The current wave of insecurity and violence sweeping Peru should serve as an opportunity to
reflect on the crime circuits that exist in our country, and how both the private and public sectors
can contribute to stopping them. Over the years, we have been horrified by “minor” or “street”
crimes, such as muggings, robberies or kidnappings on the street, however, we are even more
surprised when, upon seeing about the criminal gangs that incur in these acts, we discover that
they are linked to much larger criminal organizations and endowed with a complex structure,
which can then make it difficult to have a strategy to face crime. One issue that I personally believe
is important to study, however, is the link between crime, criminal organizations, and illegal
economies, and how this nefarious combination manages to create “the perfect storm” for chaos
and insecurity in some parts of the country, where total and absolute misgovernment reigns. For
this, I will build in this article on two cases that I have had the opportunity to study closely for
different reasons: one being the infamous case of the VRAEM, and the other that of Chala, on the
northern coast of the department of Arequipa.
The case of the VRAEM is one that we are all too familiar with in Peru. The coca-growing basin
has not only been the most important centre of cocaine cultivation and production in the country,
but has also served as a magnet to attract an endless number of economic activities (formal,
informal, illegal) that arrive there given the logical presence of people who, in search of a better
future for their families, feel compelled to become part of the dynamic economy that the coca leaf
provides. Thus, in the towns of San Francisco, Kimbiri, Pichari or Santa Rosa it is very easy to
find hotels, restaurants, workshops or supermarkets full of people working in the parasitic
economic activities of drug trafficking, often these businesses are not owned by locals from the
VRAEM, but by Huantino, Huamanguino or Cusquenian migrants attracted by the possibility of
having a prosperous business of their own. The dynamism of the area is such that it is not
uncommon to walk through Huanta or Huamanga and see caravans of 4x4 pickup trucks that act
as buses to the different towns in the Apurímac River valley, as well as bus stops full of people
queuing for a seat to the jungle along the route, which, by the way, is not completely paved.
With these very brief examples I want to try to bring up a reality, and that is that illegal activities,
which the population often recognizes as such, are also engines of local economies, thus promoting
a dynamism that allows many people who, in the absence of opportunities, find in the related
activities that arise from these illegal economies a chance to bring bread to the table of their homes.
This is how the question arises as to how to intervene, from the state but also from the private
sector, in places where illegal economies prevail, given that this is not only a question of security
(it is no secret the enormous vulnerabilities suffered by, for example, the mining company La
Poderosa in Pataz), but also how to help citizens to have access to opportunities to continue
developing economically, as well as to provide them with basic public services.
The bad reputation that places like the VRAEM or Chala, as well as Pataz or La Rinconada, have
acquired over the years should not be a reason to ignore the complex reality that the local
population faces, and should instead be a special motivation to design accompanying policies,
since only then can we really combat illegal economies effectively.
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