Peru's biggest coca-growers' organisation, the Asociación de Productores del Alto Monzón, has launched a preemptive strike against the government's plans to eradicate 8,000 hectares of coca plantations this year. Their own area has not yet been targeted by the eradication effort, but Iburcio Morales, their leader since 1996, says they could see it coming. He says the government's US-supported eradication agency, Devida, had sought to `surprise' them with proposals to carry out infrastructure work in the area, in exchange for voluntary eradication.
This, says Morales, `was a clear provocation, because the coca leaf is our only livelihood.' His association claims to represent about 25,000 peasants growing coca in the upper reaches of the Monzón valley, a branch of the Huallaga basin in Huánuco, in the centre of Peru. Over the past week or so, they have set up barricades along the 62 kilometres of road running through the valley. The police have been unable to enter the area, and the local people can only travel with Morales's permission.
The coca producers have a list of demands unlikely to be given a good reception by the government: a halt to coca eradication, declaration that the coca plantations are a national reserve, removal of NGOs from the Monzón valley, and a commitment from Enaco (the government agency charged with buying the `legal' coca crop) to buy their lower-quality leaf.
Morales also says that any negotiations with the government must be channeled through the ministry of agriculture, since the coca growers will have no dealings with Devida. That agency's director, Nils Ericsson, claims to have been taken by surprise by the Monzón growers' protest, since Devida, he says, has not been engaged in any eradication efforts in their area. The protest also comes only shortly after the government reached an accord with the growers on a `gradual and mutually agreed' eradication programme.
`Not terrorists'
The Monzón coca producers are well aware of the possible political connotations of their action. Morales keeps repeating, `We are not terrorists or criminals.' Aurora Mastre, one of the leaders of the association, says, `It is unfair to claim that the cocalero leaders are linked to the drugs trade. We sell the coca leaf without knowing if [the buyers] are drug traffickers or not; we do it in order to survive.'
The Peruvian military and police are currently engaged in a major campaign to hunt down what they describe as the `remnants' of the Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrillas. The official line is that the `remnants' are financed by the trade in coca leaf and cocaine.
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