- Mongabay Latam has identified six secret runways in and around Indigenous reserves in the regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco in the Peruvian Amazon. One was found inside the Kakataibo reserve and one in its surroundings.
- These findings came from an algorithm created with artificial intelligence, which was jointly developed by Mongabay Latam and Earth Genome. It uses satellite images to detect traces of runways hidden in forests.
- Official and local sources confirmed that the runways are used to unload drug shipments.
- The territory has become extremely dangerous due to drug trafficking, which has changed the social dynamic of some Indigenous communities. Since the pandemic in 2020, six Kakataibo leaders have been murdered for protecting their communities.
The audience erupts into cheers and applause. The emcee has just announced the four finalists of the “Miss Juan Chávez Muquinuy” beauty pageant, who take the stage for their final walk down the runway. The competitors are all schoolgirls between 13 and 15 years old, parading in tops, shorts and platform heels.
It’s 8 p.m., and although there’s no electricity in the village, the ceremony venue is lit using solar panels, and music booms through two huge speakers. “Until three years ago, the winner was decided by the number of raffle tickets sold by each salon. Now we celebrate properly,” the mother of one of the contestants says.
Nearly the whole village is gathered to witness the coronation of a new queen in an Indigenous community of the Kakataibo ethnic group, located in the province of Padre Abad, in the jungle of Peru’s Ucayali region.
The Kakataibo are a warrior people who have historically lived between the regions of Loreto, Ucayali and Huánuco, in a vast territory split in two by the Federico Basadre Highway. In the northern area they live with the Indigenous Shipibo-Conibo people, in the towns of Nuevo Edén, La Cumbre, Muruinia, Santa Rosita de Apua, Santa Rosa, Yamino and Mariscal Cáceres. In the south, they reside in the Native communities of Santa Martha, Puerto Nuevo, Sinchi Roca I, Sinchi Roca II, Unipacuyacu and Puerto Azul.
These groups have a key cultural role, as they form a security cord around the Kakataibo North and South Indigenous Reserve, the forest where Indigenous people live hidden in voluntary isolation and initial contact. However, in recent years, settler groups have invaded their territory, bringing drug trafficking, illicit coca leaf crops and illegal logging to the area.
The arrival of outsiders has changed the social dynamics in some of these Indigenous communities. The new routine is evident in the noisy passage of motorcycles adorned with neon lights, in the use of concrete and bricks in homes that were once made of straw, and in the wads of cash that some visitors carry.
Indigenous leaders like Fernando* worry about the transformation of their communities and the loss of ancestral customs. We have protected his name for safety reasons. “Now everything is calamine, cement. The community is not like it used to be. This technology signifies the changes, but we’re afraid of losing our own culture and language,” he says.
A team of journalists from Mongabay Latam, guided by the findings of the artificial intelligence algorithm that they developed together with Earth Genome, reached two of the Kakataibo villages located north and south of the reserve. We will not name them for safety reasons. The new neighbors use violence to sustain their illegal activity and establish a drug trafficking route. This instills fear, which was the biggest change found in the village dynamics.
Satellite analysis from the algorithm has detected evidence of the drug trafficking route: hidden runways that have appeared in the middle of the community’s forest land. The village’s fear is not unfounded.
Since the pandemic, 15 Indigenous leaders have been killed in Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco, six of them Kakataibo, including the leader Mariano Isacama. His body was found July 14 of this year in the district of Padre Abad, in Ucayali, a month after he was reported missing.
Mongabay Latam met Isacama during the production of this report. The community members called him “Peru” as he loved to commentate sporting events, and he was much loved in this area. At least 40 members of the Kakataibo Indigenous Guard set out in search of him, but his body was found with signs of torture three weeks later. The Human Rights and Interculturality Division of the Ucayali Second Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the causes of the crime; Isacama received anonymous threats after condemning the presence of invaders.
Three overdosed schoolchildren
An old wooden cabinet displays 2,557 cardboard folders, arranged vertically. These contain the medical records of Indigenous and foreign residents treated in the last 10 years at the Kakataibo community’s medical center. But what happened in 2023 had never been recorded before. Three teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16 arrived at the medical center with tachycardia, dilated pupils, high blood pressure and clear signs of paranoia.
“We don’t have a lab here to test blood samples, but as soon as we saw the kids we knew it was paste,” one of the nursing technicians says, referring to cocaine paste.
The teenagers study at the community school. Two of them are Kakataibo Indigenous people and the third moved with his family from Huánuco. The medical staff injected them with sodium chloride to prevent dehydration and kept them on stretchers until the symptoms passed. None of the medical staff at the center have been trained to deal with cases of overdose or toxicological emergencies associated with drug use in Indigenous communities, much less in minors.
The locals say it was a group of young people who brought the drug to the village, arriving under the pretense of planting bananas and cassava. As soon as the community found out the truth, they sent them away, but they know that two of them are drug traffickers.
There are several settlers who came to live in this community adjacent to the Kakataibo South Indigenous Reserve, after renting or invading plots to supposedly work as farmers, but the neighbors know they are growing coca leaf crops.
The reserve is also home to peoples who live in isolation. “The Kakataibo people consider the isolated people as brothers; they want to protect them, but their land has practically been taken over by invaders. … Some plant coca leaf because it generates income. It is a complicated situation, so we try to work on processes that improve their quality of life,” says Miguel Macedo, an anthropologist at the Institute for the Common Good (IBC), an environmental organization that works in rural areas.
The state’s abandonment of the community is evident in their lack of basic needs. The families don’t have drinking water or Internet, and only some houses have energy from batteries or solar panels. The medical center that helped the overdosed teenagers had to close down two of its rooms because the roof fell apart, and many folders in the school are in poor condition. However, the community does have huge speakers and sound equipment.
In this area, a quarter of a hectare (approximately 0.6 acres) can produce 313 kilograms (689 lb) of coca leaf every three months, when the season has been good; but if farmers have to deal with infestations and fumigations, they may harvest only 188 kg (413 lb). At best, this amount is equivalent to 287 kilograms (633 lb) of dried leaf that sells for $446. This is more than the amount earned for traditional crops, but when divided by month, the $148 of profit does not cover even half of a minimum wage.
The real business lies in the other links of the drug trafficking chain. Producers can obtain 2.14 kg (4.72 lb) of cocaine paste from one metric ton of dried leaf, valued at 4,712 Peruvian soles ($1,241) at the current exchange rate. However, when this drug is converted into cocaine hydrochloride, drug traffickers pay almost twice as much, so 2.14 kilos costs 7,802 Peruvian soles ($2,054) in the production areas.
The final profit comes from the sale to the consumer: 1 single gram of cocaine is sold for $286 in Saudi Arabia and $30 in the United States, according to UNODC data. That is, for 1 metric ton of processed coca leaf, converted into cocaine hydrochloride and distributed on the streets, organized crime reaps $61.2 million and 6.4 million, respectively, in these two countries alone.
Narco flights
One Kakataibo community in the south of the Indigenous Reserve has the longest connection routes for drug trafficking. The usual route to reach this community starts in Pucallpa, the capital of the Ucayali region, and continues toward the city of Aguaytía before transferring to van or raft. However, paths connect this community with the neighboring region of Huánuco, specifically with the Codo del Pozuzo district and the province of Puerto Inca, which the Anti-Drug Police considers an area used for for “planting, processing, storage, transport and shipment of drugs.”
This strategic location has been used by criminal groups to extend their production chain. “The Kakataibo Indigenous Guard monitors, destroys maceration pits and burns crops, but there are a lot,” said a local source who asked not to be named for safety reasons.
The monitoring of illicit coca crops carried out by the National Commission for Drug-Free Life and Development (DEVIDA) in 2023 confirms that these plantations are present in 1,082 hectares (2674 acres) of Kakataibo territory, and 682 of these hectares (1,685 acres) are within Native communities. However, Fernando says the eradication operations carried out by the state up until then, and the work of its surveillance teams, have served to stop the expansion of these crops.
According to sources from the Anti-Drug Directorate of the National Police (DIRANDRO), the coca leaf from this territory is processed in maceration pits and converted into cocaine paste and then sent mainly to Codo del Pozuzo, in the province of Puerto Inca, in Huánuco. From there, the criminal groups send the shipments in light aircraft heading for Bolivia.
Mongabay Latam identified six hidden airstrips — two inside and four around Indigenous reserves — through a search tool created with artificial intelligence, which the team developed together with Earth Genome. The program detects airplane infrastructure hidden in the forests. Each airstrip found was verified with official and local sources, who confirmed they are used to transport drugs.
The Global Forest Watch satellite monitoring platform shows that airstrips were opened in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021. Their length ranges from 350-940 meters (1,148-3,083 feet), and four of them are less than half a kilometer (under 0.3 miles) from the Santa Ana, Huacapistea and Dorado rivers, a strategic location to expedite the loading of the aircraft, as some interviewed sources mentioned.
The overlap of the illegal crop layer with that of the hidden airstrips confirms that many of these have been built in the middle of coca plantations, and within a radius of at least 2 km (1.24 mi), the platform identifies between 10 hectares and 26 hectares (25 acres to 64 acres) of these plantations. In total, 37 hectares (91 acres) of coca surround two of these illegal aerodromes.
Sources on the ground, who ask that we omit their names to avoid dangerous repercussions, say they feel trapped by this illegal activity, and that they no longer feel like they can trust even the authorities. “We know where the airstrips are; they’re not very far from where we live, but we don’t go there for safety reasons. … They’re armed, and everything is guarded. They’ve even surrounded them with mines,” they say.
The head of the Division of Maneuvers Against Illicit Drug Trafficking in Pucallpa, and colonel of the Peruvian National Police, James Tanchiva, says they have identified seven of these illegal airstrips: four in the north and three in the south, and they are already coordinating with the community authorities to destroy them.
Some of these, the colonel says, have been set up in almost inaccessible areas with the consent of community members. “Drug traffickers pay a certain amount of money to residents or the authorities for using those territories or for using those airstrips. … There are several airstrips that can only be accessed by helicopter. By land we can only reach two or three, no more, but we are waiting for the support of a National Police aircraft to reach the rest,” he says.
To move the illicit cargo to these areas, the criminal groups walk or ride motorcycles along tracks until they reach the nearest river or road. These paths are made by illegal loggers and miners, in a sort of unspoken pact. “There are many illegal loggers who build roads to enter the communities and cut down wood. There is an agreement between illegal loggers, drug traffickers and illegal miners, so they make roads and use them to transport drugs,” Tanchiva says.
According to the colonel, there are several groups of gatherers who meet to ship the goods to Bolivia and, from there, send them to Colombia or the United States. For this, they send out armed personnel. “When they’re organizing a flight to transport drugs, they inspect the area a day or two earlier. They send people or get people that are already there to check that there is nothing strange. They take all their measurements. The same day, they arrive and move the drugs with their security personnel, who are armed,” he says.
Aerial photographs taken last March by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) and the Native Federation of Kakataibo Communities (FENACOKA) confirm two of the illegal airstrips detected by the search tool used by Mongabay Latam. These are located in an area that the Kakataibo Indigenous communities have reclaimed as its own since 1991.
The people live on more than 3800 hectares (9,605 acres), a very small area compared with other Native communities, while the Regional Directorates of Agriculture of Ucayali and Huánuco do not approve their request to expand their territory. On the contrary, the state approved logging licenses in the very area of their requested expansion.
The invaders have taken advantage of this dispute, devastating the forests for cattle pastures and, once again, drug trafficking. DEVIDA’s map confirms that illegal crops have taken over the expansion area requested by one of the Indigenous communities, especially in the section in Huánuco bordering the Kakataibo South Indigenous Reserve.
For community leaders, this territory is already lost. “We will no longer claim that land because it’s been invaded by people who have deforested to keep livestock and grow coca leaf. What we’ll continue to demand is the expansion of land in Ucayali, where there are logging licenses,” Fernando says.
Fight or live with the enemy
In the surrounding area of the Kakataibo North Indigenous Reserve, across the Federico Basadre Highway, there is another Native community of Ucayali that is being threatened by drug trafficking and deforestation. Mongabay Latam visited this community, after following paths through destroyed forests, which have been replaced by oil palm and cattle pastures.
This area, located in the district of Padre Abad, faces similar problems to the Kakataibo peoples: the illegal crops infiltrating their territories. It is not difficult to find coca crops drying in the sun. The difference is the lack of roads accessible from the highway, which prevents members of the drug chain from settling there.
Furthermore, in some communities in the north, the Kakataibo Indigenous Guard ranges through the forests to find new areas of deforestation and monitor the expansion of illegal activity. This consists of groups of about 25 men who enter the jungle every 15 days with machetes and enough food to sleep outdoors. During their rounds, they mark the coordinates where they find new areas felled or sown with illicit crops and coordinate with the police to eradicate them. They even burn the maceration pits they discover along the way.
The president of one of the Indigenous Guards says that fewer and fewer people are renting land in Kakataibo North, due to their awareness work and because the Guard members receive a monthly payment, allowing them to afford basic provisions.
“The biggest problem now is on the border between two Indigenous communities because they’ve identified large areas of coca crops there. Also there is a hamlet where there are plantations and maceration pits,” one of the Indigenous Guard members says. According to the community members, drugs produced in this hamlet are transported to a Native community located in Kakataibo Norte, where the algorithm detected an illegal runway.
The leader of one of the Kakataibo North communities agrees that the current threat is illegal drug laboratories. “There are labs in the hamlets. [The managers] don’t carry their products through here because they go by river and adjoining roads, where there is no surveillance,” he says. “No more primary forest is being opened for growing crops; now they’re only being grown in existing secondary forests, which is why deforestation is also decreasing,” the leader says.
Faced with these threats, the Kakataibo communities have assumed the role of defending and conserving their territories, which is costing the lives of their Indigenous leaders.
“Illegal crops are well-established in both communities, and the government is not doing anything. So we’ll just keep dying. We need to combat these dangerous groups that are turning our territories into no-man’s-land. We’re going to have to apply Indigenous justice to protect ourselves, we have no choice,” says Herlin Odicio, a Kakataibo leader and vice president of the AIDESEP Ucayali Regional Organization.
Banner image: The Indigenous communities living around the Kakataibo reserve have taken on the role of defending the forests and PIACI (Indigenous People in Isolation and Initial Contact), but they are threatened by invaders. Image by Mongabay Latam.
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*The names of some people who were interviewed or who participated in the reporting have been changed or omitted for their safety.
This story was first published by Mongabay Latam in Spanish on Nov. 12, 2024.
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