HUANTA, Peru (AP) – The lung-searing ascents into the Andean highlands aren’t what worry the untold hundreds of young men who hump backpacks loaded with drugs out of the remote, lawless valley that produces about 60 percent of Peru’s cocaine.
Armed gangs, crooked police and rival backpacker groups regularly rob cocaine’s beasts of burden on their three- to five-day journeys over mountain paths carved by their pre-Incan ancestors.
In this country that overtook Colombia in 2012 as the world’s No. 1 cocaine-producing nation, Mardonio Borda regularly hikes within a few hours of the Machu Picchu tourist mecca, bound for Cuzco with drugs.
The 19-year-old Quechua native has a sixth-grade education and speaks broken Spanish. But the 11 pounds of coca paste he carries will fetch up to $250,000 on New York streets as powder cocaine sold by the gram.
Hauling cocaine is about the only way to earn decent cash – $150 to $400 per trip depending on the load – in a region where a farmhand earns less than $10 a day and the poverty rate is triple the national average.