"Gold Rush of International Entrepreneurs"

Demand continues to fuel the thriving cocaine business. According to the Los Angeles Times March 23, 2008 article,("Peru Sees Cocaine Making A Comeback") 'Peru's cocaine industry, the world's largest and most violent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is again on the upswing. Plots of coca bushes, whose leaves yield cocaine, have increased by about one-third since 1999, to about 127,000 acres, according to Peruvian and United Nations estimates. And this time, the traffickers may be more difficult to combat because the flashy kingpins from Colombia have been replaced by a piecemeal network, a sort of gold rush of international entrepreneurs."

The article states, "The Garcia administration initially agreed to suspend eradication efforts, a mainstay of the U.S.-backed anti-drug policy. But Garcia later reversed course and even suggested that clandestine laboratories be raided and bombed. With U.S. aid that totals about $50 million a year, Peru has trained and deployed hundreds of anti-drug police officers.During the 1990s, U.S.-backed enforcement efforts chased much of the coca trade to Colombia. Now, some say, the wheel is turning: Pressure in Colombia is shifting production here. But today's tableau is distinct from the brazen scenario of the late 1980s and early '90s. Gone are the Colombian drug barons swaggering around in opulent jungle redoubts such as the nearby town of Uchiza, once dubbed the world cocaine capital, with its gaudy discos and bordellos. Replacing the Colombians is a multinational network that reaches from the Amazon basin to a globalized market."

The article adds, "Throughout the Andean Amazon basin, the imperative of the marketplace pushes peasants to the dependable coca plant. About 65,000 Peruvian families make a living off the coca leaf and trafficking, according to a U.S. State Department report released last month. Alternative crops such as oil palm and cacao have met with some success, U.S. officials say. But many impoverished farmers insist that no legal product can replace the myth-shrouded bush and its profitable harvests. Despite the cocaleros' hostility, authorities managed to eradicate about 27,000 acres of coca last year in the Upper Huallaga. But that only kept pace with new plantings, often in previously eradicated zones. Many cocaleros have migrated to ever-more-remote patches of the Apurimac and Ene river valleys known in narco-parlance as 'liberated zones.' 'The narcos and their sicarios [hired killers] act in these zones with complete impunity,' said Rospigliosi, the former interior minister. 'They've bought off local officials and have complete control."