Members of the Cacataibo Indigenous Guard, who patrol the Peruvian Amazon, monitor coca crops in the rainforest – a source of deforestation, violence and bloodshed on their land.
Simeon Tegel for NPR
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Simeon Tegel for NPR
UCAYALI, Peru — As they patrol their ancestral territory deep in the Amazon, some members of the Cacataibo Indigenous Guard carry spears.
Others wield machetes. Some of them carry traditional bows and arrows, and one has an antique shotgun slung over his shoulder.
The mission of this close-knit group of indigenous villagers, who trudge along overgrown trails and wade through rivers, is extremely serious – to find illegal plantations of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, on tribal lands.
“We don't want that here,” says one of them, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from drug traffickers. “Coke just brings problems. It means death for us and the forest.”
Andean crops are thriving here in Peru, the world's second-largest producer of cocaine.
Currently, increasing quantities are grown in the Peruvian Amazon. It's a vast and often lawless border area larger than Texas. The region is also home to some of the last indigenous hunter-gatherers on Earth, who still live cut off from the outside world.
The number of hectares of coca in the South American country has increased from almost 43,000 (106,255 acres) in 2013 To nearly 90,000 (over 222,000 acres) in 2024. The country currently produces about 850 tons of cocaine a year, production fueled by global demand for the drug, including in the world's largest consumer market, the United States.
Local indigenous police officers inspect a secret airstrip that became unusable after the Ashaninka indigenous community dug large holes to stop drug traffickers from flying light planes loaded with cocaine into Bolivia.
Simeon Tegel/NPR
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Here in the lowland region of Ucayali, there are about 12,000 hectares (almost 30,000 acres) of coca, as well as dozens of clandestine airstrips, including on indigenous lands and even on the reserves of some of these extremely vulnerable, isolated tribes.
With coca comes corruption, deforestation and bloodshed.
About 20 indigenous leaders have been killed in Peru in recent years for resisting drug traffickers and illegal loggers who often work hand in hand with them. Six of them belonged to the Cacataibo, a small ethnic group whose several thousand members are scattered across the central Peruvian Amazon.
The heat in the jungle actually results in a weaker and lower quality product than coca grown in the mountains. But it is also easier to move cocaine across Peru's long jungle border with Brazil and Bolivia than it is to ship it across the Andes to Peru's Pacific ports and the main international airport in Lima.
Dirandro, Peru's specialized anti-drug police, is struggling to keep up. Eradicating crops is like playing whack-a-mole across a vast jungle area.
Dirandro commander David Morey Trigoso says his men are working valiantly under difficult circumstances, showing off a cocaine press used to make 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) bricks of the powerful drug seized in a recent operation. “We are constantly pursuing drug traffickers, but they also continue to evolve,” he adds.
Eventually, after wandering through the forest for almost two hours, the indigenous guards approach a series of green cliffs that rise dramatically above the rainforest.
This remote location is not only where the Andes meet the Amazon, but also the beginning of a government reserve for the last Cacataibo families still living in what anthropologists call “voluntary isolation.”
Segundo Pino, leader of Cacataibo's local guard, regularly receives death threats from drug traffickers.
Simeon Tegel/NPR
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They prefer this term to the term “contactless”. These indigenous communities consciously chose to go deeper into the jungle due to past traumatic encounters with outsiders, including disease, massacres, and enslavement.
The local guard launched a drone, and within three minutes it discovered two separate coca fields within the reserve. Now they will report this to the authorities.
One woman told NPR that residents of the Cacataibo reserve, who may be her distant relatives, are scared of drug traffickers. “They are in their habitat, but they feel invaded,” she says. “So we must always protect them.”
The danger is very real. Segundo Pino, leader of Cacataibo's local guard, points to a recent death threat he received on his cell phone. In misspelled Spanish filled with epithets, it promises that Pino and other Cacataibo leaders will “fall one by one” and that “blood will be shed.”
“How can we protect ourselves?” – asks Pino. “We have lost faith in our government. That's why we created the Indigenous Guard. We must protect ourselves. We have no choice.”
