Global cocaine habit is endangering the world’s most remote-living tribes
Photos prove existence of clandestine runway in Peru's newest reserve for indigenous people living in "isolation"
If you ever find yourself trying to discourage someone from using cocaine but all the usual, obvious arguments don’t seem to be working, here’s another one for you. Producing that “snow”, “blow”, “nose candy” or whatever else it is known as is seriously endangering the lives of indigenous people living in “isolation” in some of the remotest parts of the world. Indeed, extraordinary as it might sound, in Peru the cocaine trade is right up there among the most severe threats to such people, together with loggers seeking valuable hardwoods, oil and gas companies interested in you-know-what, and Christian missionaries trying to contact and convert the so-called “unreached.”
This has been understood for some years now, but it became even more impossible-to-ignore last week with the publication of photos of a clandestine runway cleared out of the forest in the 148,000 hectare supposedly protected Kakataibo Reserve in central Peru, one of the world’s top two cocaine producers. No prizes for guessing what that runway is for: moving “white stuff” to neighbouring Bolivia and/or Brazil, and ultimately other countries around the world where it is sold and consumed.
As far as I’m aware, this is the first time that photos of a runway in one of Peru’s reserves for indigenous people in “isolation” - numbering seven in total - has been made public. They were released by Mongabay after being taken last month during an overflight of the Kakataibo Reserve organised by national indigenous federation AIDESEP, which invited representatives from the Ministry of Culture (MINCU) and the Kakataibo federation Federacion Nativa de Comunidades Kakataibo (FENACOKA) to come along too.
“It’s very concerning because that is the territory of our brothers in isolation, and at the same time it’s terrifying to be able to see how the narco-trafficking is unstoppable,” a FENACOKA spokesperson who was on the overflight - but didn’t want to reveal his/her name for fear of reprisals - was quoted saying by Mongabay. “The more we denounce them, the more they accelerate and advance.”
One other runway, illegal roads, other deforested areas, coca plants and apparently evidence of people living in the reserve were all spotted during the overflight too, as well as a third runway just outside the reserve in an area claimed by a Kakataibo community called Puerto Azul. This was further proof that the Kakataibo Reserve - established just three years ago, thereby the newest reserve for indigenous people in “isolation” in the country - is almost certainly the most threatened, most vulnerable of all of them.
Miguel Macedo, from the Lima-based NGO Instituto del Bien Común, says that MINCU has taken certain actions to protect the reserve, such as establishing two offices, building a control post and creating a management protection committee, but ultimately it is under-resourced and handicapped by Peruvian laws and the attitudes of other government entities - plus the fact that indigenous people in “isolation” are just not among their top priorities.
“I think the Ministry is trying to improve the situation, but they don't have enough resources,” Macedo tells me. “They have serious limitations in what they can do because of the [2006] law which gives them a role only related to coordinating with other Ministries and public institutions. It’s also key to mention that some of those other institutions, like the regional government of Loreto and Ministry of Energy and Mines, consider the creation and conservation of indigenous reserves as a break on national development. The protection of the life of indigenous people in isolation and initial contact is not a priority for them.”
One of the FENACOKA representatives on the overflight puts it another way. “A total disaster,” was how he/she described the Kakataibo Reserve to Mongabay. “All the authorities do is meet in Lima to talk about things, but no concrete action is taken. Nothing has been done.”
Given the state’s abject failure to protect the reserve, last year AIDESEP, FENACOKA and the regional indigenous federation Organización Regional AIDESEP Ucayali (ORAU) appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington DC, hoping that it might urge Peru to take immediate, effective action. Since then, AIDESEP et al have continued to send the Commission information about what is happening there.
“The Kakataibo in isolation face violations and imminent threats to their lives and health as a consequence of the massive invasions of their territory that they depend on to survive, the deforestation caused by illicit crop-growing, the creation and use of illegal logging roads, and clandestine runways in their reserve,” AIDESEP et al wrote to the IACHR last March.
The Kakataibo Reserve was already something of an anomaly given that, unlike Peru’s six other reserves for indigenous people in “isolation”, it is split into two distinct sections - north and south - by a highway, which dates from the 1940s and was the first road to connect the Amazonian town of Pucallpa to the rest of Peru. Now it is even more out-of-the-ordinary with a runway used to transport illegal drugs right in the middle of it, and another just inside.