The boat comes to a halt, shuddering against the dirt bank that rises from the edge of the Ucayali River. Sixto, tanned and with a frown cutting deep furrows across his forehead, jumps ashore. He strides up to a flat area dotted with banana plantations, yucca crops and scattered foliage. He raises his hand and waves.

He then follows a path that penetrates a wall of trees, passes through mudflats and traces the undergrowth that thickens the forest. He doesn’t speak. He knows where to go, and that’s all that’s needed. At intervals he says, barely whispering: “It won’t be long now.”

During each stretch, as he keeps up his pace, Sixto scans the horizon, although it’s always the same scene of trees and scattered green. The dense jungle he passes through lies in Tahuanía district, Atalaya province, in the Peruvian Amazon. Thirty-four minutes into this trek along this tangled route, the roof formed by the treetops suddenly opens up to reveal a huge rectangle of bare earth.

“It is 985 meters [3,232 feet], a big ‘cancha’ [field],” he whispers, and points to the other end: “We’ve arrived.”

No drug planes have taken off yet from this clandestine airstrip. This stretch was prepared five years ago, but with the COVID-19 outbreak, there was no need for traffickers to find new ways to get their drug shipments out, Sixto recalls, now less tense, more talkative. He was one of the young men who prepared the land after it was cleared. He says he was called by a relative, did the job for two weeks, then returned home. Sixto isn’t his real name; in the face of danger, he prefers to remain anonymous.

The airstrip has been abandoned since the onset of the pandemic. However, groups of men have begun to revive it for use again.

“They come every so often, leveling the land and pruning the thicket that has grown on the sides,” says a local source. The fear that was haunting Sixto on the way here was the uncertainty of not having accurately calculated whether we were going to find the area cleared. It becomes evident that this is a drug trafficking zone in preparation, located close to the Indigenous communities of Chanchamayo and Pandishari. The area that Sixto shows us is just one of the dozens of clandestine airstrips that have turned Atalaya into the province most blighted by drug trafficking flights in Peru’s Ucayali department.

Using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, Mongabay Latam and Earth Genome have detected 45 clandestine runways for outbound drug shipments in Ucayali, of which 18 are within Indigenous territories and 19 close by.

Hidden forest sites

The airstrips identified by the algorithm and AI can also be viewed on the Global Forest Watch satellite monitoring platform. The information obtained through the satellites was cross-checked with findings from the Peruvian police’s antinarcotics unit, DIRANDRO, and the Ucayali departmental agency for forest and wildlife monitoring, or GERFFS. The development of this process, together with verifying each airstrip with local and official sources, allowed us to confirm that there are at least 45 runways used for drug trafficking in Ucayali. Of these, 31 are dispersed among the four districts of Atalaya province: 17 in Raymondi, six in Sepahua, and four each in Yurúa and Tahuanía. Concerningly, 26 of the 31 illegal airstrips in Atalaya affect Indigenous communities and reserves located in the province.

In the case of Tahuanía, the police’s antinarcotics tactical division DIVMCTID in Pucallpa, the Ucayali departmental capital, says the clandestine airstrips are abandoned.

“But if there are criminal firms or organizations with shipments ready that require the use of a runway that is currently inactive, then they clean it up well and activate it immediately,” the agent in charge told Mongabay.

Five years ago, this route was implemented for the arrival and departure of drug planes in the Tahuanía forest. Video by Mongabay Latam.

That’s what’s happening at the airstrip we visit with Sixto. The bushes, which are cut back on the sides, reveal that the airstrip was initially 5 m (16 ft) wide. There are discarded rakes and cylinders, which serve as markers where sections of land have already been worked. Everything, it seems, is being prepared for the next drug deliveries. Police report that Cessna aircraft sporting the Bolivian flag land in Atalaya to pick up shipments of 300-350 kilograms (660-770 pounds) of cocaine hydrochloride. One of the main destinations for the drugs is northern Bolivia’s Beni department; sometimes, after a layover here, the same plane then continues on to Brazil.

Sources in the area say there’s a business of renting out the runways in this part of the Amazon. If someone needs to use one, a source explains, they can choose the most convenient place and pay between $10,000 and $20,000. Although the source doesn’t admit it, it’s clear that his experience in the region has made him knowledgeable of the details involved in sending drug shipments abroad.

“Up to four flights can take off a day,” he says. “Sometimes while one plane is loading the drugs, another is departing. Each operation must take five minutes, at the most. In this way, a single organization can transport up to 1,200 kg [nearly 2,700 lbs] of cocaine a day.”

It’s 2 p.m. and, according to what we’ve heard, all the flights scheduled for the day of our visit have already taken off. “The planes leave between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., and it is very rare for an organization to use the same cancha more than twice. They are always looking for new runways to land on and depart from,” the sources tell us.

The Asháninka, Ashéninka, Yine and Shipibo communities of Atalaya are the most affected by drug trafficking. Related crimes (threats, extortion, contract killings) have driven Ucayali into the unenviable position of one of the most dangerous departments for Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon.

ORAU, the Ucayali chapter of the Indigenous umbrella association AIDESEP, has since 2013 recorded at least 35 killings of Indigenous leaders in Peru. Herlin Odicio, ORAU’s vice president, estimates that at least 10 of these killings occurred in Ucayali. ORAU, which brings together 13 federations of various Indigenous peoples in Ucayali, has also recorded 28 instances of environmental advocates in the region who have been subjected to death threats or harassment for protecting their territory.

The most recent case was that of Mariano Isacama Feliciano, leader of the Puerto Azul native community, who disappeared on June 21 this year after receiving a series of threats on his cellphone. He was found dead 23 days later, in an open field. Odicio says he’s convinced it was a revenge killing by drug traffickers: “Since April, the Indigenous Guard has burned coca fields, destroyed maceration ponds and promoted flyovers [of areas with drug activity]. I received information that they were going to retaliate against the leaders.”

In 2023, Ucayali saw 27,340 hectares (67,559 acres) of deforestation. In the first two months of 2024, it lost 673 hectares (1,663 acres) of forest, of which 203 hectares (502 acres) were inside Indigenous areas, according to GERFFS, the departmental forest monitoring agency. Agency head Franz Tang told Mongabay Latam that, on average, 45% of the annual deforestation in Ucayali is related to drug trafficking, which coincides with the more than 12,000 hectares (about 30,000 acres) of coca crops identified in Ucayali in the latest review by the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (DEVIDA).

The second VRAEM

“We’re at risk, but the state is not helping us, it does not provide us with security,” says the head of an Indigenous federation, asking to use the pseudonym Francisco because of threats to his life. “We land advocates die because we fight when our rights are violated. Atalaya is becoming a second VRAEM,” he adds, referring to the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers, Peru’s main narco hub.

Francisco says there’s no doubt that coca plantations, airstrips and drug trafficking operations have increased significantly in Atalaya since 2015. So have the killings and disappearances that, he says, aren’t always known but plague both the province and its Indigenous communities: “I know of two Indigenous brothers who were murdered in 2023, and one who disappeared this year.

“In Tahuanía, to cite one case, brothers who have been recruited to work for the drug trafficking industry die. We do not really know how many die each day. There are no police officers, no authorities. The state has forgotten us,” he says.

In 2015, the year in which, according to Francisco, drug trafficking began to intensify in Atalaya, the Peruvian government was two years into a series of operations against drug trafficking in various critical areas of the VRAEM. To date, that region still has the largest area of coca crops in Peru, at 38,253 hectares (94,525 acres), where drug gangs have carved out inhospitable routes to transfer their product. Reports from authorities involved in the VRAEM raids in 2015 indicated that between three and four clandestine airstrips were being destroyed daily in the area. In all, around 200 airstrips were disabled. The police’s antinarcotics tactical division in Pucallpa told Mongabay Latam that airstrips then began sprouting up in places like Ciudad Constitución (Pasco department), Codo del Pozuzo (Huánuco), and, later, Atalaya in Ucayali: “Here they entered Raymondi with force, as well as the area surrounding the Inuya River, in Sepahua.”

It hasn’t been used yet, but this clandestine airstrip is already being prepared for future drug trafficking flights from Tahuanía. Video by Mongabay Latam.

It’s not only the clandestine airstrips that have moved to Ucayali. In its most recent report, DEVIDA, the national antinarcotics commission, notes that although the VRAEM region accounts for two-fifths of Peru’s total coca-growing area, Ucayali has more coca land in proportion to its total size. Within the department, the so-called Bajo Ucayali area, made up of the districts of Iparía (in Coronel Portillo province) and Tahuanía, Raymondi and Sepahua (all in Atalaya), has 3,355 hectares (8,290 acres) of coca farms. Trends in VRAEM and Bajo Ucayali, according to DEVIDA’s reports, point to an expansion of illicit crop cultivation — and all the consequences that come with it.

The links between VRAEM and Atalaya area also confirmed by the antinarcotics police in Pucallpa. Officials have identified an important drug route that starts in VRAEM: it begins at the Apurimac River, then joins the Mantaro River and continues along the Ene. Once the Ene and Perené rivers join, the route follows the Tambo River, which meets the Urubamba to form the Ucayali River in the town of Atalaya. In this way, the shipments arrive in overcrowded boats to the areas surrounding the clandestine airstrips. In fact, 10 of the airstrips detected by the algorithm are less than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Urubamba and Ucayali rivers. Military intelligence personnel told Mongabay Latam that 90% of the drugs produced in VRAEM leave Peru by air, with the rest going by road, river or sea.

“But that does not mean that there is no processing in Ucayali,” says Francisco, the Indigenous leader. “Iparía and Masisea [districts] have become production zones, as have some parts of Atalaya. There are Indigenous brothers and sisters who are employed to harvest coca. Often that ends up being the only profitable economic activity here. We have no opportunities because of the lack of interest from the state.”

Reciting almost as if from memory, Francisco points to the Indigenous communities of Centro Lagarto Juvenil, Flor de Mayo, Nueva Claridad de Bambú, Puerto Alegre, Colpa, Flor de Shengari, Chanchamayo, Diobamba, Pandishari, Puerto Esperanza and Galilea are those in Atalaya province alone that are most affected by the drug trafficking operations. Among these, Centro Lagarto Juvenil, in Raymondi district, is the most at risk because of the constant arrival of non-Indigenous invaders who have set up coca farms and even a clandestine airstrip there.

The onslaught of drug trafficking in Atalaya has forced several Indigenous communities to undertake risky head-on battles with the criminal gangs, leading to success in some cases. However, the tension has tainted the routines of its inhabitants. This is what’s happening in one of the Ashéninka communities in Raymondi district. There, criminal organizations established a stronghold for drug shipments, which the community and authorities managed to eradicate in a coordinated effort. However, the possibility of the unrest returning remains latent. “There were drug trafficking trails on our land,” a local source, in a clear state of distress, tells Mongabay Latam. “We had to form a self-defense committee and informed the Navy of what was happening. That’s how we managed to get them to leave. But now they are trying to use the airstrips for flights again. We don’t want any more problems.”

According to DEVIDA, coca cultivation across Peru amounts to 92,784 hectares, (229,274 acres), of which 14%, or 13,054 hectares (32,257 acres) occurs on Indigenous lands. This trend, too, is increasing, according to the antinarcotics commission.

The dire situation described by Indigenous community members, along with the satellite data reviewed by Mongabay Latam and other organizations that have investigated the issue, contrast with the information provided by Ucayali antinarcotics prosecutors, based in Pucallpa. The prosecutor’s office told Mongabay Latam that there were only three cases of coca cultivation in Atalaya province but that these had already been “archived,” leaving just one case to date affecting an Indigenous community in Tahuanía. The office also disputed the presence of clandestine airstrips in Indigenous communities in Atalaya. “The few that exist are in populated centers,” a prosecutor said.

However, the antinarcotics police, DIRANDRO, confirmed in response to a request for information that 58 airstrips in Ucayali had been destroyed between 2013 and 2022. It also reported the destruction of three aircraft in 2012 and 2021, and the crash of four aircraft between 2020 and 2022. Mongabay Latam reviewed all the press releases published by DIRANDRO on operations carried out in Ucayali between 2020 and 2024. We found 132 operations, comprising drug confiscations (40), chemical seizures (12), laboratory raids (51), and airstrip destructions (10).

Drug trafficking oppression

Before anchoring the boat on the banks of the river in Bolognesi, capital of Tahuanía district in Atalaya province, Fabio outlines on a piece of paper the course we must now take by motorbike. The information he has about the area is that the criminal network based there is on alert due to a recent raid by the antinarcotics police. As a result, a shipment wasn’t exported, the eventual cost of which could be in the millions, as the packages remain only steps away from a clandestine runway.

Cocaine prices jump wildly between one point and the next along the supply chain, peaking at the final destination. An antinarcotics police estimate, cited in a DEVIDA presentation, puts the price of a kilo of cocaine at $1,200 at the production site. This then rises to around $2,500 when it reaches an airstrip for transportation. By the time it reaches the United States, one of the main markets, that same kilo of coke now costs $30,000; in Europe, the other major consumer market, it’s $60,000. “We talk about those costs a lot around here when there are large shipments,” Fabio says before jumping off the boat.

We ride along the highway from Bolognesi to Breu, capital of Atalaya’s Yurúa district, which sits on Peru’s border with Brazil. Fifty minutes into the ride, a turnoff near the border, indiscernible through the undergrowth, marks the beginning of a path that leads to the Indigenous community of Colpa. Another hour’s drive later, this same road, uneven and neglected, becomes an airstrip that travels along the length of the land that corresponds to Colpa: it passes right by the houses of the community’s Indigenous Asháninka people.

“When an aircraft is about to land to be loaded with drugs, all traffic comes to a standstill. So does the population,” says an Indigenous leader who left the community for security reasons. “It doesn’t happen very often, but that’s how we live.”

Our plan is to cross the runway in Colpa and then embark on a hike deep into the forest, to another airstrip inside a logging concession held by the company Ucayali Wood. It’s a similar journey to the one that Sixto led us on near the Indigenous community of Chanchamayo. But less than 4 km (2.5 mi) from the first point, we arrive at a log bridge that’s been destroyed, meaning we can’t advance with motorbikes and any other vehicles. Plastic-lined drums full of chemicals and fuel litter the vegetation nearby, as through hurriedly concealed during an urgent escape. As he rides his motorbike, Fabio confirms the information he had and warns that the area is teeming with activity: “There must be a production center very close to the runway. They have knocked down the bridge so nobody gets close. They are retreating.” Fabio looks down at what appear to be the tracks of a pickup truck on the muddy ground, and, almost reflexively, an expression of alarm forms on his face: “At any moment the truck is going to come back and take this away. It’s very dangerous to stay.”

Ucayali Wood’s concession spans 9,000 hectares (about 22,200 acres). Nearly a fifth of it has been deforested, according to general manager Teddy Arbe Rengifo. Patches of 200-500 hectares (500-1,200 acres) have been cleared of trees and blanketed with coca crops, which Arbe and his workers must pass through, “asking permission from the coca growers,” every time they conduct a census or carry out a logging operation.

“They come in, burn the species to ashes, and sow their plants. They set up camp and say it is their land, that it belongs to them,” Arbe tells Mongabay Latam. The neighboring concessions also have coca plantations and clandestine airstrips, he adds.

The drug trafficking route established in Ucayali Wood’s concession dates back three to four years, but Arbe says he’s never been around when a plane was arriving or taking off with drugs. On his desk, he displays a copy of the latest report he’s filed with prosecutors about the deforestation taking place in the concession. This one, like the previous report he filed, will also simply be archived, he said. “But I do it because they can accuse me of being involved with this criminal organization,” he says on his way to the sawmill he manages in Pucallpa.

The police’s antinarcotics tactical division says drug activity is a constant in the vicinity of the Bolognesi-Breu highway, as there are extensive coca plantations nearby. According to the division’s latest inspection, the airstrips are set up on the same roads that the loggers use to reach their camps and remove the trees they fell. “The routes are very straight so that the planes can descend without any problems,” police have concluded.

This is the situation in which the Colpa community members have lived since June 2019, a situation Mongabay Latam had earlier identified as part of our analysis. For the period between June 2016 and May 2021, we identified 10 airstrips for drug trafficking within nine forestry concessions in Ucayali.

“In our community there is an airport [airstrip], but it is only used for emergency flights, otherwise it is not possible,” say members of Sawawo Hito 40, an Asháninka village near the border with Brazil, which, since August 2021, began to be affected by the logging companies that opened a section of the Bolognesi-Breu highway here. “We have a surveillance committee that controls everything. We have not yet had interventions from outsiders, but we’re afraid because we border non-Indigenous populations.”

In October 2021, Mongabay Latam reported on Sawawo Hito 40 leaders revealing how the opening of the road, which leads into Brazil, had resulted in the degradation of their forest with the arrival of illegal loggers, along with the expansion of coca crops and, worse still, the appearance of clandestine airstrips for drug trafficking.

Ongoing crisis

From the Ucayali River, an Ashéninka community located in Raymondi district appears surrounded by a mass of trees that marks the beginning a dense and varied forest. The jungle unfolds as a huge homogeneous strip, bordering the river, until a patch of young vegetation cuts through the dense growth, revealing pastures intertwined with the remnants of a ransacked land. This is neglected farmland, or purma as it’s known in Peru, about 4 m (13 ft) wide and running out of sight deep into the thick forest. It looks unmistakably like an abandoned road — except that it leads straight to the mighty Ucayali River at one end.

It’s an airstrip, and here, where it meets the river, are a pair of soccer goalposts, about 60 m (200 ft) apart. It would be impossible, though, to play soccer on this long, steep, narrow strip of land. “That’s why they call them canchas, to make it appear like they’re not runways,” says a member of an Indigenous patrol. “This one is 800 m [about 2,600 ft] long. When a plane was going to land here, they removed the goalposts and cleared the area.”

A strip of neglected land, or purma, in the middle of the dense forest, that stretches to the edge of the Indigenous community of Puerto Esperanza. Video by Mongabay Latam.

We’re a hour downstream from where the Urubamba and Tambo rivers meet to form the Ucayali. The Indigenous guard points out that, in the background, at the border between this community and two other population centers (which we aren’t naming for security reasons), the pressure from drug trafficking is greater due to the higher number of active clandestine airstrips there. The one before us hasn’t been used since last year.

In February 2023, the guard says, a small plane arriving to pick up a drug shipment fell into the Ucayali River, which sparked a flurry of visits and operations by the authorities. The following month, Yober José Auccatoma Leche, a drug lord in VRAEM, was captured in Huamanga province in the department of Ayacucho. Investigations by DIRANDRO, the antinarcotics police, revealed that Leche’s criminal network exported up to 400 kg (880 lbs) of cocaine per day. The airstrips in the Indigenous territories on the outskirts of Ucayali were among their main embarkation points for drug shipments to Bolivia.

Police records show how airplanes, sporting the Bolivian flag, were prepared to take off with the drugs produced by Leche’s organization from airstrips inside Indigenous communities in Raymondi district. One of the runways is a few meters from the banks of the Ucayali and runs parallel to the course of the river for 650 m (about 2,100 ft). The villagers’ log and corrugated metal houses form a row on one side of the river. On the other is a thicket that separates the community from the river. “This cancha is also inactive,” the Indigenous guard says, adding with a note of concern, “There is more surveillance than before, but any organization could reactivate it if required.”

The location of both airstrips, in Puerto Esperanza and Galilea, aligns with the conclusions from our analysis, and their characteristics correspond to what antinarcotics police have found: that there are seven of them, located on the banks of the Ucayali River in Raymondi district, and all have been abandoned. According to the police, there are another 13-18 airstrips, all active, dotted around the Inuya River, a tributary of the Urubamba, in Sepahua district, Atalaya province. The hardest obstacle that the police’s tactical operations division encounters in Atalaya is the lack of a base or refueling point, since all operations must be conducted by helicopter.

The fallout from the drug activity in Atalaya is primarily focused around Indigenous communities and logging concessions, according to Franz Tang, the Ucayali forestry agency head. Police say that while they’re constantly disabling airstrips as they find them, the problem isn’t new ones being constructed. Instead, they can destroy the same airstrips five, six or several more times, and each time the drug traffickers can still manage to reactivate them. This is a story that, in Atalaya, has become cyclical, part of normality, and, for now, doesn’t seem to have a remedy.

———
*The names of some of the people who were interviewed and who participated in the production of this report, as well as all of the Indigenous communities, were changed or omitted for their safety.

This story was first published by Mongabay Latam in Spanish on Nov. 12, 2024.
———