Peru: narco card against Cajamarca ecological struggle?

Submitted by WW4 Report on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 22:53.

The Lima tabloid Perú21 April 25 airs claims that northern Peru's Cajamarca region—site of the civil struggle against the US-owned Conga gold mine project—is a "new center of cocaine production." Without giving his credentials, the newspaper cites "expert in themes of narcotrafficking" Jaime Antezana to the effect that Cajamarca's province of Celendín has emerged as a key coca leaf production zone, replete with labs for processing the leaf into paste. The neighboring province of Hualgayoc, and especially its capital Bambamarca, is identified as the trans-shipment point over the Andes towards the Pacific, and local center of money-laundering. The paper says this intelligence has been "confirmed" by National Police Anti-Drug Directorate (DIRANDRO) and the official coca eradication agency, the Special Project for Control and Reduction of Coca Cultivation (CORAH).
The Unitary Struggle Command of Cajamarca Region responded the next day in a statement charging the assertion is a "psychosocial" strategy by the fujimontiollantistas—a portmanteau implying that President Ollanta Humala has joined the power bloc of imprisoned ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori. The statement said rondas campesinas (peasant self-defense patrols) of the named provinces are on alert for any attempt to plant drugs or arms. It charged that the aim of the allegations is to "militarize the zone so as to impose the Conga project at the point of bullets." (Online at Caballero Verde blog)

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