Home » In Peru, drug traffickers threaten indigenous leaders – Dan Collyns

In Peru, drug traffickers threaten indigenous leaders – Dan Collyns

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“We are looking for you, dead or alive.” This is one of the threats that Herlín Odicio receives every day on his mobile. The cacataibo indigenous leader of the Peruvian central Amazon was forced into hiding due to his activity against drug traffickers who try to steal his land. “We have reported the presence of coca plantations in our land countless times, but nothing has ever happened,” says Odicio.

Death threats have multiplied after the indigenous leader’s decision to refuse an offer of 500,000 Peruvian sols (115,000 euros) for each drug-laden flight departing from a clandestine airstrip located in his territory. “They are hunting me,” he admits over the phone from a secret location in Peru. “I cannot walk freely in my community. The drug traffickers are looking for me ”.

Native communities in the central Peruvian Amazon are victims of threats, abuse and violence by the gangs of drug traffickers who have targeted their lands to grow coca leaves, used to produce cocaine. Covid-19 restrictions have made this remote region even more vulnerable, slowing the state’s action to protect land and combat illegal coca cultivation. The boom in coca cultivation – according to the United Nations, Peru is the second largest producer of cocaine in the world after Colombia – has serious repercussions for native peoples.

In February, in just twelve days, the two cacataibo leaders Yénser Ríos, 30, and Herasmo García, 28, were found lifeless in the Padre Abad province in the Ucayali region, an area where many coca and tracks clandestine areas for the transport of cocaine to Bolivia. The head of the Peruvian investigative police, General Vicente Tiburcio, said that the police are investigating to see if the killing of the two young people was a revenge on the part of the coca growers. Tiburcio specified that Ríos had to patrol the territory of his community and had participated in the operations to eliminate the coca crops.

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In April 2020 Arbildo Meléndez, another cacataibo leader, was killed near the village of Unipacuyacu. Meléndez had denounced the presence of trafficking gangs and secret airstrips to the authorities, inviting the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to ask the Peruvian state to protect him.

In addition to Meléndez, Ríos and García, four other inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon were killed during the pandemic, at a time when criminals are taking advantage of the crisis to seize land for the cultivation of coca and for the exploitation of timber and profitable crops. like palm oil. The most recent victim is Estela Casanto, 55, an asháninka indigenous whose body was found on 12 March.

“The family found bloodstains in their bed,” said Teddy Sinacay, president of Ceconsec, an organization made up of 120 Asháninka communities in the central Peruvian Amazon. “She was beaten and forcibly taken away from her home. They carried her forty meters and threw her into a canal. Then they continued to drag her, hitting her on the head with a stone ”. The police are investigating the circumstances of the murder, but Casanto’s death is yet another proof of the precariousness of indigenous claims on land and the often fatal consequences for those who try to assert them.

Distrust of institutions
The native peoples of the Amazon accuse the police and investigators of letting the killers act with impunity. Nine environmental activists have been killed since the start of the pandemic in Peru, but in no case has there been a conviction for murder.

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Meléndez’s alleged killer was arrested and released on bail on charges of manslaughter. Investigators believed the thesis that the gunshot was fired by mistake.

“For the state we do not exist,” underlines Berlín Diques, indigenous leader of Ucayali. “We are threatened and harassed”.

“We have lost faith in justice and in the police”, echoes Odicius, who for a few days had an escort but is now without any protection.

According to Álvaro Másquez, a native rights attorney for the Lima Legal Defense Institute, current regulations favor the purchase of indigenous lands by outside buyers. The original inhabitants of the region, on the other hand, often have to wait decades before obtaining a piece of land.

“Drug and timber traffickers have a habit of bribing officials who manage agricultural concessions and land assignments,” explains Másquez. At the same time, “structural racism in the judicial system” guarantees impunity for those illegally taking over land.

Insecurity about land ownership has turned indigenous people into an easy target for traffickers, who use “strong criminal networks” to exploit their weaknesses, points out Vladimir Pinto of Amazon Watch, an organization that protects the rainforest and rights of native peoples.

While the restrictions due to the pandemic are beginning to ease, activity has just resumed in the indigenous territory of the cacataibo to eliminate coca plantations (which went from an average of 25,000 hectares a year before the pandemic to around 6,000 hectares in 2020).

Diques fears reprisals from drug traffickers: “We natives will be cannon fodder,” he explains. “When the authorities leave, we will be targeted. We don’t want to mourn other dead ”.

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(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)

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