SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The Trump administration has expanded its crackdown on alleged drug smugglers by striking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. But while the U.S. is flexing its muscle at sea, Trump's cuts to USAID could hurt his efforts to stop anti-narco land operations in Latin America, like in Peru, the world's second largest cocaine producer. Coca there is being planted deeper into the Amazonian rainforest, and that's driving deforestation and bloodshed on Indigenous land. Simeon Tegel has more.
SIMEON TEGEL, BYLINE: This is the land of the Kakataibo, but the jungle they call home is under siege, and the people guarding it risk their lives every day.
SEGUNDO PINO: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: Six leaders of the tiny Kakataibo tribe, which has just a few thousand members scattered across the central Peruvian Amazon, have been murdered by drug traffickers in recent years, say Segundo Pino, a Kakataibo leader.
PINO: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: Pino shows me a death threat on his phone and says he could be next. He is the leader of the Kakataibo Indigenous Guard, a self defense group that now patrols tribal land to stop the spread of coca crops, the key ingredient in cocaine.
We've been walking through jungle with the Indigenous Guard for about an hour. We've just waded through a thigh-deep river. There's about a dozen of them, men and women. Some of the men are carrying spears. Some have machetes. One has a bow and arrow, and one has a very ancient shotgun.
And yet there's also a striking touch of modernity. Drones are used to geolocate the coca, including inside a reserve to protect the last handful of uncontacted Kakataibo, hunter-gatherers still living a pre-Colombian lifestyle who are extremely vulnerable to epidemics and abuse from outsiders.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
TEGEL: We're now at the edge of the reserve for these Indigenous tribes living in voluntary isolation. It's an absolutely spectacular location. It's where the Andean foothills first rise out of the Amazon. But there are coca plantations and clandestine airstrips in the reserve.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONE WHIRLING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: So they found the first coca plantation within three minutes of launching the drone.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: He's saying there's more. Just a little bit further in, there's more.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: This woman says that the Kakataibo inside the reserve, who may be her distant relatives, are terrified by the drug traffickers and unable to defend themselves. They rely on the Indigenous Guard to protect them, she says. This is a common story across the Peruvian Amazon. Coca crops, once only grown in the mountains, have more than doubled in Peru. With 12,000 hectares in this lowland region of Ucayali, Peru now produces 850 tons of cocaine a year. Dozens of Indigenous leaders have been murdered for resisting the traffickers, and young people are being drawn into the deadly trade.
We're standing in the middle of a clandestine airstrip. It's maybe half a mile long in a field in the middle of the forest. The drug traffickers used it to take two or three light aircraft a week full of cocaine to Bolivia. But it now has some huge holes in it that the local Indigenous Ashaninka community put there. They hired diggers to stop the narco traffickers.
ISIDRO PENYA: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: This field was all jungle just 15 years ago, says Isidro Penya (ph) who heads the village's Indigenous police.
DAVID MORI TRIGOSO: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: The expansion of coca into the Amazon accelerated during the COVID pandemic, says Commander David Mori Trigoso of DIRANDRO, Peru's anti-narcotics police, thanks in part to the suspension of crop eradication and interdiction efforts.
TRIGOSO: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: The commander stresses how hard his men work in difficult conditions to stop the narcos deep in the jungle. But he also acknowledges the problem of entrenched corruption in Peru. He says one drug cartel even personally offered to share its profits with him, and several of his former colleagues are now serving 25-year prison sentences for colluding with the traffickers. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's cuts to USAID have thrown into doubt Washington's longstanding support for alternative crop programs in Peru. They come as the Congress here is considering a law that could annul existing Indigenous reserves.
PENYA: (Speaking Spanish).
TEGEL: The bottom line, Isidro Penya says, is that however much President Donald Trump cracks down on the drug cartels elsewhere, as long as there is demand for cocaine, including in the largest consumer market in the world, the United States, Indigenous communities in South America will continue to suffer.
For NPR News, this is Simeon Tegel in Ucayali, Peru. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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