WSJ Article - Peru "Battles" Drug Trade

A very good article appeared in the September 22, 2009 edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article, entitled "Peru Battles Thriving Drug Trade," failed to discuss one of the most important factors underlying the resurgence of the Shining Path - poverty.

For over a decade I have spent a significant amount of time working in Peru. In that period I have seen a wave of economic prosperity and a multitude of cultural and social reforms. One thing, however, remains seamlessly unchanged – poverty. I truly believe that the only “solution” (if there is such a thing as a single solution for a multitude of social and economic issues) for Peru is to strongly work toward economic parity.

In the past 5 years I have seen an explosion of economic growth and development in the Cities of Lima and Arequipa. Lima, thanks in very strong part to Dr. Luis Castañeda Lossio (Mayor of Lima), has gone through a renaissance of architectural, cultural and culinary experiences. Today, Lima is one of the top destination cities in Latin America. No one would not have made that bold statement 10 years ago. In spite of this new found notoriety, I can take a visitor to Lima only 20-minutes from their luxury hotel in San Isidro or Miraflores to one of the most impoverished areas in all of Peru. An area where children die at alarmingly premature rates – from very preventable conditions.

People ask – how did the Shining Path make a resurgence in Peru; and the answer is a very sobering single word – inequality. As long as Peru allows the economic gaps to divide the populous – the Shining Path will have a place in the hearts of the poor. As long as children die from preventable diarrheal disease – in very close proximity to some of the continent’s most luxurious 5-star hotels – people will look for resources beyond the established mechanisms of the government to “level the playing field.”

I believe that Peru’s strongest intervention to combat the narco-traffickers is not the military or the Peruvian National Police. It is the continued development of their public health infrastructure, improvements in micro-economic loans, and the promotion of integrity driven politicians who work for the betterment of the millions of people living in desperate poverty in the Pueblos Jovenes and the antiplano of the Andean region.