It’s another statistic showing up the criminal absurdity of Plan Colombia and Washington’s “war on drugs.”
Last year, according to recent United States Drug Enforcement Administration sources, Peru produced about 325 metric tonnes of pure cocaine, surpassing Colombia’s output of 275 tonnes.
For the first time since the early 1990s, Peru has emerged as the world’s leading cocaine producer. Bolivian production is also reportedly up.
In its traditional, folk medicinal form, coca is a blessing that dispels ailments such as indigestion and altitude sickness with remarkable efficacy.
Yet insatiable Western demand for cocaine hydrochloride a drug created by 19th-century European chemists has led to a capitalist annexation of the coca leaf.
With 50,000 hectares of mature coca reportedly under commercial cultivation in narco-controlled areas such as the Ene-Apurimac River Valley, Peru’s plantations yield higher net levels of cocaine than Colombia’s 100,000 recovering hectares.
The US-Peru Free Trade Agreement has provided a huge boost for commercial coca production. The multinational onslaught in Peru has led to the displacement of tens of thousands of small farmers.
Many of these internal refugees, whose land in the sierra has been swallowed up mines, end up in the Amazonian jungle cultivating coca for cartels and the resurgent Shining Path guerillas. They do this to survive.
Production is slightly down in neighbouring Colombia, but United Nations studies show that the country still produces enough to service virtually the entire North American market. The rise of Peruvian output has led to a dramatic escalation of supply capacity to Europe and Asia.
European users are now consuming nearly as much cocaine as their US counterparts, generating an estimated US$30 billion of extra annual revenue for the cartels.
Most of the cocaine consumed by users in Australia and New Zealand a smaller, yet still valuable market comes from Peru.
It was widely predicted when Plan Colombia (a US program of military aid and assistance to Colombia) began in 2000, that aggressive, military measures such as aerial spraying with carcinogenic Monsanto-supplied chemicals would just encourage cartels to shift operations elsewhere.
Nearly 12 years on, official figures show this is precisely what has happened.
And it looks increasingly likely Washington will now seek to step up the “drug war” in Peru. This is, in reality, not a war on drugs but a pretext for a war on a dissenting population showing signs of weariness with neoliberalism.