Drug traffickers take hold in Peru's Amazon as Indigenous leader killed

By Marco Aquino

LIMA (Reuters) - An Indigenous group in Peru's Amazon is saying drug traffickers are taking hold of the jungle after its leader was found dead earlier this week.

Mariano Isacama, leader of the Indigenous Kakataibo people, had been missing for weeks before his body washed up on the banks of a river in the central Aguaytia region on Sunday. Representatives from the Kakataibo said Isacama had been shot.

His disappearance kicked off an investigation by authorities, though the Kakataibo are now warning that they may take justice into their own hands.

"If they do not do their part, we have our Indigenous guard, we have arrows and spears," Marcelo Odicio, a Kakataibo member, said at a press conference on Wednesday, adding that authorities need to expel the "outsiders."

"We're suffering from the encroachment of drug trafficking into our ancestral territories and around our reserves," Odicio said.

Isacama, 35, had received nearly constant threats from drug traffickers growing coca leaves in the area, according to Odicio.

He added that traffickers offer money to Indigenous groups, who often live off subsistence farming and forestry, in exchange for letting them operate in their territories. When the offers are rejected, the threats begin, Odicio said.

Six Kakataibo heads have been murdered in the past four years and nearly three dozen Indigenous leaders in the region have been killed in the past decade, he said.

Coca is legal to grow in Peru, and can be chewed for energy or brewed into a tea to treat altitude sickness. However, some 90% of Peru's coca leaf crop goes to producing cocaine, according to police estimates.

Peru is a top coca and cocaine producer alongside Colombia, and its less-populous regions have become attractive to drug traffickers. Coca plantations in the Aguaytia region inched up some 3% last year, despite covering less area nationwide.

The Kakataibo have uncovered cocaine labs and hidden airstrips used by drug traffickers in their territory in recent years, Odicio said.

A coalition of Indigenous groups called for meetings to develop a self-defense strategy against traffickers in response to Isacama's death.

"We find ourselves obligated to exercise our right to defense and use the same methods that are used against us," they said in a statement published late Wednesday.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Stephen Coates)