VRAEM: THE NEW PATH FOR THE COCA LEAF CULTIVATION

*Article written in April 2014.

A new strategy against the illegal crops of coca leaf has been implemented in the heated zone
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of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Valleys (VRAEM, from its Spanish acronym). On May 27 ,
the Minister of Agriculture, Juan Manuel Benites, signed an agreement with the coca grower
leaders, specifying that the illegal coca leaf crops wont be eliminated in Pichari district (La
Convencin province, Cusco region). Then, the operations plan wont be implemented in order
to reduce the illegal coca zone (Corah). The Peruvian government has changed its strategy and
chosen the productive reconversion of that zone. Will that program work?
This new politics has caused the abrupt dismissal of Carmen Masas, in charge of the
Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (DEVIDA, from its Spanish acronym) since
2012, who was notified last Tuesday night. Masas represented the elimination strategy, thus it
was supposed that she didnt follow the new guidelines ordered by the Executive Power. The
entering of Alberto Otrola, ex-minister of Defense, responds to the new politics and a position
of trust that the Chief of Congressmen, Ren Cornejo and President Ollanta Humala have given
him.
A turbulent zone
The problems lived in Vraem are of great magnitude. The zone is one of the main coca leaf
cultivation areas in Peru. Our country took the place of Colombia in 2012 as the country with the
major cultivation area of such product in the world. According to the data of the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Peru has 60,400 hectares of coca fields against 48,000
hectares in Colombia. Although the last figures state that between 2007 and 2012 the coca
fields surface reduced a 17.5% in our country, this did not stop the increase of cocaine export
through narco-aircrafts.
Nowadays, about 8 to 10 narco-flights (aircrafts with cocaine load) per day leave with cocaine
load from Vraem with 300 kilos of drug.
According to Ricardo Sobern, ex-chief of Devida and current researcher of the Centre of
Research, Drugs and HHRR, drug trafficking in Vraem constitutes the existence of a global
market that moves 450,000 millions of dollars. Besides, the favorable conditions of the fields,
the social difference and the weather of the zone facilitate that this can be inserted in the
poorest society of Peru as a way of development participation, he stated.
Each time people have less fear to enter into this business. Their ethical reasoning has
decreased so that the economic factor has prevailed. What that this means in terms of riskbenefit? There are many families that negotiate with the cocaine base and they do not care
about their freedom, Sobern added.
On the other hand, the last faction of the Shining Path guerrilla group in Vraem, leading by the
Quispe Palomino clan, and the narco-flights increased in the last years represent a constant
fight. Face to all these problems, the new strategy will work?
What was the cause of the change?
Many specialists in drug trafficking topics have different opinions about what caused the turn of
the strategy against the illegal cultivation of coca leafs. The background are the mass protests
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of coca growers on May 14 and 15 , with 10,000 and 12,000 coca growers demanding Ollanta
Humala to keep his campaign promises and do not eliminate the coca cultivation.
For Jaime Antezana, specialist in drug trafficking topics, that is one of the causes that made the
government to move back in its previous strategy.

He also considers that the pressure from the Armed Forces has influenced because since 2013
they opposed to secure the elimination in that area. If the elimination plan continued, it will be a
resistance against this from the coca growers, leading by the Quispe Palominio clan and the
local drug dealers.
On the other hand, Sobern holds that this new strategy has been chosen because the
government realizes the mistake to be committed. He also states that the government opened
its eyes face to the kidnaping brought by Carmen Masas (Devida) and the executive director of
the Information and Education Centre for the Prevention of Drug Abuse (Cedro), Alejandro
Vassilaqui.
2014 and what it remains
This year the government plans to eliminate 30,000 hectares (*) of coca crops but until now only
11,815 have been eliminated. Now in the Vraem area, it is planned to reconvert 5,000 hectares
of coca. Currently, in Vraem only 60,000 hectares correspond to coffee and 40,000 to cacao,
thus the governments objective is to increase this production progressively and together with
farmers.
For Antezana this new measure wont work because there is a previous experience.
In April 2003, President Alejandro Toledo gave the supreme decree 044 establishing the
implementation of gradual and agreed cocaine reduction programs. It was agreed with the same
coca growers of Alto Huallaga, Vraem and San Martin. However, the new agreement didnt
establish they were forced to the same of 2003; all coca growers went to plant coca leafs in
other places. How will they make it work? he stated.
However, the minister of Agriculture in his last statements to the press pointed that for those
who do not want to enter into this reconversion program, elimination has to continue, there is no
way that this wont happen.
The forced elimination was strongly criticized by different people such as Sobern, due to the
great violence generated. This change is produced in a situation where Ms. Carmen Masas
and her friends in the police would think to eliminate cultivation areas in Vraem, as it was
previously announced. The true is that if the government makes that mistake, it will regret
because it will cause an unexpected conflict situation. Even worse because in the same region
drug trafficking and Shining Path coexist, he pointed.
For Sobern, the dismissal of Masas means a good correction because it allows more flexibility
and not be dependent of an approach that implies obedience to United States. She is a person
who has worked 25 years in prevention with the American cooperation money and in fact it has
not been achieved great things. This lady makes a lot of mistakes, he added.
Carmen Masas, back at the office of Cedro, has preferred not to give her opinion.
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In her place Milton Rojas, specialist in prevention topics of Cedro received us. The entity has
prevention programs in the Vraem area financed by the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and which objective is to demotivate the youth to hustle with drugs
through the labor entrepreneurship.
And what are the results of these programs? Rojas has pointed that to date they were not
collected and they should wait a couple of years more.
Likewise, the specialist adds that Peru even though it is the first coca leaf producer in the world,
it is not the best consumer. In fact, according to the last annual report of ONU, dated 2011,

about drug consumption in the world, we are on last place among Latin-American consumers.
This list is led by Brazil, which is one of main countries to which Peru export cocaine.
For Rojas, this is due to a preventive work sustained throughout the decades. He also adds that
it is more logic that as one of the main producers of cocaine we should have the highest rates of
consumption.
The reality in Vraem
The reality is that the Vraem area has generated an economy based on leaf sale of illegal coca
leafs. In the absence of cultivation options it is difficult for the farmers to get out of this narcoeconomy and access to other options of life for their development.
Nowadays, according to the information from the Development and Monitoring System of the
Devidas Alternative Development Program (SimDev), 1 kg of net cocaine base can cost about
S/.1,000.00. An encouraging amount faces to the lack of opportunities.
Carmen Masas could not stop cocalization and narcotization in the jungle of Peru and we are
in great risk of become a south-south passage of cocaine base to Bolivia and Brazil. In terms of
public security, her performance has been really unfair because her unique schema was more
repression, so that we have a situation of prison overcrowding and crisis which cant continue,
Sobern pointed.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), the people arrested from
committing illegal drug trafficking and drug micro-commercialization have increased from 2007
to 2012 from 9,273 to 12,950.
In fact, according to Csar Augusto Daz, chief of the Penitentiary Infrastructure Office (OIP),
each month 1,000 prisoners are released from prisons, but 2,000 enter. Thats why, nowadays,
there is an overcrowding that will take many years to revert because the Ministry of Economy
and Finance (MEF) does not give the necessary budget to build prisons; the paperwork is very
slow and to finish a prison takes about six years. For Daz, building more prisons is not the
solution, but the total time for building a prison is trying to be reduced to three years.
This situation could not be solved in short time. In his latest statements to the press, the new
principal of Devida, Alberto Otrola, pointed that one of the objectives is the productive
recovering of Vraem.
We hope that the politics will follow the new path or as Sobern states Shining Path takes
these farmers to their troops or the government should do it, this is the reality.
(*) Until December 2014, 30.349 hectares were eliminated from illegal cultivation, see the news
here.