The Trump administration’s drone strikes on ships suspected of bringing illegal drugs into the United States come as cocaine production in Colombia and Peru explodes.
But there are new and deadly factors that are causing production to surge, especially in Peru. It is the relationship between coca cultivation and illegal gold mining.
It’s a toxic combination that enriches criminal organizations and corrupt officials as gold prices hit new highs on global markets. And it’s taking root in other states, including Ecuador, Brazil, and Venezuela.
In July, Peru’s then-Foreign Minister Elmer Shearer stated that Peru’s illicit gold economy was seven times the size of the cocaine trade.
Colombia has traditionally been the center of coca cultivation in South America. But cocaine production is booming in Peru, with more than 800 tons produced last year, according to the U.S. State Department.
Coca cultivation has spread from remote mountain regions to the lowlands of Peru, a vast expanse of land bordering Brazil and Colombia, where new varieties are thriving.
A recent Amazon Watch report by Ricardo Soberon, former director of De Vida, Peru’s public agency fighting illegal drug distribution, said the Ucayali region has seen the greatest increase in coca cultivation, as well as secret airstrips and drug smuggling routes. A study last year by research group Mongabay identified 128 secret airstrips cut into the jungle across six regions of Peru, some surrounded by coca plantations.
Dan Collins, a writer on organized crime in the Amazon region, said the coronavirus pandemic has caused a rapid expansion of illegal gold mining and coca production.
Police enforced a strict lockdown, giving organized crime groups free rein to expand their control over territory, especially in remote areas. And the lockdown meant many Peruvians, more than 70% of whom work in the informal economy, were forced to find alternative income, often in illegal occupations, Collins said.
Traditionally, Peruvian producers have worked primarily with Mexican cartels to ship processed drugs from Peru’s Pacific coast, Collins said. Rubén Vargas, Peru’s former interior minister, said there have been several U.S. attacks in the Pacific targeting ships suspected of carrying drugs, but the bulk of Peru’s cocaine is bound for Europe.
The link between coca cultivation and illegal gold mining provides a faster path to wealth for criminal enterprises across the Amazon region, from Peru and Ecuador to Colombia and Venezuela. Collins said this is known as narcomineria.
The advantage is simple.
Cocaine is illegal from cultivation to sale on the street. Much of Peru’s gold is mined illegally, but once refined it is indistinguishable from legitimate metal and its origins cannot be traced.
“Criminal organizations have discovered that illegal gold mining is a safer and more lucrative asset in which they can invest money from drug trafficking, making it easier to launder money,” said Collins, author of the forthcoming book Blood Gold: The Shocking True Story of the Amazon Gold Rush.
He added that the gangs “use the same smuggling routes, logistics and supplies of precursors such as diesel, and use territorial control to exploit all available resources, including gold, coca and timber.”
Along the border between the Peruvian Amazon and Colombia, rebels from the Colombian rebel group FARC control production and distribution. Collins said that along Peru’s long border with Brazil, “Commando Vermelho (Red Army Command), one of Brazil’s most powerful criminal organizations, has established itself.”
“Initially, around 2021, we observed how the company was vying for control of the tri-border area of Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. We now know that the company controls illegal coca crops in Ucayali, which is known to involve local violence, but it also controls mining operations and ‘security’ in Madre de Dios,” said Pamela Huerta, an investigative journalist with the Amazon Underworld Project.
“The Red Army Command is trying to tap into these two products of the illegal economy and control the routes and production areas,” former Interior Minister Vargas told CNN.
The company is now shipping cocaine to Brazil to supply the rapidly growing Brazilian market, all the while sparking what Vargas calls the worst crime spike in Peru’s history.
Further east, across the Amazon basin, Colombian gangs are working with Venezuelan groups in both illegal mining and cocaine trafficking.
Global think tank Crisis Group says “unchecked illegal mining” is taking place in Venezuela’s southern states of Amazonas and Bolívar, “strengthening Venezuelan criminal enterprises, Colombian guerrilla groups and corrupt elites.”
The Crisis Group estimates that Venezuela is currently home to more than 30 percent of the illegal mining sites in the Amazon basin.
According to a recent Crisis Group report, “In some cases, members of the military are solely responsible for managing the pits for personal enrichment.” The Colombian gang and a Venezuelan syndicate known as Sistema are both active in the region and have begun expanding into neighboring Guyana, the newspaper said.
“Drug trafficking routes in southern Venezuela pass through the same remote jungle areas, and profits from the drug trade are frequently laundered through investments in the gold industry.”
Ecuador has also seen a surge in crime related to illegal gold mines near the Peruvian border, where ruthless Peruvian gangs calling themselves the Guardianes de la Trocha (Guardians of the Road) operate under the guise of illegal mines.
Earlier this year, Guardians allegedly shot and killed Ana García Sorsol, a prominent figure in the Peruvian town of La Pampa. Local prosecutors believe the mass grave contains the bodies of more than 100 people killed by the group.
In the face of these powerful gangs and vast forest areas without police, eradication efforts and prosecutions are sporadic.
Peru’s Interior Ministry said it had eradicated about 27,000 hectares of coca cultivation in the first nine months of this year. But eradication is pushing cultivation to more remote areas and worsening deforestation, Soberon said.
“The deforestation, river pollution and loss of wildlife in the Peruvian Amazon, along with the impact on the ancestral communities in these areas, are currently irreversible,” Huerta told CNN.
Peru’s unstable and divided politics and widespread corruption have exacerbated the situation. Over the past five years, more than a dozen interior ministers have been appointed.
Illegal logging and mining is often the result of fraudulent licenses and permits being awarded by elected officials and senior bureaucrats, according to a report by the United Nations Drug Control Agency.
“The result is weak internal security and a lack of continuity in law enforcement. At the same time, an unpopular lobby within Peru’s parliament supports illegal gold mining,” said Collins.
Some of the proceeds from these operations are flowing into Peruvian politics ahead of next year’s elections.
Vargas, a former interior minister, agrees that the response to illegal mining is tainted by ties to the political system.
He added that in regions with the highest consumption, such as Europe and Brazil, “the war on drugs has been abandoned.”
“They are turning producing countries into fertile ground for transnational criminal gangs.”
