The hum of a small plane is heard overhead during a community assembly, but no one looks up. Conversation rises naturally over the sound as the engine’s intense roar fades into the background. The aircraft takes five minutes to pass over an Indigenous community located between the districts of Yuyapichis and Puerto Bermúdez, its course traceable by simply following the sound — today, the plane is hidden from view by clouds.

On the morning of Sunday, April 21, 2024, this Yanesha community, nestled between the regions of Huánuco and Pasco in Peru’s central rainforests, is hosting a gathering of Indigenous residents from Huánuco and its two annexes. Some have arrived by boat, navigating up the Pachitea River, which forms at the confluence of the Pichis and the Palcazu rivers. At least 200 people are present, focused on discussing one central concern: securing legal titles for their lands. Nothing else can distract them today — not the sound of the small plane, nor the clandestine airstrips surrounding the community that daily serve drug trafficking.

“Didn’t you hear what was happening earlier? That’s them. I don’t know where they are going,” a local source told us in hushed tones, confirming the aircraft’s departure. “From here, whatever they take with them will go to other areas of Yuyapichis. That’s where they fly,” he says. “It used to be more regular, busier. There was even a bit of money in it; it was fun back then. But now it’s different.” When did it change? “When they started eradicating coca.”

Satellite images reveal that both the airstrips and illegal crops are still there. This suggests that either coca eradication efforts failed to reach the area, or its replanting has simply reclaimed the space. For a year, Mongabay Latam scoured the dense forest surrounding the community, looking for airstrips that can measure 500-1,000 meters (approximately 1,600-3,200 feet), which can appear suddenly in just a few days. With the help of a search tool developed with artificial intelligence (AI), our team of journalists detected 8 inside the territories of two Yanesha communities and 7 around them.

The two communities, both belonging to the Yanesha people, share a rich history and are connected by a single entrance road leading to the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway, also known as Marginal de la Selva. Positioned on the banks of the Pachitea River, their territory spans the regions of Huánuco and Pasco and falls within the Oxapampa-Asháninka-Yanesha Biosphere Reserve. But another bond links them: a network of organized crime operating within this spectacular landscape.

Drug traffickers control the landing and takeoff zones for narcotics shipments, forming a geographic triangle where nine districts across three provinces — Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali — converge in the central rainforest.

Living in fear

“If we talk about them and say that drug trafficking happens here, they will find out and then — bam! —they will take you down. They are lawless,” says a source on the ground, who requests anonymity for safety reasons.

In these communities, they do not talk about drug trafficking. It is a forbidden term that, just by saying it aloud, arouses a sense of distrust and fear. Those who live here are survivors of the internal armed conflict between the state and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), which raged throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

“They would come and hold meetings, carrying weapons. … I was between 15 and 20 years old. That was our reality. We had to obey their laws, otherwise they would kill us. They made us walk around with weapons, instilling fear of death,” one of the Indigenous leaders says, reflecting on a time when terrorist groups controlled Peru’s central rainforest.

His words reflect the scars left by the years of violence against the Yanesha people. Their story is documented in the final report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It tells how, between 1982 and 2000, the Shining Path and the MRTA swept through the regions of Junín, Pasco and Huánuco, seizing control of towns and Indigenous communities. Fighting, assassinations, forced displacements and kidnappings that plagued the Indigenous population during this time are recounted in the section detailing the scenes of violence.

Perhaps that is why residents avoid discussing the internal armed conflict, unless someone else brings it up. One of the oldest inhabitants of the local community, whom we will refer to as Antonio to protect his identity, offers another explanation for the violence experienced by the communities of Pasco and Huánuco: the rise of coca cultivation. “They [the subversives] said that in order to survive, we all had to grow coca leaf,” he recalls, referring to the period when regional forests began to be overrun with illegal crops.

A report published in 2004 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime wrote of coca cultivation taking place in the area from 1986, when displaced coca growers from Alto Huallaga arrived. “In the early 1990s, coca cultivation in this region reached up to 12,000 ha [30,000 acres] for a production of coca leaves oriented towards cocaine production,” says the report, which also describes a subsequent decline in cultivation in the mid-1990s due to falling prices.

Almost 20 years later, the report “Perú, monitoreo de cultivos de coca 2023” (“Peru, Coca Cultivation Monitoring 2023”) revealed that the area had reemerged as “the fifth largest production zone in terms of area under coca bush cultivation, accounting for 4.6% of the national total with an area of 4,266 hectares [10,541 acres].” The section of the central rainforest referred to in the U.N. report includes the subbasins of the Pichis, Palcazu and Santa Isabel rivers, as well as part of the Pachitea River, where the communities in this investigation are located, along with the 15 clandestine airstrips detected by Mongabay Latam.

Antonio explains that the coca fields are located farther away from the community, on land occupied by settlers, at least three hours away. “We don’t dare go there because there are risks. That’s where the drug traffickers are.”

Violence has not left the area either. According to Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator and ORAU, the Ucayali Regional Organization of AIDESEP, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, eleven people, including Indigenous leaders and community members, were killed in the regions of Huánuco and Pasco between 2020 and 2024 alone. That number rises to 15 when the Ucayali region is taken into account. The threat of terrorism has simply been replaced with a threat of aggression from drug traffickers.

The drug trafficking triangle

Both the Yanesha communities have clandestine runways — five in one community’s territory and three in the other. Satellite images confirm that these airstrips began to appear between 2015 and 2016, and that the latest one was constructed in February 2023. Each lies on one side of the Pachitea River, some just meters away, and others less than 2 kilometers (just over a mile) from its banks.

Both communities are also just a 30-minute drive from Ciudad Constitución, the capital of the eponymous district in the province of Oxapampa, Pasco. Ciudad Constitución is the economic and commercial center for those living in and around this part of the central rainforest — but it is also a hub for drug trafficking.

“All the ills caused by drug trafficking can be seen in Ciudad Constitución. Violence, extortion, murders — all are part of a chain of problems directly tied to illegal activities in the area,” says Florencio Santiago Carrillo, an executive with Peru’s National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (DEVIDA), based out of the La Merced zonal office in Ciudad Constitución.

The district of Constitución, home to around 15,000 people from the Indigenous Yanesha and Asháninka peoples, as well as Andean migrants, includes a small city center roughly 10 blocks long, cut through by the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway. The surrounding rural area is, however, much larger.

Santiago notes that at least 20 killings were reported in the city in 2023, most of them related to drug trafficking. “The police presence is limited when it comes to dealing with the logistics of drug trafficking in the district,” he explains.

Constitución sits at the border of the Huánuco and Pasco regions and is directly connected to Ucayali via the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway, just like the Yanesha communities. Surrounding the city, three regions converge to form a geographic triangle that facilitates drug trafficking by air, land and river.

On the Huánuco side, the province of Puerto Inca includes the districts of Honoria, Tournavista, Puerto Inca, Codo del Pozuzo and Yuyapichis, forming a hub for drug trafficking. On the Pasco side, the province of Oxapampa encompasses the districts of Constitución and Puerto Bermúdez. To the east, it connects with the province of Padre Abad in Ucayali, which, on a larger scale, includes the provinces of Coronel Portillo and Atalaya. Together, these regions create a route that significantly facilitates drug trafficking in Peru’s central rainforest.

The most vivid symbol of the drug traffickers’ presence in the region is a practically abandoned light aircraft that lies beside the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway. For those arriving from Pucallpa, its rusty hulk is visible from the bridge over the Palcazu River, at the entrance to Ciudad Constitución.

The streets of Ciudad Constitución itself reveal striking contrasts. Large hotels stand on unpaved lots, while a vibrant nightlife attracts underage youths speeding through town on their flashy motorcycles. On the return trip to Pucallpa, our driver speaks openly about how drug trafficking fuels the economy in Ciudad Constitución and, more broadly, throughout this entire geographic triangle where drug trafficking has deeply taken root.

In the last week of April, a contingent from Pucallpa’s Anti-Drug Directorate (Ucayali) arrived in Ciudad Constitución for a targeted operation against drug trafficking. “We managed to destroy four airstrips and two rudimentary cocaine production labs,” reports Colonel James Tanchiva, head of the Division of Maneuvers Against Illicit Drug Trafficking in Pucallpa. “Constitución has been a coca-growing area for many years due to the high production of coca leaves. And wherever there is coca leaf production, there are labs for manufacturing cocaine and cocaine paste,” he adds.

According to DEVIDA’s latest coca cultivation report, three of the nine districts that form part of this production zone — Puerto Inca, Yuyapichis and Constitución — account for 63.8% of the total coca cultivation area. The Pichis-Palcazu-Pachitea area also ranks third in terms of drug seizures by the Peruvian Police between October 2020 and October 2022, according to the report “Estudio sobre la dinámica de la cocaína en el Perú” (“Study on Cocaine Dynamics in Peru”) by the Anti-Drug Directorate, DEVIDA, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

These findings are key to understanding why 15 of the 76 illegal airstrips identified by Mongabay Latam in the whole Peruvian Amazon are found between Huánuco and Pasco.

Patricia Talavera, a socioenvironmental specialist at the Institute for the Common Good (IBC), agrees that Constitución’s economy is largely driven by the drug trade. But she says she believes this extends beyond this city, explaining how corridors dominated by illegal economies have formed along both banks of the Pachitea River. “We have three predominant illicit activities,” she says — drug trafficking, illegal mining and timber trafficking.

The first corridor is made up of the districts of Puerto Bermúdez and Constitución, in Pasco, and Puerto Inca and Tournavista, in Huánuco. This area, Talavera explains, is dominated by “a drug trafficking network linked to illegal mining — two illicit economies that go hand in hand.” The second corridor runs through the districts of Padre Abad and San Alejandro, in Ucayali, to Codo del Pozuzo, in Huánuco. Here, she adds, “a drug trafficking network related to illegal logging” has taken hold. In both cases, drug trafficking is deeply intertwined with other illegal economies.

Drug trafficking routes

Tanchiva confirms that this region serves as “a transport route for drugs” and explains that “many narcotics produced in the VRAEM [a term used to refer to the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro River Valley] are moved to these areas to be transported by air. The route extends through Oxapampa, Codo del Pozuzo, Ciudad Constitución and also to Atalaya.”

In 2023 alone, 70 clandestine runways were destroyed in Ucayali as part of an operation known as Troya, according to Colonel Tanchiva. The Ucayali’s Anti-Drug Directorate jurisdiction encompasses the regions of Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali. So far in 2024, Tanchiva says, five airstrips have already been destroyed, with projections for the year matching or exceeding last year’s totals.

The anti-narcotics unit (DIRANDRO) in Ciudad Constitución explains that the drugs are transported in planes taking off from clandestine airstrips in areas surrounding the city. Boats carry the cargo up the river to a point near the runway, after which it is moved on foot with the help of people hired for that purpose.

When one of these airstrips is destroyed, it is often rebuilt within a week. “Drug trafficking organizations have efficient logistics,” Tanchiva tells us. “They have an armed wing, and they have money. That is the reality.”

Images from Mongabay Latam’s satellite monitoring show a profoundly altered landscape; dense jungle punctured with small deforested patches, pits scattered across the forest and a river running along the area’s edge. Notably, 11 of the airstrips found between Huánuco and Pasco are located within illegal coca fields, with another five just a few meters away. Coca cultivation around these runways spans 159 hectares (393 acres) within a 2-km (1.2-mi) radius, an area about 222 times the size of Peru’s National Stadium.

The Pachitea River may seem calm from the surface, but police reports and satellite images reveal a different story hidden within the dense forest along its banks. Here, illegal coca crops are growing, cocaine paste and cocaine hydrochloride production laboratories are being established and clandestine airstrips are being opened to transport drugs produced locally as well as shipments from other valleys, primarily from the VRAEM.

Flights to Bolivia

Where do the light aircrafts from Peru’s central rainforest go? According to DIRANDRO, their primary destination is Bolivia. “Planes coming from Bolivia reach here in around five hours,” says an official from Ciudad Constitución.

Ricardo Soberón, former executive president of DEVIDA, explains that the Bolivian departments of Beni and Santa Cruz — regions typically focused on cattle ranching and agriculture — have more than 200 airstrips. Light aircraft, used for transporting cattle and spraying soybean crops, are common here. “Any cattle ranch in Beni needs a light aircraft and an airstrip. Secondhand aircraft can be bought for $50,000 in Florida,” Soberón says. “While these planes serve local needs, the drug trafficking economy exploits this infrastructure.”

Ucayali has become a hub for drug trafficking and other illicit economies in recent years, he says, due to its “strategic” location, with good land, river and air connections.

An example of this connectivity is the Fernando Belaúnde Terry Highway, which links Pucallpa, the capital of Ucayali, with Ciudad Constitución in just three hours, crossing the rainforests of Huánuco, Pasco and Junín. The Pachitea River, which flows into the Ucayali, further connects these regions. “Drugs are moved by river, land and air. A small plane can carry 500-800 kilograms [approximately 1,100-1,800 lbs]; by river, up to 100 kg [220 lbs]; and by land, smaller amounts, typically divided into 100-kilo loads transported in convoys of 5-10 people, each taking different routes,” Soberón explains.

Colonel Tanchiva explains that the presence of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and Police in the VRAEM is “creating a balloon effect. Since they can’t operate from there, traffickers are shifting their drug shipments to other areas with clandestine airstrips, particularly to Constitución.”

For almost five years, six districts across Huánuco and Pasco were under a state of emergency: Puerto Inca, Tournavista, Yuyapichis and Codo del Pozuzo in Huánuco’s Puerto Inca province, along with Constitución and Puerto Bermúdez in Pasco’s Oxapampa province. Supreme decrees issued between March 2019 and December 2023 ordered authorities to “strengthen the frontline fight against organized crime related to illicit drug trafficking and associated offenses.” The final extension of this state of emergency ended in February 2024.

Cacao as an alternative

In the two Yanesha communities, residents are working to counter the illegal trade by growing cacao, reforesting and cultivating other crops. This year, rising cacao prices, which reached nearly 40 soles (around $10.50) per kilo in April, gave hope to those who had been growing cacao for several years, though by July prices had dropped to between 25 soles and 30 soles ($6.60-$8). Still, current cacao prices remain significantly higher than in previous years, largely due to a drop in production in Africa, which was hit by severe droughts.

The Native communities also grow achiote and yucca in their fields and raise cattle. The Federation of Native Yanesha Communities (FECONAYA) is committed to supporting projects that improve living conditions, with a focus on cacao farming and livestock. “We are working with agricultural engineers to provide technical advice on cacao cultivation, livestock management and reforestation programs,” says Jaime Chihuanco, president of FECONAYA.

During community assemblies held while Mongabay Latam visited the two communities, residents consistently called for improvements to health posts, school infrastructure, water systems, connectivity and communication services.

“Our community has suffered for years over land issues and has been completely neglected. To the state, we practically do not exist — it is a form of marginalization. We have more than 100 children studying at this school, and each year, parents work tirelessly to extend the classrooms by a single meter so their children can have a place to learn,” complains one of the communities.

Residents in the other Yanesha community echo these concerns. When times are good, villagers invest in infrastructure to improve their quality of life. They managed to install a drinking water system by constructing a well, but their school classrooms have not seen similar improvements.

Such shortcomings are visible in both communities; in one, children must study in classrooms resembling wooden boxes, while in the other, the health post has no permanent staff.

Yet, the primary concern centers around a single issue: titling. At the community assembly on April 21, 2024, residents discussed their options for moving forward with land title updates and formal registration with the National Superintendency of Public Registries (SUNARP).

The territory’s location across two districts, two provinces and two regions, Huánuco and Pasco, has created ongoing challenges in defining its legal security. Compounding this issue is the fact that regional governments have issued property titles to foreigners — colonists — who have encroached on Indigenous lands and established settlements. “If the process for updating the community’s territorial boundaries isn’t expedited, they will continue to lose land,” warns Michael Mercedes, head of the Native Communities Office at the Puerto Bermudez branch of the Pasco Regional Directorate of Agriculture.

One of the communities received official recognition in 1981 and was granted its title in 1986; however, it has yet to be inscribed in the public registry. The other community was also recognized in 1981 and titled a year later in 1982. Unfortunately, these titles only include geographic references for its boundaries and still require a georeferencing process to meet current regulations.

Chihuanco, president of FECONAYA, expresses concern that the lack of legal security hinders communities from accessing government funding for agricultural and reforestation projects.

The evening draws in as we glide down the Pachitea River, surrounded by the lush expanse of dense forest lining the shore. Many of the community members’ plots are nestled among the trees, Antonio tells us, along with areas dedicated to reforestation.

We arrive at a bend in the river, get off and walk through a field with several tree species. Antonio identifies them: sangre de grado, cedar, lemon trees. This space, once home to coca cultivation, is now dedicated to reforestation. A parrot flits overhead as we pass a house in the middle of the land; its owners are attending a community assembly. Cows and bulls graze nearby, oblivious to our presence. In this serene moment, the landscape resembles an oil painting, seemingly untouched by the drug trafficking that looms just miles away.

Banner image: The Yanesha people live under the threat of drug trafficking. Image by Mongabay Latam.

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*The names of some people who were interviewed or who participated in the reporting, as well as the name of Indigenous communities, 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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