Peru’s President Asks U.S. for Billions to End Peasants’ Coca Growing

President Alan Garcia on Friday called on the United States to funnel billions of dollars to Peruvian peasants to encourage them to replace coca, the raw material for cocaine, with other crops as a way of curbing the drug trade.

Saying Washington’s anti-drug efforts were misguided, Garcia said the United States should invest in Peruvian agriculture and give seeds and fertilizers to induce farmers to switch from coca to coffee and other crops.

“I propose the U.S. form a direct alliance with peasants . . . who will be the most active fighters against drug trafficking if you give them an alternative,” Garcia said in an interview with Reuters.

He also said Peru could slash the amount of coca smuggled out of the country if the U.S. gave Peru a radar network along its jungle border with Colombia.

Peru is the world’s largest producer of coca, the raw material for over 60% of the cocaine that reaches U.S. streets.

Garcia said Washington should also guarantee a share of the U.S. market for coca growers who switch to coffee or cocoa, the raw material for chocolate, and perhaps even pay to airlift their crops out of farming regions in the same way that drug traffickers airlift cocaine.

“No product will be able to compete with cocaine as long as cocaine is shipped out by plane,” said Garcia who, at 40, is Latin America’s youngest president.

Garcia has allowed U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents to aid local police in wrecking cocaine laboratories, jungle airstrips and hideouts used by traffickers in Peru’s Upper Huallaga river valley, the world’s largest coca supply point.

DEA agents and local police have destroyed at least 10 cocaine laboratories in the Upper Huallaga valley in the past month, government officials have said.

But Garcia said he believed military and police aid would not be enough.

“The most direct and real way of attacking the problem . . . of Latin American (coca) production is not through weapons and helicopters,” said Garcia.

President Bush has earmarked $261 million as the first part of a long-term anti-drug aid program.