By Paul Gootenberg*

“Peru’s national drug control agency just released a four-year counter-drug strategy in April that warns of the urgency to reverse the ongoing surge in cocaine production.” / Editora Perú / Creative Commons

Peru, with a capacity to produce about 350-450 tons of cocaine a year, has been approaching Colombia as the world’s top exporter since around 2011, but its new drug strategy is not likely to reverse that trend.  Most Peruvian coca now comes from the Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro (VRAEM), and most cocaine flows towards Brazil not the United States.  Peru’s national drug control agency, DEVIDA (National Commission for Development and Life Without Drugs), just released a four-year counter-drug strategy in April that warns – again – of the urgency to reverse the ongoing surge in cocaine production but offers few compelling or new ideas on what to do.  The report notes the “high risk for Peru that our country will repeat the cases of Colombia and Mexico” in violence, corruption, and other costs of a massive illicit narcotics trade.  The strategy has some serious flaws, however.

• Although the report touts itself as a “Plan Integral,” military spending and eradication far outstrip “alternative development.” Coca “supply control” is the core of the program, though development efforts (mainly with cacao) are offered. Peru’s plan is mechanically sequenced – Pacification, Eradication, Services, and Development – and its rigid militaristic strategy draws criticism.  The latter seems basically directly against VRAEM peasants.  In 2014, a similar plan was announced to eradicate “50 percent” of the VRAEM coca in just one year, but nothing occurred because of the risky security environment.
• The sources of some key data are unclear. The report cites UN information but apparently without taking into account the substantial flow of cocaleros and cocaine traffickers deeper into Amazonia, near the Brazilian and Colombian borders.  It generally treats the VRAEM, Peru’s main producing area, as an isolated containable “world apart” – poised for national “recuperation.”  Security threats in the area, including guerrillas, actually made holding off eradication since 2014 a wise move – it would have pushed cocaleros into the arms of guerrillas – but the new report fails to consider any blowback from its plan.
• It glosses over the shortcomings of Peru’s security services to carry out what remains a heavily security-based strategy. It makes the startling admission that only 1.5-2.0 percent of VRAEM cocaine and 3-8 percent of cocaine nationally is seized – one of the lowest interdiction rates in the world.  (Colombia’s improved intelligence enables it to grab about half of cocaine in-country, and even weak Bolivia does better policing illicit cocaine.)  The ease of smuggling in Peru is directly related to the open corruptibility of Peru’s police, military, and politicians.  But except for money laundering, DEVIDA’s report barely addresses the corruption problem.
• Peru, unlike Colombia and Bolivia, has never questioned the UN/U.S. international drug regime, nor does this report. But Peru should expect little overseas eradication aid in the Trump era, raising big doubts about the sustainability of a long-term program.

As Colombians learned after decades of drug war against coca growers, including Plan Colombia, forced eradication is one of the most inefficient and futile ways to combat drugs. Studies by Colombian economist Daniel Mejía show that the marginal cost of eliminating a kilo of cocaine from markets by aerial spraying is a whopping $247,000 – far more than a kilo’s price on the street.  Eradication also provokes violent conflict and propels growers to new areas, and Peru has many tropical basins ripe for raising coca.  Effective intelligence to hit labs and intermediary layers of cocaine trades pays bigger dividends.  So does enlisting cocalero unions on the side of the state – to self-police as in Bolivia (now with the region’s least illicit cocaine) and Colombia (where the 2017 peace accord now recognizes cocalero rights).  Peru marginalizes cocaleros, precluding the sort of socio-political strategy needed for success.  All in all, DEVIDA’s strategy makes it interesting to see whose plan will produce the best results by 2021 – Peru’s, Colombia’s, or Bolivia’s?

June 13, 2017

* Paul Gootenberg is Chair of the Department of History at Stony Brook University and author of Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).