, guerrillas, police and military-has created a bewildering and savage situation...
...Rather, the senderistas act as a bargaining agent of sorts for the region's coca farmers, forcing drug producers to pay fair prices for the leaves...
...The government of President Fernando Bela6nde then called in the army, whose commander, Brigadier Gen...
...One hectare is approximately 2.5 acres...
...The valley lies in what is known as the ceja de selva ("eyebrow of the jungle") halfway down the eastern slope of the Andes, between the cold, arid mountains and the steaming lowlands of the Amazon basin...
...State Department plays an even more important role internationally...
...2 8 The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, approved by Congress in October, temporarily waives a ban on arming the special anti-drug police units which have been created at the urging of U.S...
...These were services that the insurgents were happy to provide...
...2. U.S...
...El Comercio, Oct...
...Caretas, July 20, 1987...
...drug policy, though she and WOLA are not responsible for the conclusions drawn here...
Vol. 22 • March 1989 • No. 6
