May 7, 2015

The lung-searing ascents into the Andean highlands aren’t what worry the untold hundreds of young men who hump backpacks loaded with drugs out of the remote, lawless valley that produces about 60 percent of Peru’s cocaine.

Armed gangs, crooked police and rival backpacker groups regularly rob cocaine’s beasts of burden on their three- to five-day journeys over mountain paths carved by their pre-Incan ancestors.

: In this March 16, 2015 photo, Asuncion Huallpa walks to a coca field that needs harvesting, and carries a chicken that will be slaughtered for his lunch, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Hauling cocaine out of the valley is about the only way to earn decent cash in this region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day. Beyond extinguishing young lives, the practice has packed Peruís highland prisons with backpackers while their bosses evade incarceration. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: This March 15, 2015 photo shows steaming bowls of chicken soup on a table set for a special meal marking the second death anniversary of cocaine backpacker Yuri Galvez, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Galvez, 25, was found dead two years earlier after a smuggling trip with other backpackers. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, Julio and Rufina Galvez pose for a picture holding a portrait of their late son Yuri, outside their home, in La Mar province of Ayacucho, Peru. The 25-year-old university student had gotten his fatherís permission to haul coca in a backpack to pay for his agronomy studies, his mother said. Yuri was found face-up on a mountain trail, with bullet wounds to his head, stomach and arm, in a March 2013 cocaine smuggling trip. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, a slaughtered chicken sits on a pan lid, to be used in a soup for a special dinner marking the second anniversary of the death of Yuri Galvez, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Galvez, 25, was killed in March 2013 during a cocaine smuggling trip. Deaths of cocaine backpackers often go unreported. Bodies lack identification papers, and villagers quietly bury them. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, Donato fries an egg over an open fire to add to his breakfast of rice and plantain, before starting his work day of weeding coca fields, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Roughly one third of the 305 metric tons of cocaine that the U.S. government estimates Peru produces each year travels by foot by way of cocaine backpackers or mochileros, as they are known locally. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, young men compete in a multi-village soccer tournament, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. A hardy lot, cocaine backpackers are mostly native Quechua speakers and hail from the isolated communities that suffered the worst atrocities of Peruís 1980-2000 dirty war with Shining Path rebels. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 16, 2015 photo, a young man dances under a heavy rain during a concert by huayno singer Ely Corazon, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. The average cocaine backpacker, or mochilero, is typically recruited by relatives and friends – often at festivities where liquor flows. They tend not to tell their parents, who nearly always disapprove. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 16, 2015 photo, Jhorlis Huallpa, 17, carries a bagful of tarps, to be used for drying coca leaves, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Hauling cocaine out of the valley is about the only way to earn decent cash in this economically depressed region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day. Beyond extinguishing young lives, the practice has packed Peruís highland prisons with backpackers while their bosses evade incarceration. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 16, 2015 photo, Janet Curo, 9, takes a break from harvesting coca leaves with her mother, in La Mar, province of Peruís Ayacucho state. Janet skipped school to help her mother in the coca fields. They are in the remote Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, where 60 percent of Peruís cocaine originates. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, a seedling grows next to a barefooted Donato Mosco, as he weeds a coca field, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Peru overtook Colombia in 2012 as the worldís No. 1 cocaine-producing nation. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 14, 2015 photo, sandbags used by members of self-defense groups to control the exit and entrance of their town, sit piled on the periphery of a coca field in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, Rufina Galvez chews coca leaves outside her house in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Adored by her son Yuri, he would ferry her around Ayacucho on his blue motorcycle, buy her groceries, and make sure she always had cell phone minutes. A university student, Yuri had gotten his fatherís permission to haul coca to pay for his agronomy studies. In March 2013, he was found face-up on a mountain trail, with bullet wounds to his head, stomach and arm. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, Rufina Galvez reads coca leaves outside her house in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Her son Yuri, a cocaine backpacker, always checked in by phone. So when he didnít call after a March 2013 smuggling trip, his mother turned to reading coca leaves to try to divine his fate, tossing them on her skirt as is customary. ìThe leaves fell spine-up, a bad sign,î she said. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, Yohan, 4, from left, Cristian, 7, and Angelo, 6, playfully toss coca leaves into the air, singing: “I have a lot of money, look at all the money I have,” in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Hauling cocaine out of the remote valley is about the only way to earn decent cash in this region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day. Beyond extinguishing young lives, the practice has packed Peruís highland prisons with cocaine backpackers while their bosses evade incarceration. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 16, 2015 photo, young people dances under a heavy rain during a concert by huayno singer Ely Corazon, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. The average cocaine backpacker, or mochilero, is typically recruited by relatives and friends – often at festivities where liquor flows. They tend not to tell their parents, who nearly always disapprove. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, Donato Mosco, right, and Delfin Mosco, begin their work day of weeding coca fields, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Peruís cocaine trade is highly decentralized, run by scores of extended families who sell to representatives of foreign cartels. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 14, 2015 photo, a coca field is seen from the side of a road in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru, located in the remote Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, where 60 percent of Peruís cocaine originates. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, coca farmer Alfredo Mosco, 44, who had polished off a bottle of cane liquor by midday, sleeps in his field of coca seedlings, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Mosco is a small coca farmer who provides work for young villagers. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, Rufina Galvez blows into a cane reed to stoke a fire while preparing a special chicken broth to mark the second anniversary of her son’s death, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. He adored her, ferrying her around Ayacucho on his blue motorcycle, buying her groceries, making sure she always had cell phone minutes, she said. Her son, a university student, had gotten his fatherís permission to haul coca to pay for his agronomy studies. In March 2013, her son was found face-up on a mountain trail, with bullet wounds to his head, stomach and arm. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, Rufina Galvez plucks a chicken in preparation for a special dinner to mark the second anniversary of her son’s death, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Yuri, a cocaine backpacker, always checked in by phone she said. So when he didnít call after a March 2013 smuggling trip, his mother turned to reading coca leaves to try to divine his fate, tossing them on her skirt as is customary. ìThe leaves fell spine-up, a bad sign,î she said. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, Donato, from left, Delfin, and Jony, eat breakfast before starting their work day of weeding coca fields, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Peruís cocaine trade is highly decentralized, run by scores of extended families who sell to representatives of foreign cartels. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: This March 16, 2015 photo, a rural road is seen in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. While authorities say most of the drugs in the region are now flown out, backpacking is dependable in the rainy season, cheaper than hiring a pilot and plane – and key to evading police checkpoints. Backpackers, or ìmochileros,î (ìmochilaî is Spanish for backpack), have been hauling cocaine this way for nearly two decades. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this Feb. 28, 2015 photo, an elite policeman of the DIRANDRO counternarcotics police agency walks through a puna in Husnay, Peru, after an unsuccessful mission to try to arrest drug-toting backpackers hiking up from the worldís No. 1 cocaine-producing region. The backpackers can choose from myriad routes in a half dozen corridors of sparsely populated steppe. They often hike at night, to avoid detection. Few know before they are arrested that they face eight- to 15-year prison sentences. (AP Photo/Frank Bajak)

: In this March 13, 2015 photo, coca farmer Alfredo Mosco, 44, right, instructs his young employee Donato Mosco, during the weeding of a coca field, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru. Hauling cocaine out of the remote valley is about the only way to earn decent cash in this economically depressed region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

: In this March 15, 2015 photo, huayno singer Nanda la Dulce performs during a multi-village soccer tournament, in La Mar, province of Ayacucho, Peru, located in the remote Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, where 60 percent of Peruís cocaine originates there. Huayno traditional Andean folk music. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

By Franklin Brinceno and Frank Bajak, Associated Press

In this country that overtook Colombia in 2012 as the world’s No. 1 cocaine-producing nation, Mardonio Borda regularly hikes within a few hours of the Machu Picchu tourist mecca, bound for Cuzco with drugs.

The 19-year-old Quechua native has a sixth-grade education and speaks broken Spanish. But the 11 pounds of coca paste he carries will fetch up to $250,000 on New York streets as powder cocaine sold by the gram.

Hauling cocaine is about the only way to earn decent cash – $150 to $400 per trip depending on the load – in a region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day and the poverty rate is triple the national average.

Yet it is packing highlands prisons with young, mostly native Quechua speakers who, like Borda, hail from the isolated communities that suffered the worst atrocities of Peru’s 1980-2000 conflict with Shining Path rebels.

“The great majority haven’t finished high school,” said Laura Barrenechea, a sociologist who oversaw a study last year of 33 imprisoned backpackers. “They are not really conscious that they are the first link in the drug-trafficking chain.”

The Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley stretches northward for 250 miles (400 kilometers), and about a third of the coca grown here is trekked out by backpackers. Not a single fully paved road reaches the valley, which separates the Andes ridge from the Amazon basin.

Police say more and more cocaine is being processed to powder rather than left as coca paste, which includes residues of hydrocarbons, typically gasoline, used in initial processing. While authorities say most of the drugs are now flown out, the backpacking is dependable in the rainy season, cheaper than hiring a pilot and plane – and key to evading police checkpoints.

Backpackers, or “mochileros,” (“mochila” is Spanish for backpack), have been hauling the drug for nearly two decades, traveling in groups as small as four and as large as 70. Guards with assault rifles often accompany them. They tote radios and satellite phones, while police rarely have more than cellphones.

Some backpackers carry handguns, some grenades.

Nobody hits the trail unarmed, they say.

Alcides Martinez, 24, lost two close friends. One fell off a precipice in the confusion of an armed robbery. Another was deemed an informant – and took two bullets to the head.

Many backpackers believe their bosses sometimes dispatch robbers – or sacrifice a small group to police so a much larger contingent can pass unperturbed carrying far more cocaine.

One said he invested in a load to try to get ahead and his boss hired thieves to steal his 25-kilogram (55-pound) share – then demanded he pay for the stolen drugs. The backpacker moved with his parents to the Pacific coast, where they harvest rice. Two years later, they still haven’t paid off the $10,000 bank loan they took out to invest in the drug shipment.

“I can’t go back,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear. “They said they’re going to kill me.”

Rural medic Oscar Huaman runs a health post along a principal backpacker route and sees mochileros almost daily.

He said robbers like to pounce at mountain streams where fatigued mochileros drop their loads to refresh.

In January, Huaman had to pluck grenade fragments from the legs and faces of two backpackers who were attacked at a stream. One lost his pack and the nearly 18 pounds (8 kilograms) of cocaine inside.

It could have been worse. Villagers along the remote routes sometimes run across putrefied corpses. Deaths go unreported. Bodies lack identification papers, and locals quietly bury them.

Borda, the backpacker whose route passes near Machu Picchu, says his group of four was once confronted by five gunmen.

“We only had three .38-caliber pistols,” he said. “So that they wouldn’t kill us, we gave them all the backpacks.”

In highlands prisons near the Apurimac river valley, nearly half the inmates are in for cocaine trafficking – compared to a fifth nationwide. Worse for backpackers, a statute was amended last year to strip those newly convicted of drug offenses of a chance at parole.

President Ollanta Humala lamented the imprisoned backpackers’ plight in remarks in Cuzco last July.

“I’m embarrassed for this country because we have not offered them opportunity.”

Sociologist and drug war analyst Jaime Antezana said cocaine backpackers are disproportionately penalized because powerful traffickers evade prosecution by bribing police, prosecutors and judges.

“The policy is basically concentrated on the masses, on the narco lumpen proletariat, which is the backpackers. And they end up jamming the prisons.”

Some backpackers long ago graduated to the big leagues of trafficking, moving to Bolivia to buy small planes and join the airborne-smuggling business, said Gen. Vicente Romero, Peru’s No. 2 cop.

Borda has a more humble ambition.

He is saving up to buy land and get in on the ground floor.

“With coca bushes of my own,” he said, “I’ll earn more money.”

Drug trade’s lowest rung: Peru’s cocaine backpackers

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