Word: colombia
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...working to identify Peru with chocolate, the way Colombia is identified with coffee. We have the world's best beans," says Blanca Panizo, who works for the Alternative Development Program, a U.S. Agency for International Development-backed initiative promoting crops to replace coca. San Martin's top cacao producers hosted a tasting fair in Tarapoto, the department's largest city, in mid-January for a U.S. delegation including Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, who was in town for a day. Steinberg walked away with bags of rich, dark chocolate, telling growers that his two daughters loved chocolate...
Peru is the world's second largest coca producer after Colombia, with nearly 139,000 acres (56,250 hectares) covered by the crop, according to the UNODC. While land dedicated to coca has declined noticeably in San Martin, it has increased nationwide throughout the last decade. Eradication brigades eliminated around 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares) last year. A similar amount is targeted...
...threat to the Mexican security services. Born in a rough-hewn village of the northern Sierra Madre, he was alleged to have been trafficking heroin and marijuana since the 1980s. As Mexican cartels grew in power, drug agents say, he forged a smuggling empire stretching from the jungles of Colombia to the avenues of New York City. He is alleged to have masterminded the killing of hundreds who stood in his way, including federal police chief Edgar Millan, who was shot dead in his home in May 2008. "As he first created and then defended his empire built on cocaine...
...kilos of seized cocaine beside his desk, the square-jawed soldier explained the smuggling routes for the white powder with the aid of computer maps. Small aircraft were carrying bundles of cocaine from western Venezuela into Honduras, he said. His intelligence showed that the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were operating openly in Venezuelan territory and were behind many of the shipments. "The Venezuelan government is either incapable or complicit in this traffic," he said, speaking with a frankness uncommon among Latin American officials. His forces had found more than 50 such small planes within the past year...
...Such accusations against the government of Hugo Chávez are not new. The U.S. and Colombia have for years accused Chávez of consorting with narco-terrorists. Chávez, for his part, claims that the U.S. smuggles drugs to fund its espionage. Gonzalez added his own bit of politico-narco conspiracy theory, suggesting that his country's ousted President, Manuel Zelaya, was under investigation for possible involvement with cocaine shipments, echoing a charge of Zelaya's political opponents. When TIME questioned whether a Honduran head of state could really have had his hands in trafficking, Gonzalez nodded...