Counter-Narcotics Strategy in Peru: Meeting the Threat With Proportional Force

• NCJ Number: 134000
• Journal: CJ The Americas Volume: 4 Issue: 6 Dated: (December-January 1992) Pages: 3-4,7,12
• Author(s): J Sutton
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 4 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: The second in a series of articles on U.S. efforts to combat narcotics trafficking in Latin America.

Annotation

This article examines the political and economic conditions in Peru that make it difficult for the United States to gain the cooperation of the Peruvian government to counter that country's coca production.

Abstract

Peru produces close to 60 percent of the world's coca crop. Coca base is Peru's single most successful export with related revenues estimated to exceed $1.5 billion. Peru does not share the United States' concern with narcotics trafficking which is viewed by most Peruvians as an American problem. Increasing pressure by the United States on the Peruvian government to collaborate with U.S. counter-narcotics strategy is deeply resented. The Peruvian president has often stated that the cultivation of coca in Peru is an economic problem, and a solution cannot be found by relying on military force. The government recognizes that hundreds of thousands of Peruvian farmers have become isolated from the legal economy, such that they have no other alternative than to cultivate coca to earn a modest living. The United States' focus on military aid and coca eradication programs rather than on underlying economic factors that fuel coca production is a strategy likely to fail.