The Drug War's Fungal
"Solution" in Latin America
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"Andean Seminar" Lecture Series
sponsored by GWU and WOLA
Friday, December 8
Jeremy Bigwood
By 1989, Peruvian campesinos began complaining about helicopters and planes spraying something, after which their crops die. These complaints continue to the present. This was not unnoticed by the US Embassy in Lima. Many of these complaints ended up as reports cabled from the US Embassy to Washington, DC. Here are some examples:
1990 - "IN THE LAST WEEK REPORTS HAVE BEEN CIRCULATING OF A GREEN FUNGUS ATTACKING PLANTS (COCA INCLUDED) IN THE UHV. WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT THE U.S. IS BEING FINGERED AS THE CULPRIT IN SOME CIRCLES. MORE ON THIS LATER.." 1990LIMA18575 DOS/JB
1993 -In a debriefing of the US-funded Peruvian National Coordinator for Human Rights (Coordinadora) about their 1993 Annual Trip to Peru’s Huallaga Valley Jungle Region "THE DELEGATION WAS STRUCK, HOWEVER, BY THE DEVASTATION CAUSED BY THE FUNGUS PLAGUE THAT IS WITHERING COCA CROPS. THEY WERE ASSAILED AT ALMOST EVERY STOP WITH ACCOUNTS OF U.S. DEA AIRPLANES SPREADING "FUNGUS PODS" OVER THE COCA FIELDS.... 93LIMA08060 DOS/ JB.
1996 - February 1996: A Peru Monthly Narcotics Report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, under the heading "Plant Disease Attacks Coca," states: Meanwhile, reportedly 3000 farmers in the Tingo Maria and Leonicio Prado area,... have had to scratch for other means of earning a living, including panning for gold, when a plant disease, "seca-seca", which had previously attacked coca plants broke out again in alternate crops planted in former coca beds. [State Department-JB FOIA response #199804417]
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The Huallaga
Last summer, my colleague, investigative reporter and long-time resident of Lima, Peru, Sharon Stevenson and I went to the Huallaga to investigate these reports. She had written the first article on these reports for the Miami Herald in 1991, breaking new ground. Wherever we went in the Huallaga, we were immediately barraged with dozens of reports of helicopters spraying coca fields, at which point, coca and neighboring plants died. There were so many reports, that this had to be true, or did it?
In the 1980s and early 1990s, I had spent six years covering the Salvadoran conflict. Many eyewitness reports concerning aviation had proved to be untrue there. One very good example is that of the A37 plane that is fitted with bombs and multi-barrelled "miniguns" that fire extremely rapidly, and make a distinctive noise like a wounded cow wailing. In El Salvador these planes used to dive firing their miniguns at a given target. However, in spite of this, many peasants used to believe that the plane’s machine guns extruded from its rear. That is why, they reasoned, that one heard the noise of the machine guns firing after the plane had pulled out of its dive and was swooping upwards. Dead wrong! The real reason was that sound travels more slowly than light, and what they perceived was an illusion! This caveat was strongly in mind when analyzing the Peruvian situation.
Reports of helicopters spraying a whitish-tannish-brownish dust when hovering over coca fields were very interesting in light of my Salvadoran experience. It is true that CORAH, the US-funded, practically mercenary, anti-coca and poppy police would often surveil coca fields from helicopters by hovering over the fields. This would raise much dust and detritus, simulating what appeared to peasants as spraying. None of the peasants described helicopters with fixed spraying devices hanging below them, and many stated that they thought people inside the helicopters were manually throwing out something while it hovered - something nobody would do with a toxic herbicide.
And also, in the case of Peru, there HAD been a US spray program using chemical herbicides that had lasted a year in a limited area in a limited area around a place called "La Morada" (see map) in the Upper Huallaga Valley. This involved Tebuthiuron and Hexazinone and who knows what else, but was normally applied by small crop-dusting planes, often while helicopters hovered protecting the perimeters. That could have explained some, but not all of the reports.
Now, in fairness, I should say that my colleague Sharon Stevenson believes, as do many others, including Peruvian government officials, that a herbicide was being and still is being aerially sprayed in Peru --and that it was sprayed for many years. People who believe this have strong arguments and a considerable amount of as yet unanalyzed physical evidence.
My position is that if Fusarium was applied in Peru, it was done so secretly by the CIA in the early and mid-1980's, and has since spread. I have no hard information on whether other things have been sprayed since the US spraying test program ceased, but, I must recognize that it is possible. While there are samples to substantiate these allegations, their clarification would require two full sized grants -- one for botanical and mycological investigation, and the other for the analysis of the many samples collected by campesinos and others. Such work needs to be done, but for lack of funding will probably not be done, the result being that we will never know.
However, there is no doubt that there was a huge Fusarium epidemic in the Huallaga, and whatever its source, and we should study it to determine what would happen if Fusarium were to be applied in other places. What are the lessons of the Huallaga Fusarium epidemic?
The first lesson is about "non-selectivity". We heard repeatedly that when Fusarium attacks coca, it also attacks other plants. The many reports of other nearby plants being affected were very disturbing. These reports came from so many sources, including some very competent agronomists, that they cannot be discarded.
After the Peruvian epidemic, almost everybody reported what I call the "sick soil syndrome". Farmers and agronomists said that the soil did not produce like it used to, that it was "poisoned". This is very reminiscent of what the Soviet scientist Krasil’nikov reported in the soils after the Russian Fusarium epidemic, and may be due to an excessive amount of residual mycotoxins from the epidemic. These may take several years to dissipate.
