Peru where can I buy cocaine

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Peru where can I buy cocaine

In a side pocket, a. Mardonio Borda is a year-old native Quechua with broken Spanish and a sixth-grade education. He is among untold hundreds of cocaine backpackers who make the difficult and dangerous trek up Andean mountain paths first carved by their pre-Incan ancestors. In this country that overtook Colombia in as the world's No. Sixty percent of Peru's cocaine comes from the remote Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, and the backpackers trek for three to five days to deliver cocaine to traffickers who move the drugs on for export. But it is not the lung-searing ascents to high altitudes that worry the young men. It is the armed gangs, crooked police, and rival backpacker groups who regularly rob cocaine's beasts of burden on journeys that can extend miles kilometers or more. Beyond extinguishing young lives, the practice has packed Peru's highland prisons with backpackers while their bosses evade incarceration. It is a big business. Roughly one third of the metric tons of cocaine that the U. A hardy lot, cocaine backpackers are mostly native Quechua speakers like Borda and hail from the isolated peasant communities that suffered the worst atrocities of Peru's dirty war with Shining Path rebels. Not a few backpackers are orphans, and some are Ashaninka, members of Peru's largest Amazon indigenous group. Not a single fully paved road rises out of the Apurimac river valley, which stretches northward for miles kilometers , separating the Andes ridge from the Amazon basin. Police say more and more cocaine is being processed to powder rather than left as coca paste, which includes residues of hydrocarbons, typically gasoline, used in the initial processing. While authorities say most of the drugs are now flown out, backpacking is dependable in the rainy season, cheaper than hiring a pilot and plane — and key to evading police checkpoints. Backpackers, or 'mochileros,' 'mochila' is Spanish for backpack , have been hauling cocaine this way for nearly two decades. After reaching highland cities on foot, cocaine travels mostly via highway either to Pacific ports or Bolivia's nearby border. Peru's cocaine trade is highly decentralized, run by scores of extended families who sell to representatives of foreign cartels. The backpackers they hire travel in groups as small as four and as large as Guards with assault rifles often accompany them, as do scouts who walk 20 minutes ahead. The traffickers also tote radios and satellite phones. Police, by comparison, rarely have more than cellphones. A typical trip begins with a ride down into the valley paid for by the patron. One backpacker described how his group would then get fed at a house in the Apurimac valley town of Lechemayo, issued backpacks and driven as high as the dirt road went. Some backpackers carry handguns, some grenades. At times, it rains so hard that mochileros, exhausted, hire horses and mules. But they're an additional expense — and a potential liability. Martinez, who says he's made 30 trips since age 18, lost two close friends. One slipped and fell off a precipice in the confusion of an armed robbery. Another was suspected of being an informant — and took two bullets to the head. Martinez knows he could easily meet the same fate. Cocaine backpacking is a twice-monthly endeavor for the jack-of-all-trades, who also works construction and in the fields. His wife wants him to stop. But he rarely refuses a trip. He needs to feed his wife and two children — ages one month and 2 years. The university student had gotten his father's permission to haul coca to pay for his agronomy studies, his mother said. He adored her, ferrying her around Ayacucho on his blue motorcycle, buying her groceries, making sure she always had cell phone minutes. When he started backpacking, Yuri always checked in by phone. So when he didn't call after a March smuggling trip, his mother turned to reading coca leaves to try to divine his fate, tossing them on her skirt as is customary. His career ended after four trips when he invested in a load he helped carry. He is convinced that his boss hired thieves to steal his kilogram more than pound share when his guard was down. He said the boss then demanded he pay for the stolen drugs. The backpacker moved with his parents to the Pacific coast, where they harvest rice. Andahuaylas is controlled by traffickers, and most people live either directly or indirectly off the trade, backpackers say, a claim backed by prosecutors and investigators from Peru's elite counternarcotics police. Many of the young men believe their bosses sometimes sacrifice a small group of backpackers to police so a much larger contingent can pass unperturbed carrying far more cocaine. Rural medic Oscar Huaman runs a health post along a principal backpacker route, where he sees mochileros almost daily. Huaman had to pluck grenade fragments in January from the legs and faces of two backpackers who were attacked cooling off at a stream. One lost his pack and the nearly 18 pounds of cocaine inside. It could have been worse. Villagers along the remote routes sometimes run across putrefied corpses. The dogs and pumas eat you,' said Hector Fernandez, justice of the peace in Putis, a major backpacker transit zone. Deaths often go unreported. Bodies lack identification papers, and villagers bury them without notifying authorities. Borda, the backpacker whose route passes near Machu Picchu, says his group of four was once confronted by five gunmen. His men had hiked five hours and spent a frigid night in rugged mountains only to watch as their quarry, 15 mochileros, appeared at 1 a. Backpackers can choose from myriad routes on the half-dozen corridors of sparsely populated steppe. They often hike at night, to avoid detection. Few backpackers know before they are arrested that they face eight- to year prison sentences, says Barrenechea, the sociologist. If they are caught with unlicensed firearms, sentences are stiffer. The law was amended last year to strip anyone newly convicted of drug trafficking of a chance at parole. They must now serve the minimum: Eight years. In highlands prisons along the western rim of the Apurimac river valley, nearly half the inmates are in for cocaine trafficking — compared to a fifth nationwide. At the Ayacucho prison, 1, out of the 2, inmates were in for drug-related crimes in January, the latest month for which data was available. No statistics are kept on how many are mochileros, but prosecutors say it's the majority. In Andahuaylas, half of the inmates were in for drug-related crimes. President Ollanta Humala's government has not addressed the high incarceration rate, though the president did lament the backpackers' fate during a July speech in Cuzco: 'I'm embarrassed for this country because we have not offered them opportunity. Sociologist and drug war analyst Jaime Antezana said cocaine backpackers are targeted by law enforcement because powerful traffickers evade prosecution and capture by bribing police, prosecutors and judges. And they end up jamming the prisons. Only a handful of local and regional drug capos have been arrested in recent years — and no major traffickers, says Sonia Medina, Peru's state attorney for narcotics and a harsh critic of drug corruption in the country's criminal justice system. Vicente Romero, Peru's No. Home U. Drug trade's lowest rung: Peru's expendable cocaine couriers. Show Caption. Hide Caption. Peru backpackers first leg in cocaine's journey. Much of the world's cocaine now originates in the mountains of Peru, where young, poor farmers risk their lives making the difficult and dangerous trek to deliver cocaine to traffickers. May 7. Facebook Twitter Email. Share your feedback to help improve our site!

Peru’s cocaine trade overruns remote Indigenous territory

Peru where can I buy cocaine

A remote valley east of the Peruvian highlands is the perfect place for growing coca. Peru now produces more cocaine than any other country, and this is where more than half of it originates. But there is no easy way to smuggle it out, so traffickers hire young men to carry it on foot. At any moment there are likely to be hundreds trudging over mountains and through the rainforest with pure cocaine worth thousands of dollars on their backs. A teenager rips an over-sized tropical leaf from a branch. He strips the stalk, then using both hands, he wrings it out. On a journey that will take him through dense jungle terrain, knowing which plants can quench thirst is one small survival technique. Daniel is a mochilero - one of thousands of young Peruvians who hike an illicit cargo of cocaine from the valley of three rivers - the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro - to secret stash points or clandestine airstrips from where it will be moved on by other means. Known locally as the Vraem - a contraction of the Spanish Valle de los Rios Apurimac, Ene y Mantaro - the huge valley is one of the poorest regions in Peru. Daniel lives here in a village with his parents and siblings - and at the age of 18, he is a veteran of the cocaine business. At 17, I began transporting the drug. Most of the journeys Daniel undertakes are lengthy - two weeks to reach the destination and 10 days to return home. He carries 15kg of cocaine. It is precious cargo, and his job is dangerous - far too dangerous for him to be identified publicly. Wholesale in Miami its value is 20 times greater. Many mochileros move in small groups of 10 to But Daniel treks with to others, and together they move drugs in industrial quantities. These journeys take him north out of the valley. Or he travels in a south-easterly direction, passing close to the tourist mecca of Machu Picchu, and towards the city of Cuzco. The mochileros are well organised and prepared for attacks - either from rival groups or the police. Those at the end of the line carry pistols, like a Browning. Our lines are very long, and we walk with two or three metres between us. If there's an attack, it's the guys up front who fall first. When you're at the back and hear the shooting, you just run and escape. He says they buy ammunition from corrupt police officers. Often it is hidden in the buckets of food scraps and rubbish dumped outside the police barracks, from where the mochileros retrieve it. But assaults and shoot-outs are not the only hazards. The journeys themselves are physically demanding, taking these young men high into the Andes on ancient Inca trails, and down into the Amazon Basin along tracks hacked through virgin forest. It can be treacherous. You go along a path that's so narrow you have to walk sideways with your back against the mountain, carrying your backpack in front. Sometimes it's slippery, and people just fall. Daniel does not smile much. His face is quite immobile, even when he is talking. He is small and muscular, like a battle-hardened soldier, and he is old beyond his years. On every journey Daniel has undertaken, three or four mochileros have lost their lives. We travelled together. But 10 of them have died. Some were close relatives, cousins with the same surname as me. It's very painful to leave your cousin behind on the trail somewhere. Of those 10 young men, four fell into the river, the others fell victim to minor injuries that meant they were unable to continue. With treatment they would have survived - but left alone, with limited food and water, they died. There are plants that can heal you, but they aren't available everywhere. Or you fall or get cut. Your feet swell, and they change colour. Then you can't walk. Your foot rots and ants enter the wound. You can't go on because of the pain. And there's no-one to help you - the others just leave you. The fear of losing his own life has not yet persuaded Daniel to stop. The money is too tempting. It is a small fortune in the valley. If you think you could die, then you could die. But if you say no to those thoughts, faith moves mountains. Massive plantations stretch as far as the eye can see. Young people like Daniel have grown up in this coca culture - it is part of life. In every village, freshly picked leaves are regularly tipped from sacks on to large plastic sheets. They are kicked out with bare feet, spread evenly to dry in the sunlight. Most farmers in the Vraem grow some coca - and that is not illegal. Shops sell leaves by the bagful, and when chewed or made into tea they are a mild stimulant and appetite suppressant, and can also help with altitude sickness. Coca leaves may also be used to try to divine the future. For many Peruvians the plant is revered and sacred. It connects them to their Inca ancestors and even those who came before. But although it is not against the law to grow coca, it is illegal to process the leaves into coca base from which powdered cocaine hydrochloride is made. At the heart of the valley is the town of Llochegua, a commercial centre that serves tiny, far-flung communities. The only visible signs of disposable income are the expensive 4x4 pick-up trucks - the go-to vehicles of narcos across Latin America. Coca's harvested four times a year. And the other 90? They end up growing coca. Many become mochileros too. At least a third of the cocaine produced in the Vraem is transported on their backs. While Daniel carries it long distances, far away from the valley, others take it to airstrips closer at hand, hidden deep in the jungle. The flights come in with thousands of dollars of cash on board, and take off loaded with more than kg of coca base or cocaine. In the past year-and-a-half, more than illicit runways have been blown up by Peru's specialised drug police and the military. But repairing the blasted airstrips takes only a few days, and new ones continue appearing in ever more remote locations. During the day planes buzz overhead on their way to Bolivia - the main distribution point for cocaine from the Vraem. Drugs also move by road. But there are military and police checkpoints, and landfalls may block highways in the rainy season. A fit, committed mochilero - which is what Daniel is - may well be a better bet to ensure delivery of one of the world's most expensive consumable products. Comandante Luis Enrique Diaz peeps out from under a peaked, camouflage cap, surveying a coca plantation that tumbles down the valley towards the river below. Commandante Diaz of Peru's anti-narcotics police is serious, sturdy - and he is Daniel's adversary. Then we hide and wait to ambush them. Sometimes we stay there for four or five days. That's the only way to do it. So both police officers and mochileros die in these encounters. Most people in the valley know of somebody who disappeared without explanation, or whose dead body has turned up in a remote location. That is what happened to Alain Leon, a year-old living far away from his family in Ayacucho, a city high in the Andes. His family was told simply that people in a distant village had found a body bearing knife wounds. But the family was too poor to retrieve his body from the highland town where it had been taken, and they have never managed to find out exactly where he was buried. The absence of a proper funeral intensified the trauma especially for Alain's mother, Eduarda Ramirez de Leon, who half-believes her son is still alive somewhere. Alain had told his family he was working as a driver carrying goods by road between highland towns. They had no idea he could be mixed up with drugs, but the village where he was found is on one of the routes used by mochileros. Probably he was working as a mochilero and died in a skirmish with a rival group or criminal gang intent on stealing his cargo. Around town there are new, modern homes, many of them vacant and pasted with notices declaring they have been seized by the authorities. Property is one way of laundering drug money in Peru. The prison sits on the edge of town. In spite of its control towers and barbed wire, the carefully painted blue and yellow walls give it a jaunty appearance in the afternoon sunlight. Inside, a large mural of Christ is painted on one wall. Of the inmates here, more than half are serving time for drug offences, and of those, the majority are backpackers. Thirty-seven of them are women. Ranging from teenagers to middle-aged mothers, and even grandmothers, they have been convicted of transporting cocaine on foot and by road. She is 26 years old, quietly spoken, and is serving a sentence of 12 years with no remission for trafficking coca base. She was picked up with bricks of the drug strapped to her body under her clothes. A woman Roxana knew offered her a job carrying coca from Andahuaylas to Cuzco. There were three of them. First they had to trek a few hours out of Andahuaylas into the mountains in the middle of the night to get to the pick-up point. Once they had the cargo, they would travel by road in different vehicles. The journey there and back took a week, and for Roxana it was the first of several. When she was stopped in a taxi by the police five years ago, she was carrying 12kg of coca base, worth thousands of dollars. But I was used by that organisation, I can see that now. In the male facility next door, inmates have been convicted of drug crimes, the vast majority of them mochileros. An anti-drugs organisation, Cedro, funded through the US Embassy in Lima, carried out a study two years ago of imprisoned young, male mochileros and found that most had not finished secondary school, and were unaware of the penalties they faced. So they could end up with a sentence of as much as 15 years. She points out that although the jails are full of mochileros, none of the drug kingpins have been caught. In the Vraem the cocaine business is controlled at community level by clans and families. Locals have an idea about who they are, but the important drug-traffickers always seem to escape imprisonment. That made them vulnerable. And the suspicion is that it was their bosses who turned them over to the police. They may also be targeted in police operations if their boss betrays them to distract attention from a larger consignment travelling by a different route. Francisco Barrantes and his wife, Victoria Canchari, are inspecting their coca crop. He rubs the leaves between thumb and forefinger, and a cloud of butterflies emerges from one bush. It means Enaco, Peru's state coca agency, which buys leaves to make legal coca products, will not want them. The only buyers for spoilt leaves are the narcos. But Francisco Barrantes does not only sell the coca chewed by caterpillars to drug-traffickers, he sells them most of his crop. But the agency pays a lot less than the narcos. As secretary general of the Federation of Coca Producers in the valley, he is well aware of the bigger picture. He knows families whose boys have died working the backpacker routes. I know the coca I sell ends up in the backpacks of young mochileros in this area. I'm also aware of the impact of all of this in other countries. So Barrantes is planning on joining a government-sponsored crop substitution programme. The government will send in agro-engineers to advise on the swapping of coca for coffee and cocoa. He abandoned them for coca, which needs far less tending, when the Vraem became a war zone in the s. A small number of Sendero Luminoso guerrillas still operate in the Vraem. They too are involved in drug-trafficking, and they control some of the backpackers' routes. Their presence explains why there has been no forced coca eradication in the valley as there has been elsewhere in Peru. Last year, more than sq km of coca were destroyed in other coca-growing regions further north. Peru was lauded by the United States, even though the programme does not seem to have visibly dented cocaine production. It is not surprising, given the economic supremacy of coca in the valley, that the farmers are resistant to eradication. Francisco Barrantes says there could be social unrest if it is enforced. During the war, he was one of hundreds of campesinos who joined local militia to fight Sendero Luminoso. Now alliances have shifted - Sendero has declared it will support the coca farmers if government agents arrive to pull up coca bushes. So it is a stalemate. Coca production continues in the valley, and Daniel, the mochilero, is still in business. The money Daniel makes from the drug business feeds his family, but like many other backpackers he knows, his main motive for doing this work is to pay for his education. They say I should continue in the business for now, and next year I can devote myself to studying. He has eschewed the life of a teenager and remained utterly focused. I used to have a girlfriend, but not now. When you have this job, your girlfriend isn't happy. And if you don't take her out, who will she go out with? She might end up betraying you. So it's better just to be alone and concentrate on the job. Daniel's ambition is to study law at university in Ayacucho. Then he wants to return home and become mayor. In five years, we could legalise coca, and look for new markets producing and exporting medicines to other countries. No doubt he has spent a lot of time thinking about it on those arduous, hikes across some of Peru's most difficult terrain. But the cocaine trade has become part of Daniel's DNA. He has grown up with coca - picked it, dried it, processed it, packed it, carried it, risked his life for it, and made a lot of money. Will he be able to leave this life? Will he be allowed to? There are powerful forces at work in the valley. There may be people who decide Daniel knows too much. The Mochileros High stakes in the high Andes - the young backpackers risking their lives in cocaine valley. They are the mochileros - the backpackers. It's one of the most perilous jobs in the cocaine industry. The moisture runs as though from a tiny tap - pure and sustaining. Coca valley. The coca bush is an unassuming plant - its leaves are not luxurious, and it does not grow tall. In the Vraem, it is everywhere. Supplying the leaves to narco-traffickers is also, of course, prohibited. Catching the couriers. But Alain was not killed in a shoot-out, he was stabbed. It is the stuff of nightmares. There are other perils too that may bring an early end to a mochilero's career. Roxana has the fresh, open face of an innocent. Coca or cocoa? On a hillside high above the town of Pichari, the soil is the colour of ginger biscuits. This is a bad sign - the leaves are being destroyed. But perhaps not for much longer. And he has a radical vision not only for the valley, but also for Peru. Share this Email Facebook Twitter.

Peru where can I buy cocaine