U.S. raids coca region in Peru

Press, 11 September 1989, Page 10

U.S. raids coca region in Peru

NZPA-Reuter Lima United States and Peruvian narcotics agents have resumed raiding cocaine laboratories and launched other joint antidrug work in Peru’s main coca-growing region, diplomatic sources said yesterday. After an eight-month break the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and Peruvian authorities began their work on Friday in the Upper Huallaga River valley, the sources said. They said the D.E.A. agents had received a grisly welcome to the

valley. About 20 bodies, many with their heads or hands cut off, washed up on the shores of the Huallaga River near the Santa Lucia base. “We don’t know if this was meant as some kind of warning or if it was just coincidence, only that it was very gruesome,” said one source. They said the D.E.A. agents were staying at a heavily fortified base near the town of Santa Lucia, in the heart of the remote, tropical valley known for rampant lawlessness and violence.

The Upper Huallaga valley is considered the world’s largest single production centre of coca, the raw material for cocaine. Most of its output winds up on United States streets.

“They’ve busted some cocaine labs and located clandestine airstrips,” one diplomatic source said.

Their duties included keeping track of drug traffickers’ movements and clandestine airstrips from which the traffickers fly plane-loads of coca into Colombia daily for processing into cocaine.