May 8, 2002
Narco News '02
"U.S.
Has Lost the
War
on Drugs"
The Narco News
Interview:
Journalist Róger
Rumrrill
Part
III of a Series
By Luis A. Gómez
Narco News
Andean Bureau Chief
The Narco News Andean
Bureau continues, now, with part III of our series on the drug
war in Bolivia and, today, in neighboring Perú. Luis Gómez
interviews Róger Rumrrill, the outstanding authentic journalist
who blew the whistle and thus caused the cancellation of a planned
U.S. military base in Perú....
Narco News: Have the change in government or most recent strategies
succeeded in reducing drug trafficking in Perú?
Róger Rumrrill: In the first place, since the transitional government
of President Paniagua and now in the current Toledo government,
the basic design of the anti-drug strategy, formulated and structured
by Fujimori and Montesinos, has not changed. And if there is
a consistent effort to make sure this policy does not change,
it comes from the United States Embassy. Why does the United
States defend this design? Because its function is political.
What's more, in the course of the investigation of Montesinos,
the United States is hiding a lot of information. An example
of that is the report that the CIA gave $10 million dollars to
Montesinos for undercover operations. Nobody has denied that.
Today, the production of coca has increased
in recent years. The government has taken a measurement - when
I speak of the government I am speaking of that of the United
States, the Peruvian government has not taken any measurements
- by satellite photos of the crops. But I have seen coca crops
underneath trees, to hide them from the satellite lens. On the
other end, one of the first impacts of Plan Colombia is that
the prices have gone up in the past two years and the 95 to 96
percent of the farmers (in Perú) have now returned to
growing coca in their fields. What's more, is that the satellite
photos aren't as effective monitoring the eco-systems where coca
grows (at 1,000 to 1,500 meters of altitude) as they are with
photographing the lower regions. So, without having an exact
measurement, I do believe that there is more coca growing in
Perú than the U.S. government says.
In the second place, there is a process
of reengineering underway: better technical means to process
cocaine, more production: with the same amount of coca more drug
can now be produced. The largest quantity of cocaine (400 to
500 tons, annually) is now refined on the coast, in laboratories,
and up to 80 percent of the drug goes by maritime routes toward
Mexico and Spain. Only 20 to 30 percent goes the Amazon route
through Brazil and Africa to reach Europe. What originates in
Bolivia and the Peruvian coasts goes mainly to the Mexican cartels
and from there to the United States. As a consequence, the business
continues to be active, with constant flow, and not only has
it not been detained by the governments of Paniagua and Toledo,
but, to the contrary, it has increased.
Narco News: Can you speak to us about the now-cancelled project
of the U.S. military base in Perú? What would have been
the goal of the United States to have a military base in the
Peruvian Amazon?
Róger Rumrrill:
It's no surprise. In fact, there are
floating bases in the Amazon right now. Since about two years
ago, the United States has a contract with the police and military
forces in Peru, and has created a school to train marines in
the Amazon basin to control the 10,000 kilometers of the river.
They are bases that are controlled and managed by U.S. and Peruvian
soldiers…
With relation to the base in Uchiza: I
received a protest letter by the local authorities of this town
on March 8th. Based on this communication, I investigated and
they delivered me a video-cassette with film of military troops,
dressed as civilians, who had come to the area three times in
the past year with the intention of buying land and getting close
to the population.
On April 6th, I was in Uchiza with the
president of the Alternative Development Commission and Fight
Against Drugs Commission of the Peruvian Congress, Juan Manuel
Figueroa and Alvaro Pastor. On this day, the mayor of Uchiza,
Juan Raymundo Navarro accused the U.S. Southern Command of having
come there with the intention of installing a base, because they
had said as much. And they told them not to worry because they
came in a song of peace, that they shouldn't worry when the materials
to construct it start arriving and that there will be more or
less 300 troops there. That is the mayor's version of the story.
Of course, the Peruvian authorities, among
them Defense Minister Carlos Loret de Mola and Secretary of State
Diego García Sayán, had denied the existence of
this base (and that is true, because there still was not a base,
just a project to build one). But as I've already said, the accusations
come with evidence and the government denies it because it is
true.
For me the issue of the base is an element
in a larger strategy, related to the anti-drug policy in the
Andean region. It's clearly a geopolitical strategy, in which
the fight against drugs is an instrument that helps mask the
true goal of this low-intensity war, which is to control the
natural resources of the Amazon and provide security for U.S.
investments in the zone, in the hemisphere.
Narco News: Isn't it also that Plan Colombia is not designed
to stop the drugs, but, rather, to control the market and sales?
Róger Rumrrill: That's one hypothesis. The Colombian State and
the experts in the field say that Plan Colombia is really a counter-insurgency
plan to stop the guerrillas. Now it is much more clear, after
President Pastrana asked for military aid, that another hypothesis
has to be at work. But what we have to understand is the the
drug money, according to a United Nations estimate, now amounts
to, more or less, $500 billion dollars a year, more than the
external debt of all Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, we
see a flow of money that has helped to prop-up economies like
that of Russia in the process of a change toward capitalism…
And this money flow disappears like magic. At this moment the
world economy and many national economies are at the point of
collapse. In the case of the United States, it is calculated
that this drug money brings $200 billion dollars there. When
one reviews the U.S. budget debt, one finds that part of it is
covered-up by the money from narco-trafficking… and logically,
as we know that they are part of the lion, well, less than one
percent of this money stays in the hands of the producing countries,
five percent in other stops along the way (like banks and money
changing houses), another five percent stays with the narcos
and the rest stays in the consumer market where the drugs are
bought.
At this moment, for example, a kilo of
base paste made in Perú costs $200 dollars. This kilo
makes 900 grams of cocaine hydrochloride, that costs $1,200 dollars
in the market… and from there, in Chicago, it can obtain
up to $700,000 dollars. There is, then, a very cynical discourse
about reducing the demand and the consumption by this superpower.
There must be 70 different agencies in the United States that
work on the drug issue, and now, also, the Pentagon and the military
apparatus. So, yes, it's about a huge business that provides
work for important segments of the postmodern economy.
Narco News: Returning to Perú, what has happened with
the case of the owner of the airline accused of narco-trafficking?
Róger Rumrrill: A few years ago they accused Fernando Ceballos,
owner of AeroContinente, of having made his fortune with narco-money...
I would say that during the 1970s and 80s, during the big increase
in narco-trafficking, there wasn't a single bank that didn't
launder drug money. One of the groups that would have had to
benefit from those resources was Grupo Romero, owner of the largest
financial company in Peru - they control 36 percent of the financial
capacity of the country - the Banco de Credito. Now they have
found in one of the "Vladi Videos" (secret videos made
by hidden cameras of Vladimiro Montesinos when in power in Perú),
a film in which Montesinos is talking with Romero who is asking
for favors… The richest man in Perú seeking favors
from the largest corruptor in the history of the country…
This demonstrates the moral quality, the essence of the dominant
classes in Perú. Linking this to the Ceballos case, there
is testimony that the airplane of this man went each week to
collect the dollars from the agencies of Banco de Crédito
in the entire country… The Peruvian financial system has
laundered money in recent years.
Narco News: There is one theory that a large part of the business
of narco-trafficking would end if drugs were legalized. What
is your opinion on this?
Róger Rumrrill:
The war on drugs is 30 years old. The
United States has lost two wars in this century: Vietnam and
the War on Drugs, which it has lost definitively.
Everything began when, in the 1970s, upon
the end of the Vietnam war, some 500,000 veterans returned and
became the most lucrative market of drug consumers in the world…
Well, I've conversed in Europe with politicians and members of
Congress about why they don't just legalize the coca leaf, and
they tell me that the pharmaceutical companies are opposed. And
I've asked why they don't legalize the drugs and the coca leaf
in the United States, and they tell me that the voters oppose
it. Thus, as an alternative discourse, legalization began to
be spoken of as harm reduction, which is to say, to try and neutralize
the damage to the consumers, and the narco-trafficking web in
general. Today the discourse over legalization and harm reduction
has disappeared. There is only a discourse on eradication. The
tone of the proposals has radicalized to the point in which no
alternative is accepted. What happens is that the countries are
hitting their heads against the wall and then sticking them into
the ground like ostriches to keep from seeing the problem: Thirty
years later there is more consumption and more production.
The United States doesn't dare to modify
its anti-drug policies. To the contrary, it continues radicalizing
its positions and this is bringing it to an absolute failure.
In contrast, Ethan Nadelmann, a former investigator from Princeton
University, has said that the cost of the war on drugs is higher
than it would be if, tomorrow, we legalized drugs. I have never
said this in an open manner, but I believe it is an issue to
debate. At the same time, we must look to cultural uses and alternatives
for the drugs and I'm in agreement with the more intelligent
and humane policies like those of Holland and Denmark.
I think that these policies and these
wars are expensive and harmful to our countries. And what the
market creates, the market destroys… Meanwhile, we prepare
ourselves for this new scenario, beginning to work on alternatives
regarding coca, in light of themes like biodiversity and tropical
resources, until the coca leaf returns to being a sacred plant
connected with the Amazon's biodiversity. This process is already
close to being done. We are in a cycle of global crisis, the
end of paradigms. And in the United States, where I have interviewed
different people (from priests to police officers to drug consumers)
you have society in a structural crisis: You have two million
prisoners in jail, 20 million occasional consumers of drugs,
three million incurable addicts and the highest divorce rate
in the world… This speaks of a profoundly sick society.
And contrary to what the politicians say,
that the consumption of drugs generates violence and criminality,
I think that it is the structural crisis that generates the consumption
of drugs, which aggravates the situation. This will begin to
lose its power in the coming years and maybe even the end of
this empire will not be for economic causes, but, rather, that
the United States will end up corroded from within by its own
contradictions.
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It Already
Was Another Vietnam