- The cultivation of coca is a burgeoning business in southern Peru, where even forests in protected area are being cleared to make room for coca fields.
- Coca is the plant from which cocaine is produced and is a more lucrative and dependable crop than coffee, which has been a staple crop in the region for years.
- Satellite data and a survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show increased clearing in and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park due primarily to coca farming.
The burned forest and coca crops that have dominated the landscape along the road for the past two hours are gradually being transformed into coffee plantations. These are the last plantations left in San Lorenzo de Palmerani, which lies east of the Putina Punco district. Simón* is a coffee farmer who continues to bet on a crop that grows in the middle of an ecological paradise – between the Peruvian Bahuaja-Sonene and Bolivian Madidi national parks – but is haunted by drug trafficking. This corner where Simón lives in the Puno jungle is one of the last bastions of legality left in the Sandia valley.
To get to this district, a rugged terrain must be crossed where thin passes and crevasses are typical along the way to the jungle. The journey that supposed to take eight hours took much longer when there was no road. The reward, however, has always been high-quality coffee plantations that grow at more than 1,500 meters above sea level, where the climate is ideal for this crop.
Simón has just returned from the forest to check his crops. He notes that he is happy, as they are becoming fuller, which is how he usually refers to crops that grow at a good pace. There have been heavy rains since November and Simón prepares coffee to receive visitors.
“We have learned to grind [the coffee beans] to see if we can give it some added value, because what they pay us now is no longer enough,” he says. In the last year, the price of 46 kilograms of coffee fell to just over $91, which is a big difference compared to the 1990s, when, according to Simón, “they were paid [$182 per 46 kilograms], not counting the [profits] that the cooperatives gave.”
Last May, Mongabay Latam reported on the organic coffee crisis in Putina Punco, an emblematic area home to Tunki coffee, award winner of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. But the region has now been taken over by the coca crops – from which cocaine is produced – that feed the illegal drug trafficking business.
The problem continues to worsen, as confirmed by satellite data analyzed by the University of Maryland. These data, visualized as deforestation alerts on the forest monitoring platform Global Forest Watch, indicate that Bahuaja-Sonene National Park is not only surrounded by increasing forest loss from coca cultivation, but that this activity is increasing within the park itself.
Increase in drug trafficking
In addition to crops both surrounding and invading Bahuaja-Sonene National Park, there are also cocaine processing facilities, paste production laboratories, and clandestine airstrips where small Bolivian planes have the capacity to transport up to 300 kilograms of the alkaloid at a time, according to intelligence data from the Peruvian Air Force.
Satellite data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab indicate the situation has deteriorated in recent months. The GLAD lab recorded at least 880 human-caused deforestation alerts in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park between July and the end of October.
Deforestation within the park also coincides with the area occupied by the Colorado hamlet, a human settlement adjacent to the southern part of the protected area. Its inhabitants claim that they should remain there, since they were living on the land before the protected area was created. Peru’s National Service of Natural Areas Protected (Sernanp) considers their actions illegal, since law prohibits any form of deforestation within national parks.
Although Sernanp claims that the deforestation caused by this hamlet represents less than 1 percent of the park – the protected area covers 1,091,416 hectares in total – more coca fields, laboratories, and clandestine tracks have been established in this sector than in any other.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently published its annual Coca Cultivation Survey that found deforestation was higher in 2017 than in the year prior. According to the survey, 193 hectares were deforested by illegal crops in Bahuaja-Sonene National Park in 2017, compared with 118 hectares in 2016. Sernanp rangers, who are constantly monitoring, say the figure is yet higher this year: 473 hectares (roughly five square kilometers). The UNODC survey shows that coca cultivation now occupies 3,147 hectares in the park’s protected area, an increase of approximately 1,000 hectares over 2017.
Kristian Hölge , representative of the UNODC Office for Peru and Ecuador, noted that the entire Puno jungle comprising the valleys of Tambopata (where Putina Punco is located) and Inambari is “one of the main growth centers of the coca frontier. In the last report, UNODC calculates that between the two valleys there are 5,310 hectares of coca leaf plantations. We know that this growth responds to the market demand for coca leaf and by-products from the border area, particularly with Bolivia. This, together with the existing problems of accessibility to address the problem, makes this trend even more worrisome.”
Biologist and ecologist Ernesto Ráez Luna recalled that there was a successful coffee program in the 1990s. However, according to Ráez Luna, the project did not evolve despite being a good alternative to deforestation activities within the park.
“There is a combination of factors that are beginning to create problems, such as the lack of soil management so that the land does not wear out and continues to produce,” Ráez Luna said.
Ráez Luna added that the project collapsed when the price of coffee began to fall and productivity began to decline due to poor soil quality. He said coffee rust, a disease caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, was the nail in the coffin and shifted grower focus to coca crops.
A lost battle?
Simón slowly sipped his steaming coffee from an earthenware cup. “There is Madidi and a little further on is Bahuaja Park,” he said, pointing in the direction of the other side of the mountains covered by rain-filled clouds.
“When I was a child, this was all coffee,” Simón said. “My father sent me 50 years ago with the donkey from Sandia to Putina to bring groceries and coffee sacks. The workers lined up to work on the farm to work on a daily basis.”
What he liked best was the red color of the ripe coffee. When he was 24 years old, he bought six hectares of land, planted coffee plantations and built his house nearby to watch them grow. But in 2012, the rust plague wiped out everything in its path. Simón was left with only one hectare from which he was lucky enough to produce around 720 kilograms of coffee beans this year.
“That is why many have become discouraged – even I did,” he said.
After the coffee growers of Putina Punco became discouraged, coca plantations started to appear. Unlike coffee that has one annual harvest, coca has four.
“The weakest [coca] farmer has one hectare, the average is five to five,” said a local technical agronomist who, for security reasons, preferred not to reveal his name.
On average, one hectare of coca can produce between 1,200 and 1,800 kilograms of coca leaf, according to the inhabitants of Putina Punco. Calculations from UNODC are more optimistic and indicate 2,415 kilograms can be obtained from each hectare. Growers are able to make more money per kilogram of coca than coffee, which further incentivizes the crop.
According to Jorge Turpo, head of the Specialty Coffee project of the Putina Punco municipality, only 15 percent remain of the 5,000 producers who once worked in the area.
“Those who remain, from young adults to older adults, do not have the level of production as before 2012,” said Hernán Tito of the Central Agricultural Cooperative of the Valleys of Sandia (CECOVASA). He said the reason for this decline is a lack of workers. The daily wage for those working in coca extraction is around $40, while coffee workers earn between $9 and $11 per day.
A glance around the area seems to reveal the trappings of an influx of wealth and burgeoning industry: upscale houses are under construction, new trucks drive up and down the road.
A man from one of the new trucks greets Tito. “He’s my cousin,” Tito says. “He got involved in cultivating coca last year and bought his truck after three harvests.”
A pending debt
Matilde* has been getting up very early for 42 years, looking out of her window at the majesty of nearby Madidi National Park. Few people are lucky enough to live in front of such a biodiverse national park. She was 18 years old when she arrived at the Miraflores Lanza area, which is located in the Miraflores Lanza basin, two hours from the center of Putina Punco. The coffee producer said that since last year the wooded hill where she lives, located on the Peruvian side but adjacent to the Bolivian park, has begun to gradually run out of forest. She said logging ramped up in 2018, recalling how five hectares were cut down and burned to plant coca seeds right in front of her farm.
“My neighbors ask me when I’m going to get into coca, but I haven’t dared,” she said.
Matilde’s farm in Miraflores borders Bolivia’s Madidi National Park. New coca cultivation has begun close to the protected area and her farm. Photo by Vanessa Romo/Mongabay Latam.
According to agrarian experts in the area, deforestation begins with the clearing of small weeds, branches and leaves between July and September. After this, trees are cut down. Farmers say that in primary forest, they fell trees like walnut and wild cedar that have trucks up to a meter in diameter.
After clearing forest, farmers wait a couple months so that the summer heat can dry out the felled land before setting controlled burns. Then the coca seeds are planted. In less than six months, it will be time for the first coca leaf harvest.
“When the land is deforested, we are eliminating both trees and fauna, interspecific associations and habitats,” said UNODC representative Kristian Hölge. “Coca, like other monocultures, acidifies the soil, reducing the level of nutrients. The recovery of these soils is a slow process, though it can be effective as long as coca is not replaced by another monoculture.”
Sernanp officials say they are working to stem encroachment into the park.
“There is political will to remove the illegal [encroachment] from the park and we are working to make this a reality as soon as possible,” Sernanp head Pedro Gamboa told Mongabay. He also commented that Bahuaja-Sonene is a priority and that intelligence operations are being conducted in order to carry this out effectively.
Gamboa said the current situation is different than in years prior, explaining “there is close coordination” with the authorities responsible for carrying out interventions, such as the Ministry of the Interior and the Anti-Drug Directorate of Peru’s National Police. However, he was unable to confirm whether these actions will happen in 2019.
Hölge believes that planning is the key to addressing the problem.
“Analyzing deforestation in a coca-growing area has much greater scope than combating drug trafficking,” she said. “This is directly linked to people’s quality of life and the creation of adequate conditions to generate well-being among the population, especially in the most remote areas. A comprehensive State intervention must be applied.”
As night fell, trucks began to appear more frequently to collect the coca leaf harvests the farmers leave on the side of the road.
“This is washing time,” said a local source. This is the term used for processing cocaine paste in laboratories that are farther away from the city and closer to the park. It is also the time when brothels receive more customers. The forest is not the only thing that has changed in Putina Punco.
The survivors
Simón’s discouragement following the decline in coffee has not led him to cultivate coca. Rather, the crisis filled him with more hope and more expectation for the arrival of change in the area. Diversifying his production has helped him to survive, and he is cultivating crops like cocoa that are doing much better.
As the rain fades in Miraflores and forested mountains materialize from the clouds, patches of deforested land can be seen close to the mountains on the Peruvian side.
“Few people now have land to cultivate food crops; everyone prefers to use it for coca,” Hernán Tito said.
Simón looked out at the fields and lowered his head.
“I have told the young people in the assembly not to cultivate so much coca; at least grow some coffee,” he said. “Or if you have coca, stop cutting down trees – what you have is enough.” As he holds a cup of coffee in his hands, he turns to his young plants and looks at them with hope. “We now have a good reputation for growing great coffee thanks to Tunki coffee and we have a responsibility to continue this. “That is why I must grow coffee until I die. It is my symbol,” he said, a symbol he does not intend to lose.
*Names have been changed to ensure the safety of those interviewed for this story.
This is a translated version of a story that was first published in Spanish on December 21, 2018.
Cover image: Vanessa Romo/Mongabay Latam.
Editor’s Note: This story was powered by Places to Watch, a Global Forest Watch (GFW) initiative designed to quickly identify concerning forest loss around the world and catalyze further investigation of these areas. Places to Watch draws on a combination of near-real-time satellite data, automated algorithms and field intelligence to identify new areas on a monthly basis. In partnership with Mongabay, GFW is supporting data-driven journalism by providing data and maps generated by Places to Watch. Mongabay maintains complete editorial independence over the stories reported using this data.
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This article was first published by Mongabay Latam. Translation by Sydney Sims.
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