White House: Peru displaces Colombia as top cocaine producer

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Peru has regained its former distinction as the world’s top cocaine producer, according to an annual White House report, issued Monday, that says Colombia’s output fell sharply last year, putting the former leader in third place behind Bolivia.

The report by the Office of National Drug Control Policy diverged from a U.N. monitor’s report last week that estimated Colombian cocaine production at a much higher level. No reason was given for the disparity in the reports, which usually track each other closely.

The White House report estimates Peruvian cocaine production last year at 358 U.S. tons, followed by Bolivia with 292 tons and Colombia at 215 tons. It’s the first year since 1997 that Colombia has not led in global cocaine output in the report. The recent figures represent a 25% drop from White House estimates that Colombia produced 286 tons of cocaine in 2010, topping all producers.

Peru was the world's leading producer of the drug through most of the 1980s and 1990s, before Colombian drug traffickers introduced crops here in a bid to form vertically integrated cocaine cartels. Both the White House and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime use satellite imagery, on-the-ground monitoring, seizures and other indicators to come up with their estimates of cocaine production.

Leading foe rejects new plan for Peru mine

LIMA, Peru -- A prominent regional leader who has led protests against a $4.8-billion gold and copper mining project in northern Peru said he opposed a new offer made by President Ollanta Humala and Newmont Mining.

Under the new plan, reservoirs would be built to expand by 10 times the water storage capacity of existing lakes near the proposed site of the mine. With Humala’s backing, Newmont Mining said the reservoirs would address the concerns of residents that the Conga project could endanger water supplies.

But in a telephone interview, Gregorio Santos, president of the Cajamarca region, said Humala and Newmont had both lost credibility. Santos said he and other opposition leaders in northern Peru were sticking to their demand that an independent environmental impact study be carried out before the project goes ahead.

The Cajamarca region is where Newmont operates the Yanacocha open-pit gold mine, one of the largest in the world.

“Humala says he wants dialogue, but he has not listened to the people of Cajamarca,” Santos said. “Now we don’t believe him, and he is only repeating the words of economic power groups.”

In an address to the nation Saturday, Humala said the Conga project would go forward  and promised that water supplies would not be compromised.

“Water comes first, that’s the condition,” he said. “My government would never permit the development of any mining project that exposes the population to the loss of water or the lack of quality standards required for human consumption.” '

Mining has been a prime engine of Peru’s stellar economic growth over the last decade, luring billions of investment dollars amid a global commodities boom. Humala has said he needs the taxes and royalties from the Conga project, which was approved by his predecessor, to help pay for ambitious social programs.

Observers say the project is also a gauge of Humala's commitment to foreign investment despite his leftist rhetoric during his successful presidential campaign last year.

Colorado-based Newmont says the mining design is sound and there is no need for the months-long delay that would result from carrying out another environmental study. Company Vice President Carlos Santa Cruz said recently that Newmont was willing to address any mistakes of the past, reach “a new state of understanding” with residents and contribute to a $49-million social works fund.

Peasant protests over mining projects in Cajamarca in December and in Espinar province to the south in May prompted the government to declare states of emergency, suspending the right to assembly and other constitutional protections. Unlike with the standoff in Cajamarca, protesters against the $1.5-billion Espinar project proposed by Swiss-based Xstrata are negotiating with the company.

“We will not accept Conga," said Santos, the regional president. "There are projects in Peru that are just going to sit there because the people feel they would mean abandoning their natural resources. Cajamarca will continue resisting.”

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Photo: Hundreds of people demonstrate against the Conga mining project in Cajamarca, in the mountains of northern Peru, in May. Credit: Francisco Vigo/European Pressphoto Agency

Global death toll of environmental activists rising, report says

In April, Chut Wutty was shot to death in the Cambodian forests he was so outspoken in defending, a slaying that outraged human rights activists suspicious of the conflicting explanations given by police.

His death appears to be part of a chilling trend. Growing numbers of activists and others defending the environment have been killed over the last decade, according to a new report from the environmental watchdog group Global Witness.

The London-based group says more than 100 people were killed last year while protesting or investigating environmental causes -- the highest death toll it has found in a decade of tracking such killings.

It linked the apparent rise in environmental slayings to fierce competition for dwindling resources worldwide that have put local activists "in the firing line" as they protest against being forced out of their homes to make way for development, losing the forests they rely on and other disputes.

Such killings often go unpunished, Global Witness lamented. In Brazil, for example, fewer than 10% of such cases have gone to court and barely 1% of them have led to convictions, the report said, quoting the Catholic Land Commission.

The death toll is "the sharpest of wake-up calls" for delegates convening in Rio de Janiero on Wednesday as the United Nations holds the biggest conference in its history to save the environment, Global Witness campaigner Billy Kyte said. "Over one person a week is being murdered for defending rights to forests and land."

The watchdog group consulted with other human rights groups, journalists and the United Nations and scoured website and academic studies to come up with its figures. It found that Brazil, Peru, Colombia and the Philippines had the highest numbers of killings, though it cautioned that there was an alarming lack of information and monitoring in much of Asia and Africa, which might mask killings there.

"It's difficult to know whether [the apparent increase in killings] is because there are more murders or whether it has now become more difficult for these things to be ignored," Radford University professor Bill Kovarik was quoted in the report released Tuesday. Either way, it's "an emerging and visible pattern."

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Photo: A woman cries during the funeral in April for Chut Wutty, a prominent environmental activist killed in the Cambodian forests he was so outspoken in defending. Credit: Mak Remissa / European Pressphoto Agency

Peru police arrest mayor who led mine protests

LIMA, Peru --  Peruvian police on Wednesday arrested a mayor who supported protests against a mining project in southeastern Peru amid violence that  prompted President Ollanta Humala to declare a state of emergency this week.

Espinar Mayor Oscar Mollohuanca, one of the principal leaders of a weeklong protest against a $1.5-billion expansion of the Tintaya copper mine, was forcibly detained at City Hall and later transferred to a jail in Cusco. The apparent reason was his support of a general strike in defiance of Humala's emergency decree.

More than a dozen police officers entered City Hall to arrest Mollohuanca as he was meeting with other city officials,  television reports said.

Over the last several days, violent protests have left two civilians dead and at least 70 police officers injured in Espinar province. The proposed project would be an expansion of a mine operated by Xstrata of Switzerland.

 Humala's emergency decree on Tuesday suspended constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and assembly.

Local residents have complained about Xstrata's hiring practices and alleged environmental violations, as well as claiming the  royalties paid to local governments are too small.

 At least 1,500 police officers were sent to Espinar province by Humala in a bid to restore order. Another protest leader, Herbert Huaman, was arrested Tuesday.

Also on Wednesday, protesters announced  a general strike in northern Cajamarca province in protest of the Conga mining project proposed by Newmont Mining of Colorado. The $4.8-billion project has been in abeyance for several months since Humala declared a state of emergency there as well after  widespread protests.

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Photo: A protester in Peru prepares to sling a rock at police during clashes linked to a strike against Swiss miner Xstrata. Credit: Fredy Hurtdado / European Pressphoto Agency

  

 

Peru declares state of emergency after violence at mine protests

LIMA, Peru -- The Peruvian government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in a southeastern province after eight days of protests over a proposed expansion of a huge copper mine left at least two residents dead and 70 police injured.

The government's emergency declaration covers the province of Espinar and suspends constitutional liberties of speech and assembly for 30 days. The government also ordered the arrest of a protest leader, Herbert Huaman, who heads the Front for the Defense of Espinar Interests.

Violence in Espinar broke out over the weekend after President Ollanta Humala described  demonstrators protesting a $1.5-billion expansion of the Tintaya mine as leftist radicals. Widespread property damage was reported, as was the brief kidnapping of a judge.

Humala used a similar state of emergency decree in December to squelch protests in northern Cajamarca over the proposed Conga mine, a project Humala was counting on to finance his ambitious social agenda.  The government is now reviewing the $4.8-billion Conga copper and gold mine project, but Humala's strong defense of mining has distanced him from part of his impoverished support base.

The protests involve mainly peasant communities and resemble demonstrations held last year in Cajamarca, where residents waged a long-running and still unresolved campaign against the Conga project proposed by Colorado–based Newmont Mining.

Residents in Espinar complain that mining firm Swiss-based Xstrata doesn’t hire enough local workers, violates environmental laws and transfers too low a percentage of mining royalties to the local municipalities.

In a statement Tuesday, Xstrata said it lamented the violence and was ready to discuss residents’ complaints, but it insisted, as it has in the past, that it is fulfilling its social and economic obligations. The company said it would be willing to initiate new environmental monitoring procedures to assure compliance.

Social conflict expert Javier Torres of the Lima-based SER civil society group said the violence could have been avoided, and he blamed the government’s slow response to simmering tensions.

“The reluctance of the government to intervene before the conflict reached a level of violence, and of the [protest] leaders to dialogue, added to the silence of the Tintaya mine’s management, have been causes of these tragic events,” Torres said in an interview.

The global commodities boom has made mining Peru’s biggest industry, fueling the nation’s economic growth to an expected 6% this year. Mining attracted $21 billion in foreign investment from 1996 through 2010. Over the last half of 2011, Xstrata was the largest single mining investor in Peru, with $450 million plowed into its projects.

Analysts such as Torres say the perception of Peru as a mining mecca could be hurt unless community relations improve.

“As long as the government considers that [social] inclusion means the distribution of resources  according to a certain formula, and that those who protest are sheep being led by a handful of radical extremists, there will be no solution to these conflicts,” Torres said.

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Photo: Peruvian President Ollanta Humala. Credit: Jeon Heon-Kyun / European Pressphoto Agency

Peru ministers resign over antidrug sweep

LIMA, Peru -- Peru’s  defense and interior ministers resigned Thursday shortly after the Congress opened a debate to consider censuring them for their handling of an antiterror and antinarcotics operation in a valley known for coca cultivation and the presence of the leftist rebel group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path.

Defense Minister Luis Alberto Otarola and Interior Minister Daniel Lozada resigned after legislators blamed them for the deaths of 10 soldiers and police officers conducting drugs sweeps over the last month in a region known as VRAE, or the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers. Rebels are suspected in the killings.

The toll is higher than that suffered by the armed forces during all of 2011, when nine police officers and soldiers were killed in similar sweeps. Critics charged that the recent operations were poorly planned.

President Ollanta Humala is on a state visit to South Korea and Japan, but his office confirmed the resignations. Had the censure come to a vote in Congress, it could have provoked a political crisis for his administration.

The VRAE has become an increasingly important center of coca farming and cocaine processing because stronger law enforcement in Colombia is pushing traffickers southward to neighboring Peru and Bolivia. Peru may overtake Colombia this year as the world’s largest coca farming nation and cocaine producer in the annual survey that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is scheduled to release next month.

The recent sweep, which involved 1,500 police and soldiers, has been called off. The operation was prompted partly by the kidnapping of 36 natural gas workers near Cuzco last month. The Shining Path group, which released the workers shortly thereafter, claimed responsibility.

The rebels are active players in the upsurge of Peruvian cocaine production, counternarcotics officials here have said. The rebel group has reemerged from near extinction in the 1990s, when it steered clear of drug trafficking as a violation of revolutionary ethics. Now authorities believe the rebels traffic in drugs to finance their insurgency.

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Photo: Peru's defense minister, Luis Alberto Otarola, seen in a file photo, was one of two Cabinet members to resign over antidrug raids that saw 10 soldiers and police officers killed. Credit: Eraldo Peres / Associated Press

Peru miners rescued; kidnappers hold gas-field workers

 

LIMA, Peru -- Nine Peruvian miners trapped for six days in the collapse of a copper mine were rescued Wednesday, most walking out under their own power and wearing sunglasses against the light.

"Mission accomplished!" proclaimed President Ollanta Humala after the rescue at the mine in the southern region of Ica. Humala had flown to the zone the day before to oversee the rescue operation.

Rescuers were able to communicate with the trapped miners with a hose they lowered into the pit. It was also used to send oxygen, liquid nourishment and medicines.

The mine was not operating with proper permits, and Humala said the cave-in underscored the dangers faced by so-called informal  miners. Illegal mining, said to produce as much as $2 billion in metals annually, also does terrible damage to the environment and public health, his government has said.

Wednesday's rescue echoed the 2010 evacuation of 33 Chilean miners who had been entombed half a mile below ground for more than two months.

But as Peruvians celebrated the good news, another crisis was still playing out.

In the Andean region of Cuzco, 36 workers for gas-extracting companies have been kidnapped by guerrillas from the resurgent Shining Path group, officials from the firms said Wednesday. They have been held at least two days, and on Wednesday the government declared a 60-day state of emergency for the zone, which makes it easier for the army to deploy.

An estimated 550 army and police troops have fanned out through the area in search of Shining Path camps.

About 30 heavily armed guerrillas burst into three hotels and seized 39 workers. Three were released.

Shining Path emerged in the late 1970s as a Maoist faction aimed at toppling the Peruvian government. It was largely wiped out in the last two decades but has recently made a comeback, including being involved in drug trafficking.

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Photo: Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, center, waves alongside nine miners rescued in the Ica region. Credit: Cris Bouroncle / AFP/Getty Images

Spanish treasure comes home after 200 years

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

REPORTING FROM MADRID -- One of the world's largest shipwreck treasures is being loaded onto Spanish military planes in Florida on Friday to complete a long-delayed trip home that began more than 200 years ago but was interrupted by war on the high seas and a nasty legal battle over ownership.

The Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was sunk by British warships off Europe's Atlantic coast in 1804 while on its return from South America. It was carrying more than half a million gold and silver coins back to Spain -- valued today at several hundred million dollars -- along what was once one of the world's most-traveled routes for warships and trade.

In 2007, a U.S. deep-sea diving company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, used underwater robots to locate the long-lost vessel on the ocean floor off Portugal. The company laid claim to the bounty and says it spent more than $2 million to retrieve the precious cargo, the biggest trove of coins ever extracted from the deep sea. The haul was flown back to Florida, where the 17 tons of mostly 18th century silver coins have been kept in warehouses in Sarasota.

But Spain challenged Odyssey Marine's claim to the booty, and won. After a five-year court battle, a U.S. federal judge awarded the treasure to Spain and ordered Odyssey Marine to relinquish it to Spanish authorities by Friday. Spanish archaeologists have been in Florida for several days, inspecting the coins ahead of the transfer.

In a surprise last-ditch effort, another bid for the treasure surfaced Thursday when Peru filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming ownership because the gold and silver coins were mined, refined and minted in the South American nation, then part of the Spanish empire. Peru asked the high court to halt the treasure's flight back to Spain to allow Peruvian lawyers more time to prepare their case. But U.S. courts have previously rejected similar claims by descendants of Peruvian merchants, and the Supreme Court did not indicate when or if it would respond.

The treasure's journey to Spain was set for sometime Friday, the court-appointed deadline, but details and exact timing are shrouded in secrecy for security's sake. U.S. marshals are expected to secure 100 miles of southern Florida highway along which the treasure will be trucked from the Sarasota storage facility to Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base, where two Spanish military C-130 transport planes will ferry it home.

[Updated 10:41 a.m. Feb. 20: Spanish military planes laden with the shipwreck treasure had left Florida as of 10:41 a.m. Friday morning.]

Spain's culture minister has said the treasure will be divided among several national museums.

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Photo: A member of the Spanish Culture Ministry's technical crew displays some of the coins found in the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. Credit: Culture Ministry of Spain

See the world: In Peru, nice day for a wet wedding

Every day on World Now, we highlight a remarkable shot from somewhere in the world. Today's shot comes from Ventanilla, Peru.

This is the second year that the Peruvian city has organized a group wedding in a pool on Valentine's Day, the Associated Press reported.

It's a moment of lightheartedness in Peru, where the news is often not so light. The country recently saw the capture of the last remaining ideologue in the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group, but analysts say it isn't likely to stem the illicit cocaine trade in Peru that helped fund it, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Spot a photo that strikes you? Please tweet it to @latimesworld with the hashtag #see.

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Photo: Couples get married in a pool on Valentine's Day in Ventanilla, Peru. Credit: Martin Mejia / Associated Press

Brazil state struggles with poverty despite rich natural resources

 

REPORTING FROM RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazil’s huge northern state of Pará is about three times the size of California, home to much of the Amazon rain forest and is the second-largest producer of the nation's most important export, iron ore.

But poverty levels are well above the national average.

“It's like a poor family, living in an impoverished home, suffering from hunger, but with a Ferrari parked outside,” Josenir Nascimento, head of a local municipal association, was quoted as saying in the O Globo newspaper. “And all the money is spent on maintaining the car.”

In an attempt to address the contradiction, activists pushed forward a bill that would have split Para into three states and, in theory, increased the amount of federal aid to the region (link in Portuguese). But in voting Sunday, the measure was defeated by a 2-1 ratio amid criticisms that creating new states would carry heavy administrative costs.

Even opponents of the bill, however, recognized the predicament, and it’s one that is repeated in parts of Peru, Colombia and elsewhere in South America: the lack of central government representation for states that are resource-rich (be it mining, gas or other commodities) but poverty-stricken.

“We can't accept that in this country, natural resources benefit companies, but not its people,” said Simão Jatene, governor of Pará. “The Brazilian fiscal system is extremely perverse with respect to Pará.”

On Monday Jatene's comments were endorsed by São Paulo-based Jose Serra, one of the most prominent politicians in the center-right PSDB Party.

In Brazil, the last decade of economic growth has brought tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty, powered by commodities exports, consumer credit growth and social spending. But the country still remains extremely unequal, across class and geographical lines. Some parts of the southeastern cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have a higher gross domestic product per capita than rich European countries, while in remote parts of Pará, residents who are struck ill must brave a five-day boat ride to the nearest hospital for treatment, O Globo reported.

The bill would have resulted in three states -- Pará, Carajás and Tapajós -- and increased Senate representation for the northern region. Jatene and others now hope to renegotiate a federal spending pact for the state.

At the moment, there are at least 13 proposals under discussion in the National Congress to divide other states, most of which are far from the country's rich population centers.

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Photo: Residents of Para state in Brazil celebrate the Dec. 11 defeat of a measure that would have divided the state into three parts. Credit: Paulo Santos / Reuters