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Authors: Aaron Elkins
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Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee served in Spode bone china cups that had been delivered by another hard, silent man – this one with the checkered grip of a semiautomatic pistol prominently protruding from a shoulder holster – Arriaga bluntly got started. Did Scofield know what the average annual earnings were for a small coffee or tea farmer in the Huallaga Valley?
Scofield did. In American money, approximately four hundred dollars.
True, said Arriaga. In other words, they were working themselves to death for barely enough to survive on. And did Scofield happen to know what that same farmer could earn growing coca leaves and converting them into coca paste?
Probably more, Scofield said prudently.
Much more, Arriaga told him. Something on the order of twelve hundred dollars, a living wage here. And he could do it virtually risk-free, since the local police had been effectively “dissuaded” from pursuing their enforcement responsibilities overvehemently, at least in regard to farmers associated with Arriaga’s cartel.
What was more, coca was the region’s most sensible crop in terms of conservation and ecology, two subjects to which the professor was so commendably devoted, and to which Arriaga himself was deeply committed. Tea, coffee, palm oil trees – these took years to begin producing, and rivers of sweat. Coca shrubs would be ready for harvesting in one season. And they would thrive in poor soil, where coffee and tea crops would not without constant attention. Moreover, they would not deplete the nutrient-deprived jungle soil, as so many other crops would.
Nod, nod, nod, went Scofield, who in truth was in substantial agreement with Arriaga’s arguments but was increasingly anxious for him to get to the point.
And, with the moral and ecological justifications out of the way, here it came. For every quarter hectare of land – roughly half an acre – that Scofield could convince one of his local farmer acquaintances to convert to coca growing, he would receive a onetime honorarium of one thousand dollars. Afterward, there would be an annual payment of five hundred dollars per quarter hectare as long as reasonable production was maintained. If the farmer himself successfully undertook the conversion of the leaves to coca paste (not a simple operation) for further pay, there would be another two hundred dollars per quarter hectare per year for Scofield. Was Scofield interested?
Scofield was fascinated.
That had been nine years ago, and now, with almost no expenditure of effort, he was pulling in an extracurricular income of $55,000 a year, paid in good, green, American dollars, and tax-free at that. By the sixth year, however, he had exhausted his contacts in the Huallaga Valley. His earnings were no longer increasing. Knowledgeable now about the ins and outs of the underground coca economy, he itched to branch out on his own. Naturally, he didn’t dare to do anything that Arriaga might perceive as treading on his turf, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about other options.
His opportunity had come ten months ago, when the Peruvian government had announced the coming reinstitution of its “air-bridge denial” policy, a drug interdiction program in which military jets hunted and shot down the planes of traffickers hauling coca paste to Colombia for processing into cocaine. The program had been introduced by President Fujimori in 1992 with great success, but it had been halted a few years later because of international outrage over the botched shooting down of a missionary’s plane that resulted in the killing of an innocent American woman and her daughter. But now the outrage was forgotten, and the sleek, Russian-made Sukhoi Su-25s of the Peruvian Air Force were again aggressively scouring the skies, hunting down unauthorized airplanes. Air transport was now out of the question. The only alternatives were transport by water and by foot.
This was a staggering blow to Hector Arriaga and his kind.
Scofield did. In American money, approximately four hundred dollars.
True, said Arriaga. In other words, they were working themselves to death for barely enough to survive on. And did Scofield happen to know what that same farmer could earn growing coca leaves and converting them into coca paste?
Probably more, Scofield said prudently.
Much more, Arriaga told him. Something on the order of twelve hundred dollars, a living wage here. And he could do it virtually risk-free, since the local police had been effectively “dissuaded” from pursuing their enforcement responsibilities overvehemently, at least in regard to farmers associated with Arriaga’s cartel.
What was more, coca was the region’s most sensible crop in terms of conservation and ecology, two subjects to which the professor was so commendably devoted, and to which Arriaga himself was deeply committed. Tea, coffee, palm oil trees – these took years to begin producing, and rivers of sweat. Coca shrubs would be ready for harvesting in one season. And they would thrive in poor soil, where coffee and tea crops would not without constant attention. Moreover, they would not deplete the nutrient-deprived jungle soil, as so many other crops would.
Nod, nod, nod, went Scofield, who in truth was in substantial agreement with Arriaga’s arguments but was increasingly anxious for him to get to the point.
And, with the moral and ecological justifications out of the way, here it came. For every quarter hectare of land – roughly half an acre – that Scofield could convince one of his local farmer acquaintances to convert to coca growing, he would receive a onetime honorarium of one thousand dollars. Afterward, there would be an annual payment of five hundred dollars per quarter hectare as long as reasonable production was maintained. If the farmer himself successfully undertook the conversion of the leaves to coca paste (not a simple operation) for further pay, there would be another two hundred dollars per quarter hectare per year for Scofield. Was Scofield interested?
Scofield was fascinated.
That had been nine years ago, and now, with almost no expenditure of effort, he was pulling in an extracurricular income of $55,000 a year, paid in good, green, American dollars, and tax-free at that. By the sixth year, however, he had exhausted his contacts in the Huallaga Valley. His earnings were no longer increasing. Knowledgeable now about the ins and outs of the underground coca economy, he itched to branch out on his own. Naturally, he didn’t dare to do anything that Arriaga might perceive as treading on his turf, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about other options.
His opportunity had come ten months ago, when the Peruvian government had announced the coming reinstitution of its “air-bridge denial” policy, a drug interdiction program in which military jets hunted and shot down the planes of traffickers hauling coca paste to Colombia for processing into cocaine. The program had been introduced by President Fujimori in 1992 with great success, but it had been halted a few years later because of international outrage over the botched shooting down of a missionary’s plane that resulted in the killing of an innocent American woman and her daughter. But now the outrage was forgotten, and the sleek, Russian-made Sukhoi Su-25s of the Peruvian Air Force were again aggressively scouring the skies, hunting down unauthorized airplanes. Air transport was now out of the question. The only alternatives were transport by water and by foot.
This was a staggering blow to Hector Arriaga and his kind.
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