Peasants flee raid

Press, 14 November 1984, Page 10

Peasants flee raid

NZPA-AFP Mexico City

Thousands of Mexican peasants forced to work with marijuana crops in slave-like conditions fled into the desert when the police raided their camps last week and several died of hunger and thirst. But the police action in northern Mexico ended in the seizure of a record 8000 tonnes of the drug. The operation started on Friday when the authorities seized 2000 tonnes of marijuana, estimated to be worth SUSIO million ($2O million), in a desert region of Chihuahua state, near the United States border.

They confiscated 600 vehicles, used to carry the drug, and arrested 300 people, who then revealed the existence of five camps where drug traffickers forced some 3000 peasants — men, women, and children — to work with the illegal crop.

The peasants toiled from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., harvesting and treating the marijuana so that 15 truck-loads could be sent daily to the, United States.

At night they were herded into make-shift camping areas guarded by armed men, who passed themselves off as policemen. Searching the desert on Monday, the police found another 6000 tonnes of marijuana stored in large warehouses and guarded by armed men. The guards were arrested and several laboratories used to treat the drug were destroyed. But the peasant workers fled to the desert, where some died of hunger and thirst.

The police searched the desert by helicopter, trying to find the survivors to assure them no legal action would be taken against them.

The peasants, recruited

nearby as well as from areas more than 1000 km away, had arrived in the region on October 10. Some were told they would be picking apples. Some were offered jobs packing marijuana, which the drug dealers recruiting them said was legal. They were promised 4000 pesos (about $23) a day, but never received it.

Journalists arriving at the camps said that about 90 per cent of the peasants had gastric and intestinal illnesses, respiratory problems, and malnutrition. Many also had signs of having been beaten. The police found bodies at the camp but they did not yet know how many people had died of malnutrition, illness and exhaustion, and how many of beatings. They did not say how many bodies they had discovered there and in the desert.