VIOLENT CARTEL CULTURE NOW THREATENS PERU

Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are importing a far more
brutal operating style to Peru, say authorities.

This message chilled Sonia Medina the most: "Listen, we know who your
daughter is," the anonymous threat came via text message over her
cellphone. "And we think she is good-looking."

As Peru's top drug prosecutor, Ms. Medina, a former judge who stands
just 5 feet tall, is confronting the nation's increasingly violent
drug-trafficking problem head on. She is whisked around by bodyguards
- - sometimes one, sometimes three - and never rides in a car without
tinted windows.

Authorities in Peru, the world's second-largest producer of cocaine,
say that the kind of carnage that makes headlines in Colombia and
Mexico is now finding its way to Peru, making the task of fighting
organized crime and corruption an increasingly risky business. In
July, a judge overseeing a case involving alleged members of a
Mexican drug cartel was killed. Last month, a radio reporter who
covered local crime and corruption was murdered in front of his wife
and children.

Production of coca, cocaine's main ingredient, has increased 38
percent in Peru in recent years, according to the US Department of
State. But authorities blame international mafias, mainly Mexican,
for the more sophisticated and high-stakes cartel culture that now
plagues Peru. They say that traffickers have also aligned with
members of the infamous Shining Path rebel group in remote
subtropical valleys - forming new trafficking routes and prompting a
new level of concern among authorities here.

"We are moving toward becoming a narco-state," says Medina, who has
received dozens of death threats at her office, home, and on her
cellphone. "Of course I feel afraid. I am a human being. But you
can't hide in a corner watching what is happening in your country."

A leading coca producer

Peru was once the leading producer of coca, but US-supported
eradication efforts in the 1990s and falling prices turned many
farmers toward alternative crops. But since then, massive US and
Colombian efforts to stem coca production in Colombia, coupled with a
persistent demand in the US and Europe, has shifted production demand
to Peru, luring many poor farmers back. Today, Peru produces about a
third of all coca leaf in South America, according to Gen. Juan
Zarate, the former antidrug czar and now the head of eradication
efforts in Peru's Interior Ministry. It is grown on fewer acres than
in previous decades - about 120,000 today compared with 445,000 in
the 1980s. But technology - mostly in the form of new fertilizers -
has spurned far greater yields.

In 14 major coca-growing regions across the country, some 110,000
metric tons of coca is cultivated annually, and then turned into 180
metric tons of cocaine, according to government figures.

What is more worrisome to authorities here is that traffickers from
other countries, principally from Mexico, have changed the face of
the industry. Bypassing Colombian traffickers, Mexican cartels are
working directly with farmers, demanding that Peru not only export
the leaves or paste that is part of the process of synthesizing
cocaine, but the cocaine itself.

It's a multibillion-dollar industry, which authorities say has given
rise to corruption at all levels of society.

"For a while Peru's problem went down," says General Zarate. "Now
again, we have this problem. There is an invasion of mafias in Peru."

Colombian rebels, he says, are vying for control along the border
with Peru. But the bigger concern is Mexican-run cartels, he says,
which have been active in the country for the past 15 years but have
recently become more violent. "They have invested a lot of money to
claim space here," Zarate says. "They are savage, and they pursue and pursue."

The slaying of the federal judge, Hernan Saturno Vergara, in July,
was a wakeup call for many Peruvians about the grip of Mexican
cartels, say observers. The judge had been overseeing a case
involving alleged members of the Tijuana Cartel, and was gunned down
while at a restaurant near his Lima office.

"It was a threat by these mafias to the entire judicial system," says Medina.

On a recent day, Medina stands in the back of a courtroom at the
Callao prison in Lima, while a case involving three suspects charged
with selling cocaine plays out. The case is one of an estimated 7,000
her department will hear this year - a number that has increased by
30 percent in the five years since Medina was named to the post.

The high case load has made her an easy target for the rancor and
revenge that marks the narcotics industry. Unlike Medina, her
predecessor, she says, didn't need to have bodyguards at all hours.
Medina also had to change her e-mail to an obscure address so that
her name doesn't appear at all, lest she receive a barrage of
intimidating messages.

"People get mad. They say it breaks up their marriages. Some realize
this is my work. Others want to harass me," says Medina, a devout
Catholic who is married with two teenage children. "I don't want to
be a hero, I don't want a monument. Someone has to do it."

Contributing to that hostile environment is a reemergence of the
Shining Path, the organization that practically went defunct after
the 1992 arrest of its leader. According to a recent report by the US
Department of State, Shining Path members give protection to coca
growers and traffickers alike.

In December, eight suspected Shining Path members were arrested after
an attack on a police convoy in a coca-growing region killed eight people.

Pressure on Colombia causes shift

Nearly all the cocaine that enters the US comes from Colombia. But
pressure - not to mention the $7 billion that the US has given to the
country in recent years - has produced a so-called "balloon effect,"
in which production has expanded to other countries.

"Because there was real pressure in Colombia, Peru became a very
interesting alternative," says Gustavo Gorriti, a Lima-based reporter
who studies the drug trade.

In his inaugural address in July, President Alan Garcia acknowledged
the challenge facing the country today. "Today kidnappings and
narco-trafficking are growing," he said. "The international cartels
have arrived in our homeland. We must be firm with them."

But Medina says that real changes have yet to take place. She faults
an increase in the drug trade to a lax judicial system, one that
often lets traffickers off with lenient sentences, and the corruption
that has infiltrated the system. "It's easy to come to Peru to
traffic drugs," she says plainly.

"If the state decides to focus on this, we can overcome it," she
says, as she leaves the courtroom with three armed bodyguards who
constantly look out side mirrors, her cellphone ringing incessantly.
"Otherwise it is going to consume us."