NARCOTRAFFICKING IN THE AMAZON (II)Secrets of the Kitchen
In the Amazonian tri-border region of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, Indigenous and mestizo communities from all three countries take part in producing tens of tons of cocaine each year, shipped via the Amazon River to the rest of the world. The jungle and its people pay the price: rampant deforestation, polluted rivers, and ancestral ways of life degraded by the lure of easy money.
Cocaine base extraction laboratories are established deep in the thick Amazon jungle. Photo: Xavier Carrión.
Text by Carlos Suárez Álvarez. Photos by Xavier Carrión and Carlos Suárez Álvarez.
Originally published in issue 159 of Cáñamo magazine, March 2011.
Darwin is one of those called “raspachines” (coca leaf scrapers); a dedication that can already be considered an indigenous tradition, ever since cocaine production was established in the jungle at the end of the seventies, seeking impunity in this vast and uncontrollable territory. Since then, “scraping” coca—that is, harvesting it—has become a new rite of passage into adulthood. Darwin, from the Uitoto ethnic group, is sixteen years old. He traveled from the Colombian bank of the Putumayo River to Leticia looking for work. He found it: working from dawn to dusk in a warehouse, he earned one hundred sixty thousand pesos (sixty euros) per fortnight, a salary low even by the region’s standards. “A friend told me: Come work in coca, they pay well.” They arrived in Caballococha, the most important mestizo town in the Peruvian part of the tri-border area. “Come tomorrow,” they were told. And the next day they began. That easy.
burning and planting
To plant the coca bush (once sacred, now cursed) it was first necessary to clear a few hectares of Amazon forest. In reality, if we take a retrospective look, it was more than just "a few." Perhaps the former Colombian vice president, Francisco Santos, exaggerated a bit when he claimed that in the last fifteen years coca cultivation has destroyed two million hectares of Amazon rainforest, bordering on melodrama when he called it "ecocide"; perhaps the Peruvian government also exaggerates when attributing two and a half million hectares of national Amazon forest deforestation within its borders to cocaine. Yes, maybe Santos was a bit sensationalist when accusing European and U.S. consumers of destroying four square meters of virgin forest for every line snorted. But the truth is that in recent decades, when the Amazonian summer arrives in Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia, everywhere, squads of men armed with machetes, axes, and chainsaws cut down extensive areas of vegetation. The seasonal drought and summer sun do their work, and a couple of weeks later the fuse is lit. The flames devour leaves and wood, and the Amazon soil reduces its acidity and becomes ready to receive the cuttings. The bushes grow.
Now it is harvest time, Darwin's turn. Darwin works on a ten-hectare coca field, a couple of hours' journey from the nearest town, deep in the jungle, although not so far that the Peruvian army and police are unaware of the plantation. During the campaign he sleeps in an adjoining camp. "There are children, women, young and old men… Many people, all kinds," Darwin says with a smile as he recalls the scene. On the first day Darwin could only harvest thirty kilos. "At first my hand hurt, but then it gets calloused, turns yellow," he says, touching his palm. He got the hang of it and now reaches fifty kilos a day, at 2,600 pesos per kilo, 130,000 pesos daily, almost what he earned in fifteen days working in the warehouse. Is there any doubt why there will always be "raspachines" willing? In thirty days of work, Darwin earns four times the salary of a secondary school teacher. More experienced harvesters can double that amount.
Those willing to take greater risks reach exorbitant figures. "A week ago," Darwin recalls, "the boss asked us if we wanted to take forty kilos of base to Benjamin Constant [a town on the Brazilian side from which the merchandise is shipped to the Atlantic Ocean via Manaus]. He was paying us one million pesos per kilo transported: forty million." Fifteen thousand euros for one night's work. Too easy, too tempting. The boys declined; they suspected that instead of receiving forty million, they would very likely receive forty bullets: two tongues less.
An indigenous councilman from the small town of Caballococha (near which Darwin works, completely penetrated by the cocaine economy) recognizes the importance of the crop for the local economy, especially in indigenous communities: "It’s a crime but hunger, misery, and poverty force us to do it. Native communities plant plantain but they don’t get the price they want for that product." The man, indigenous, who prefers to remain anonymous, criticizes the situation the region is condemned to: abandoned by the central government, without prospects. The indigenous community of Cushillococha is an example of this prosperity: satellite antennas flourish among houses with palm roofs that protect flat screens and huge sound equipment, high-cylinder motorcycles that barely circulate on mud tracks, a school whose classrooms empty when a party approaches and teenagers have to earn some extra money… and no source of income beyond coca leaf production.
It is necessary to burn the jungle to make the large coca plantations, which has turned this activity into an important factor of deforestation. Photo: Carlos Suárez Álvarez
the process
The coca growers (better described as well-paid farmers—why plant bananas if they could barely make a living from selling them?) press and pack the harvest and transport it to the laboratory or “kitchen.” It takes one hundred kilos of leaves to obtain one kilo of cocaine base. Sometimes the coca grower handles the transformation himself, but more often it is another link in the chain, more cautious, violent, armed, and more connected to the international drug trafficking networks. The “kitchens” are usually set up deep in the jungle, protected from surveillance flights, and are hardly controllable by the Peruvian police, who lack the resources and personnel to confront the powerful and violent drug trafficking network.
Mario, thirty years old, is a regular at the kitchens. Originally from Medellín but living in the Colombian city of Leticia, hooked on basuco, he barely survives in the port until necessity forces him to overcome his fear. “This is the last time I do this,” he whispers quietly, so as not to be heard. “Very dangerous, the other day they killed ten people in a shootout. Everyone gets caught: leaf pickers, coca growers, chemists… because of problems between rival gangs, the guerrilla…” he murmurs with a fearful gesture. But besides enduring “five hundred thousand mosquito bites, hunger, thirst, and diarrhea,” he will pocket six hundred thousand pesos (two hundred forty euros) for a week of work.
He walks in one of the three-by-fifteen-meter pools dug into the ground, lined with plastic, where the coca is macerated in a mixture of water and car battery acid. With his footsteps, he breaks the leaves into small pieces, releasing the active ingredient. Two other companions walk beside him and occasionally stir with their hands; they do this all day. At night, it is left to macerate, and the next morning, after a couple of more walks, the resulting liquid is transferred to a large drum, where it is mixed with gasoline. They stir tirelessly with shovels until it is ready, and three liquids with different densities separate: the waste on one side, the gasoline on another, and finally what is known as “the serum,” whose taste and properties are tested with the tongue, which becomes numb upon contact. The serum is collected in a bucket, where lime, bicarbonate, and sodium permanganate are added; it is stirred, and in about ten minutes it solidifies. After a week of work, they will have produced one hundred fifty kilos of cocaine base and discharged hundreds of liters of highly contaminating chemical waste into the river system, another blow to this nature so prodigious yet so abused.
First step in the production of cocaine base: the leaves are macerated for a day in a mixture of water and car battery acid. Photo: Xavier Carrión.
DON GUSTAVO
Barely coexisting with this harsh process, various ethnic groups of the Colombian Amazon traditionally use the coca leaf. The processing is not, of course, polluting; the consumption, socially and ritually controlled, is not problematic—in fact, it enables communication, promotes healing, facilitates work, and enlivens traditional dances. A mild stimulant, with negligible doses of cocaine, the mambe also carries the stigma of international prohibition.
When evening falls, Don Gustavo, owner of a maloca (the large traditional indigenous house) of the Macuna ethnicity, goes to his small coca plot and respectfully harvests, after focused prayer, one by one, a kilo of coca leaves. As he does so, he recalls the time when he also fell into the narcotics networks. “Crazy. I was lost in drugs for three years. Many were damaged on the Mirití River: the Yucuna, Tanimuka... Everyone used drugs. I was a chemist. And our grandparents stopped it. They said: Let’s sell the coca leaf to the whites and have them process it in their land. Because the grandparents already saw that the children would get harmed. We sell because we need money to live.”
Producing mambe, a powder made from coca leaves traditionally used by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, involves a series of ritual care. When harvesting, the leaves are picked one by one. Photo: Carlos Suárez Álvarez.
When he has filled his basket, he returns to the maloca, now in darkness. In a large pan, his assistant slowly roasts the coca leaves over low heat. When they are crispy, they remove them and grind them with a mortar. The powder is mixed with ashes from yarumo leaves, a local tree, and the resulting mixture is sifted. Don Gustavo now has his mambe.
At seven in the evening, he sits around a small wooden table. He blows tobacco snuff into the nostrils of his guests and offers them a spoonful of mambe. Then he connects with his allied spirits and begins to tell stories, healing the world with his coca words: “Sometimes I ask people: How is the world? They tell me the world is bad. No, the world is not bad. My God left everything complete. Our minds are a little bad; it’s what misleads us. What will one do, how will one grow, what will one think? One will listen to advice from grandparents, uncles, mom, and dad. And that’s how things begin to change. That’s the order. And the world that my God left, care for it. Don’t harm it but take care of it.”
