Peru Farmers blame U.S. for coca-killing fungus
Sharon Stevenson, The Miami Herald.  Sunday, June 2, 1991  

The first article on this subject.

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AROUND THE AMERICAS SUNDAY JUNE 2, 1991

THE MIAMI HERALD

Angry peasant farmers in Peru are accusing the United States of waging a biological warfare campaign against coca that is also withering yucca, banana and other food crops.

The U.S. government denies the charges, and an American expert in soil blights says it is "unlikely" that a soil fungus that destroys coca plants would spread to other crops.

But farmers and agronomists in Peru say a soil fungus is devastating not only coca crops, but also beginning to hit tangerines, palms and other broadleaf plants in Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley, the world’s No. 1 producing region for cocaine.

Agronomists hired by the coca farmers are testing soil samples to determine the cause of the blight, which U.N. official Hernan La Torre said ‘has severely affected certain areas" of the region.

The infestation is harming efforts to persuade coca farmers to switch to legal crops because they fear other crops will wither, said La Torre, who heads the United Nations Development Program’ s office in New York that oversees its crop substitution efforts in Peru.

U.S. officials in Washington acknowledge they have spent $14 million over the last six years to research and develop biological agents to kill coca, poppy and marijuana crops abroad.

The State Department is paying the Department of Agriculture $5 million this year and next to find effective biological agents against coca, research service spokesman Bob Norton said. Details of the research are secret, he said.

But U.S. officials say no biological agents have been introduced into the Upper Huallaga Valley. And they flatly reject charges that U.S. helicopters are dropping what coca farmers describe as a "cloud" that vaporizes when it hits the ground.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman sad the U.S. government had not sprayed iii the Upper Huallaga Valley since March 1989, when testing of a herbicide known as Spike was halted after an outcry by coca farmers and environmentalists.

"The United States has not been, is not, nor will it be involved in any kind of use of chemicals." U.S. drug policy director Bob Martinez said on a visit to Peru May 15. "And I have no knowledge of what it is that may be occurring in the fields of Peru."

Martinez acknowledged that he is "aware at a lot of research in the United States, but I’m not prepared to talk about any of the research."

Agronomists in the Upper Huallaga, however, say they believe the soil fungus is being spread by outsiders to destroy Coca crops.

"The fact is there was an effect [the crops dying], and a cause, namely the helicopters flew over throwing something out," said Iban de Rementaria, who until last year was the principal adviser to the U.N. crop substitution program in Peru.

In complaints to the U.N. Development Program office in Lima, beginning in 1989, farmers allege the helicopters are flying from Santa Lucia, a fortified base for an anti-narcotics strike force that was built by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

A letter from one farmer said a helicopter flew over the land of Jose Landete near the town of Uchiza on Feb. 6 at 3 p.m., dusting a yellow colored material over the coca field.

Another letter said farmers spotted a helicopter spraying a substance between Paraiso and Santa Isabel around 6 a.m., on Dec. 20.

The substance first killed just coca crops, but then spread to banana and yucca plants, and affected citrus and other broad-leaf trees, the farmers claimed.

The U.N. Office has begun a registry of farmers affected by the blight. It has 72 names.

Asked if the United Nations believes the farmers’ charges, La Torre said. "We accept that this is a fact. The question for us is to measure the impact of the action."

He added that he had seen the same kind of aerial spraying "in Mexico where marijuana is grown."

Experts at the state Agrarian University of the Jungle in Tingo Maria identify the blight as a strain ci Fusarium Oxysporum, a soil fungus that a U.N. panel at a drug control conference in Vienna last year determined had "practical possibilities for the control of marijuana.

They said, in addition to the coca crops, up to 10 percent of the staple food crops are wilting and are testing to see if the fungus is the cause.

Hundreds of subspecies of Fusarium Oxysporurn exist around the world, attacking specific species of plants, like carnations, tomatoes, cotton and sweet potatoes.

A U.S. expert who pioneered research in the strain that kills marijuana said the fungus can easily be made in pellets and dropped aerially.

But "it would be unlikely, if not impossible" that a strain that destroys coca would also harm other plants, said Dr. Arthur McCain, a ‘plant pathologist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Experts differ on the extent of the blight, which now affects patches in much of the Upper Huallaga Valley, an area about the size of Connecticut. The presence of armed drug traffickers and leftist rebels in the region makes research difficult.

Villages tainted by the fungus include Los Angeles, Bajo Porongo, Puerto Huiete, Santa Fe, Nueva Union and Tupac Amaru, according to agronomists.

A political leader of the surrounding region of San Martin, Sergio Guerra, said as much as 62,500 acres had been hit. An agronomist who has worked in the area for years but asked that his name not be used put the affected area at a maximum of 12,500 acres. But he said the blight is spreading rapidly.

Peruvian experts say there are 500,000 acres of coca plantations in Peru.

Some farmers are rejecting alternatives to coca flow because of the fungus. Ironically, many around the Huallaga town of Uchiza say they support crop substitution programs but don’t want to risk ripping out coca crops for new crops that might die from the blight.

Last month, President Alberto Fujimori signed an agreement with the United States aimed at stopping the cocaine trade through law enforcement economic assistance and crop substitution. The accord follows a decade of failed U.S.-financed efforts to control the flow of cocaine from Peru.

The U.S. Embassy th Lima on Friday confirmed that U.S. surveillance planes are helping Peru fight cocaine traffickers in the northern jungle. President Alberto Fujimori said the U.S. Air Force, using to agronomists. Advanced Warning Aircraft, or AWACs, is tracking small planes that fly semi-processed cocaine north out of Peru s jungle, the paper La Republica reported.