Pubdate: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Juan Forero FARMERS IN PERU ARE TURNING AGAIN TO COCA CROP ACHICOTO, Peru -- His farm filled with money-losing crops, Francisco Torres had begun to despair that he could ever make ends meet in this green river valley in northern Peru. Then tens of thousands of acres of coca were eradicated in neighboring Colombia in a vast American-backed campaign of aerial fumigation. The tightening supply has pushed the price of coca to new highs in recent months, drug market analysts say, making legitimate crops even less appealing while opening fresh opportunities for Mr. Torres and his neighbors. Now they are making more room for coca, a crop that Peru had made great strides in eradicating in the 1990's. "We live off coca," said Mr. Torres, 58. "We pay for our harvest with coca money. Without coca, there is no life." In at least two river valleys in Peru, for the first time in years, coca, cocaine's main ingredient, is making a comeback, say Peruvian and United Nations antidrug officials. The trend does not mean that antinarcotics efforts in the Andes are failing, said analysts who track American antidrug programs. But it does underscore how fleeting victories can be in a drug war where national boundaries mean nothing to traffickers who can shift their crop across remote and poorly policed regions. While the reasons for the increase in Peru are complex, most experts attribute it largely to what they call the "balloon effect," in which eradication in one place simply pushes coca growing to another, given the continuing demand for cocaine, principally in the United States. Once-successful eradication efforts in Peru had already shifted much production to Colombia, where a $1.3 billion American-financed antidrug effort, called Plan Colombia, has now helped nudge coca growing back here again. "The drug mafia knows Plan Colombia would be hard, so they began to automatically move," said Ricardo Vega Llona, Peru's newly named drug czar. "And how do they give incentives to get people to plant? By paying higher prices." Even in Colombia, which had more than 400,000 acres dedicated to coca in 2000, new growth has offset eradication efforts, leaving the size of the coca crop steady last year, according to new United Nations estimates. In Bolivia, where the government declared coca nearly wiped out a year ago, farmers in the Chapare region have continued planting the leaf, with drug traffickers increasingly shipping to Brazil. Ecuador has also become an important corridor for coca paste shipped from Colombia, as well as a port for cocaine bound for the United States via Pacific sea routes, said Klaus Nyholm, director for the United Nations Drug Control Program in Colombia and Ecuador. "This is a footloose industry, and by footloose I mean it always goes to the path of least resistance," said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University in Miami. In Peru, satellite maps, aerial surveillance and ground assessment work by the United Nations Drug Control Program show that the coca crop has slightly expanded to cover about 125,000 acres in 2001, from 107,000 in 2000. Several Peruvian government officials, including Mr. Vega Llona, say those preliminary figures are accurate. The shift to Peru comes after years in which the coca crop here was cut by 75 percent -- falling to 84,474 acres in 2000 from 318,000 in 1992, according to American figures -- with a decadelong American-supported program in which the Peruvian forces pulled up coca bushes and intercepted and even shot down drug flights and coca farmers were offered alternative crops. The strategy succeeded in collapsing coca prices, destroying coca labs, and disrupting transportation routes. But coca did not disappear. One high-ranking State Department official who works on drug issues said coca cultivation was now up 10 to 12 percent in two traditional growing regions of Peru, the Upper Huallaga and Apurimac valleys. Other American officials here and in Washington took issue with the United Nations findings on Peru, saying American data for 2001 now being analyzed shows that eradication efforts in Peru have simply slowed. The American figures also point to a smaller overall coca crop in Peru than the United Nations figures, putting the total crop at 84,000 acres in 2001, a reduction of 500 acres from the previous year. Still, American officials are concerned about the new growth in Peru and the rising price for coca leaf, which has shot up to over $4 a kilogram in this region from less than $2 two years ago, increasing its appeal over alternative legal crops. "That's really high," said James Williard, director of antinarcotics affairs at the American Embassy. "For it to be competitive with coffee or cacao, it needs to be around $1." American and Peruvian officials blame a range of factors for the new growth, including the political turmoil in Peru after President Alberto K. Fujimori's government collapsed in November 2000. The suspension last April of a policy that allowed Peruvian Air Force planes to shoot down drug flights has also permitted trafficking to pick up, Peruvian officials say. The suspension came after a Peruvian fighter plane shot down a private plane carrying American missionaries, killing a woman and her baby. American officials, though, remain optimistic about eradication efforts here, noting that antidrug aid to Peru is tripling to about $150 million this year to pay for the renovation of antidrug aircraft and to finance alternative development programs for farmers. More money is likely in the coming years for a sustained, long-range program here and elsewhere in the Andes. "It's not a one-year effort," said the State Department official. "It won't work in one year, and I think Congress agrees." Peru's government has increased the police presence in coca-growing regions, signed a new eradication plan with the American government and declared narcotics a national security issue. American officials in Washington also say that the suspension of the aerial interdiction program may be lifted later this year. "I anticipate the possibility of making great headway here in the next few years," said John Hamilton, the American ambassador in Lima. Still, coca and opium poppies, which are also on the rise in Peru, will be particularly hard to uproot fully because the recent collapse of coffee prices and stubbornly low prices for other legal crops have given farmers few options, said Patricio Vandenberghe, director of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Peru. For now, here in the Monzon valley planting more coca simply makes economic sense, since prices have reached nearly $50 for 25-pound bales of leaves, the highest in Peru because of the quality of the plant. But the crop has also brought violence and other social ills. Beyond leading to renewed signs of drug trafficking, the increased coca plantings here and elsewhere have led to a reappearance of Shining Path guerrillas, who benefit from the coca trade. The group was nearly wiped out in recent years. In fact, across Peru the police are discovering that traffickers are increasingly operating labs that process coca paste into cocaine, a change from years past when labs were solely for producing paste that was then shipped to refineries in Colombia, said Juan Zarate, director general of intelligence at the Interior Ministry. New trafficking routes, many of them headed into Brazil or to Peruvian ports, have also been found. Just last month, six tons of coca paste was discovered in a truck in southern Peru, an indication of how ambitious traffickers had become. "This was a signal that the cocaine industry is reactivating," Mr. Zarate said. "It put us on the alert." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth