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PERU: Gov’t Puts Renewed Emphasis on Forced Coca Eradication

Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Apr 2 2007 (IPS) - The fight against coca crops in Peru increasingly involves the forced destruction of crops, and has shown little success in terms of alternative development plans, while resistance among coca producers is growing.

“In the case of those who do not want to eradicate the crop willingly, with the aid of a loan and orientation from the Agriculture Ministry, we must move on to (forced) eradication,” President Alan García said Sunday.

Leaders of the cocaleros (coca growers) have responded that if the government fails to live up to an agreement reached with them last month, they will resort to direct action tactics in protest.

In 2003, cocalero leaders agreed on a voluntary eradication policy, which coca-growing communities can join by signing an agreement with the state. But coca farmers have little confidence in the programme, and complain that the government fails to provide them with alternative livelihoods after they have destroyed their coca bushes.

Peru is the second biggest producer of illegal crops in Latin America, after Colombia, according to United Nations data.

Forced eradication has increased 61 percent over the past six years, while gradual, negotiated elimination of coca crops fell 22 percent in 2006.

The governmental Special Project for the Control and Reduction of Illicit Coca Crops in Alto Huallaga (CORAH), which is in charge of eradication, reported that 10,136 hectares of coca bushes were destroyed last year, the biggest area since 1999.

At the same time, voluntary eradication slowed down, and only 2,550 hectares of plants were destroyed with the cooperation of farmers last year, down from 3,271 hectares destroyed in 2005.

As forced eradication efforts have been stepped up, violent clashes between cocaleros and the police have increased.

In 2006, one worker was killed and 42 were injured while engaged in the forced destruction of coca plants, and dozens of coca farmers complained that they were attacked with tear gas and bullets by the police who watch over the eradication efforts.

The latest incidents occurred in early March in the northeastern province of Tocache in the Alto Huallaga valley, where the 10,136 hectares of coca eliminated in 2006 were located.

Six clashes between cocaleros and the police occurred in that area, and a number of coca farmers were injured, including the local leader of the cocaleros, Wilder Satalaya.

On Mar. 15, a high-level committee was sent to Tocache to negotiate with the farmers. The cocaleros and the negotiators signed an agreement in which the government promised to suspend forced eradication efforts until a new national register of coca farmers was produced, in order to identify those who raise coca illegally and the areas that are used to supply the drug trade.

But ignoring that agreement, President García announced that forced eradication efforts would only be suspended until Mar. 30, and cocaleros in Tocache are once again on the alert for the imminent return of police operations, even though no register of coca farmers has been drawn up.

According to official statistics, there are 49,000 hectares planted in coca in Peru, 92 percent of which are illegal and go towards the production of drugs.

But the cocaleros say the figure has been inflated, and are asking for a census to be carried out in the country’s 14 coca-growing valleys so that the statistics will reflect the reality.

In addition, they are asking for coca growers to be registered again, because the last register dates back to 1978 and does not reveal the real number of farmers who sell their coca for traditional uses on the domestic market: coca leaf chewing, herbal teas, and medicinal and ritual purposes.

“We want to be legal,” Satalaya, the president of the Tocache association of cocaleros, told IPS. He said he was willing to join the voluntary eradication programme if the government modifies its police-based approach, which in his view follows the dictates handed down by the United States, the world’s largest consumer market for drugs.

“We are willing to cooperate with the authorities. If they tell us to grow such and such a crop instead of coca, we’ll do that, but only if we have a guaranteed market for the alternative crops, to allow us to survive,” said Satalaya.

Legislator Nancy Obregón, who is a cocalero leader, believes the main challenge facing the state is recovering the confidence and trust of farmers, because governments have systematically failed to live up to their promises.

“They’ve always told us to stop growing coca, in exchange for building a health post or a new road, but in the end they never carry out the promised public work or health project. So how can we commit ourselves to the state?” Obregón remarked to IPS.

The voluntary eradication programme was created in 2003 by former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) with the approval of Obregón and other cocalero leaders.

Since then, coca growers have had the option of signing an agreement with the National Commission for Development and a Drug-Free Life (DEVIDA) to eliminate their coca crops in exchange for assistance in infrastructure, services, and alternative crop initiatives.

To live up to its commitment to coca-growing communities that have opted for voluntary eradication, the state depends on some 50 million dollars a year in international anti-drug assistance, 90 percent of which comes from the United States, according to DEVIDA.

But the funds are insufficient and the results fall far short. Just 50,000 of the 300,000 families who live in the country’s 14 coca-growing valleys have signed agreements to join the voluntary eradication programme, said the head of alternative development in DEVIDA, Fernando Hurtado.

Actually, alternative development projects began to be carried out with the support of international cooperation in areas subjected to forced eradication long before 2003.

“There is discontent over the coverage offered because we can only help 18 percent of the families in those areas. Our main problem is a shortage of funds,” said Hurtado.

The director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) in Lima, Aldo Lale-Demoz, said another aspect that generates mistrust is that in some cases, the organisations that carry out the alternative production programmes have not followed through.

Nevertheless, there have been successful initiatives, like the cultivation of oil palms, cacao and palm hearts, said Lale-Demoz.

In 2006, the combined sales by the 13 leading companies set up by small farmers with UNODC support totalled more than 55 million dollars, which represented a 38 percent increase on 2005. Of that total, 50 million dollars came from exports to the European Union and North America.

But these are islands of success in a sea of needs in the coca-growing valleys, where the law of supply and demand prevails, and the price paid by the drug mafias remains the only option for many cocaleros.

While one kilo of cacao fetches 1.88 dollars on average, the same quantity of coca leaf sells for three dollars when purchased by drug producers – two times what is paid by the National Coca Company, the only institution authorised to purchase and sell coca.

Another advantage of coca is that it produces four harvests a year, while alternative crops involve a waiting period. Oil palms, for example, take three years to begin producing.

Expert in drug and security issues Ricardo Soberón, former head of the Drug Trafficking and Human Rights Programme in the Andean Commission of Jurists, told IPS that instead of just promoting alternative products, “the government should carry out an integral development programme in the jungle areas where coca production is concentrated.”

In Soberón’s view, the cocalero movement in Peru is still far from achieving a voluntary eradication programme like the one implemented by the Bolivian government, because coca-growing organisations in this country do not have the same long history of organised trade union activity nor the consequent influence of the coca farmers in the neighbouring Bolivia, where the president himself, Evo Morales, is the leader of the country’s cocaleros.