Peru and Bolivia are unlikely allies in the war on drugs

IN THE early 1980s Peru’s government founded Ciudad Constitución to be the capital of the country’s Amazon region. Today, it serves as the capital of Peru’s war on drugs. Clandestine airstrips etched into the jungle make the area a hub for smugglers. They form part of an “air bridge”, with small planes flying in from Bolivia to pick up cocaine paste or refined cocaine, stopping in Bolivia to refuel and then heading to Brazil, from which the drug is dispatched to Europe. A single plane can carry 300kg (660lb) of cocaine, worth some $350,000.

Peru and Bolivia, which co-operate to disrupt the air bridge, are an odd anti-drug duo. Peru is a partner of the United States, from which it gets $120m a year to fight the narcotics trade. Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, once led a coca growers’ union and in 2008 expelled the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration. Both countries allow some coca cultivation (for traditional uses like chewing). Bolivia nearly doubled the area on which farmers can grow coca to 22,000 hectares in 2017.