Peruvian counter drug agency Dirandro requested support from the FBI to tackle the growing influence of Mexican cartels in the Andean nation, daily El Comercio reported, citing a 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable it received from Wikileaks.
An agent from Dirandro met with officials from the US Embassy’s Narcotics Affairs Section on November 13, 2009 to discuss a meeting with Mexican officials in which Peru signed an anti-drug accord.
“The counter-drugs official… summarized to NAS officials the recent history of Mexican drug traffickers in Peru and the new agreement signed [between both countries],” the cable read.
The agent said that in 2008 Peru had detected 1,091 Mexican citizens who had illegally entered the country and were suspected of being connected to drug trafficking. They entered Peru with fake passports or by flying in on private planes that landed at clandestine runways.
The Dirandro official said that Mexico’s biggest cartels are represented in Peru, which is reflected in a “climate of violence with ordered killings.”
The agent pointed to the 2006 murder of Peruvian Judge Hernan Saturno Vergara, who had been handling the trial of 25 alleged members of the Tijuana cartel. Saturno Vergara was gunned down in a Lima restaurant.
Also in 2006, Colombian citizen Andres Murcia Hernandez was severely beaten, stabbed 100 times in his back and stomach and thrown from a second-story window before he died, for allegedly betraying the Guadalajara-based cartel.
One of the assassins was identified as Mexican citizen Víctor Rivera Félix, the son of Manuel Rivera Niebla, known as “the Ranchera singer” or “Colonel Manuel,” then head of Mexico’s Guadalajara cartel in South America.
Soon after that case, Dirandro confirmed the presence of Mexican cartel cells in Peru, making the first clear “cocaine connection” between the two countries.
As a result of these cases, and many others, the agent told the NAS that “Peru is interested in working with the FBI… just as the Mexican government does.”
According to a 2008 report by daily La Republica, 80 percent of drug production in Peru is financed by the “Aztec Mafias,” which now occupy territories once controlled by the Colombian Cali and Medellin cartels.
In 2010, Peru overtook Colombia as the world’s top producer of the coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, according to the UN’s World Drug Report.
