CSI challenge

13 July 2011 Last updated at 00:00 GMT By Julian Miglierini BBC News, Mexico City Mexico is trying to train more staff who are qualified to investigate crime scenes Walk past the modern facilities of Mexico City's forensic headquarters and it is hard to imagine that the building hosts one of the grimmest aspects of Mexico's war on drugs.

Inside are dozens of unidentified corpses - most believed to be the victims of the drug gang violence that has engulfed parts of this country.

They were found in clandestine graves in the north of the country - a macabre twist to the bloodletting that has seen some 40,000 people killed since late 2006.

Some mortuaries in the violence hot spots - mostly in the north near the US border - have been overwhelmed by the discovery of hundreds of corpses.

"We only have facilities to deal with 20 bodies," Dr Jose Gutierrez Silva, head of the forensic service in the city of Durango told the BBC.

"We had to hire two trucks that are specially fitted to hold corpses."

Tortured victims

To date, some 250 bodies have been found in several mass graves in the state of Durango.

Julian Miglierini visits Mexico City's Forensic Medical Service

It has been a similar story in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, where more than 190 bodies were unearthed earlier this year near the town of San Fernando.

That is why many bodies have been brought to the capital.

At Mexico City's Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), work continues to try to give a name to the victims stored in temperature-controlled vaults behind two heavy metal doors.

The hope is that a positive identification means a body can be handed over to grieving relatives.

Mexican officials say the number of forensic staff employed at a national level is now 1,500 - up from 454 a decade ago.

Some states, like Durango, have opened new forensic laboratories over the last few months, while the while the main university, UNAM in Mexico City, is set to introduce a new degree course next year to train people in forensic science.

But the expansion of the forensic service will take time - while the victims keep turning up.

"We support states in the north of the country by receiving these bodies because they don't have facilities to keep them for long," says Dr Macario Susano Pompeyo, technical director of Semefo.

"And since they keep on finding bodies, that makes their work more difficult."

About 120 of the Tamaulipas bodies, some mutilated and bearing the signs of torture, were moved to Mexico City.

So far, less than a quarter of the corpses has been formally identified. None of the victims, Dr Pompeyo says, had any links with criminal groups.

"They were migrants making their way to cross the border with the US," he says.

That could explain why few families come looking for their loved ones.

"Many of them do not even know if their relative is missing or dead," says Dr Pompeyo.

Missing or murdered?

That is not the case of Maximo Bazaldua, who believes his brother-in-law Rafael, could be among the bodies at the Semefo facilities.

The last time he heard from him, in March 2010, Rafael was on a bus on his way to the US.

Limited storage means some unidentified victims have already had to be reburied

Over the phone, he told his family that the bus he was on had been stopped in Tamaulipas at a supposed checkpoint near San Fernando.

Mr Bazaldua's efforts to find his brother-in-law have so far been unsuccessful.

The search involves dealing with different departments, a lot of bureaucracy and costs money travelling to and from Tamaulipas.

"We're about to give up," he says.

Rafael seems set, for the foreseeable future at least, to remain on the list of some 6,000 people who have gone missing in Mexico since 2006, according to human rights groups.

As for the bodies in Semefo's vaults, their destiny contains a grim irony.

If in about a year, no relative has claimed them, they will be buried again in mass graves.

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Cocaine challenge

23 June 2011 Last updated at 14:11 GMT By Dan Collyns BBC News, Ene-Apurimac Valley, Peru On the front line of Peru's drugs war

Peru's Ene-Apurimac valley is the world's densest coca-producing belt but it is also home to some of the Andean nation's poorest people.

More than half the population live in poverty, yet the Andean-Amazonian valley, better known by its Spanish acronym as the VRAE, is a virtual drugs factory supplying Argentina, Brazil and Europe with high quality cocaine.

Coca farmers here no longer limit themselves to growing and harvesting their plantations.

They have branched out into processing the drug in hundreds of artisanal "cocaine kitchens" scattered throughout the valley.

Soldiers stationed in the VRAE say they have come across Olympic swimming-pool sized pits where piles of coca leaves drenched in a cocktail of chemicals are stamped on by villagers as if pressing grapes for wine.

Seizures

Most experts agree Peru's cocaine producers are now more efficient, getting more of the drug out of the raw material of coca.

This area can see up to five coca harvests in a year.

Soldiers are fighting "terrorism and trafficking", officers say

The UN's World Drug Report for 2011 showed the VRAE's coca coverage increased by 13% in 2010 to 19,700 hectares (48,679 acres) - a third of Peru's total of 61,200 ha.

Peru's coca leaf coverage is practically on a par with Colombia's.

Overall, Colombia's coca coverage decreased by some 16% between 2009 and 2010, while Peru's rose by 2%.

And on some measurements, Peru is a bigger producer of coca leaf than its neighbour.

In both 2009 and 2010, Colombia seized 10 times more cocaine than Peru, according to the UNODC figures. Most analysts agree this suggests Peru is the biggest de facto exporter of the drug.

Some 4,500 military personnel are deployed throughout the VRAE, an area that straddles the Andes mountains and the Amazon jungle.

The soldiers' main mission is counter-insurgency to combat the estimated 500 Shining Path fighters who control much of the drugs trade.

The US state department has offered a reward of up to $5m for information leading to the capture of the rebels' leader in the VRAE, Victor Quispe Palomino.

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The powers-that-be are the Shining Path and the drugs trade. What kind of state presence is that?”

End Quote Ruben Vargas Security expert Gen Luis Howell, chief of the Joint Command of the Peruvian Armed Forces, says they are combating "not just terrorism but also drug trafficking".

He acknowledges that they have made few gains but he says his men have pacified the area and kept the rebels away from population centres.

But the security operation has come at a price. Some 60 police and army officers have been killed in the past three years but no important Shining Path leader has been captured or killed.

Ruben Vargas, a Peruvian security expert, says both the military operation and attempts to bring economic development and basic services to the VRAE have failed.

"In the VRAE - which is the principal cocaine-processing laboratory in Peru - many villages don't have drinking water or electricity, the schools don't have teachers, the clinics don't have medical supplies and the powers-that-be are the Shining Path and the drugs trade. What kind of state presence is that?" asks Mr Vargas.

Lucrative journey

The predominance of the narco-economy drives many young men to join the army of "mochileros", or backpackers.

Each carrying between 10kg to 20kg of unrefined cocaine in their packs, they march in columns out of the valley and into the Andes.

President-elect Ollanta Humala: Tackling the drugs trade is a key task

Choosing the most remote routes and protected by Shining Path rebels, they trek for several days until they reach a staging point where the drugs are bought.

They can earn up to $500 (?313) a trip, a small fortune in VRAE.

"Which would you rather be - a soldier or backpacker?" jokes army Gen Leonardo Longa.

Peruvians still tend to run the drugs trade in the country's interior, but security experts say that Mexican drug gangs, particularly the Sinaloa cartel, have displaced Colombian drug lords in Peru's coastal cities.

In recent years, there have been several drug-related killings, mainly of Colombians.

The murders caused alarm because they were unusual.

Gustavo Gorriti, an investigative journalist who focuses on security and corruption, believes organised crime could "quickly get out of control".

"When it reaches a certain level it's so much harder to eradicate. Mexico has a mid to high-level insurgency - it's a for-profit, capitalist insurgency but an insurgency nonetheless," he says.

Mr Vargas believes that if and when the Peruvian authorities decide to really tackle drug trafficking, this will mean more seizures of cocaine.

That in turn will trigger a response from the traffickers, he says, and "that is when we will see a rise in the levels of narco-violence".

The incoming government of President-elect Ollanta Humala may well face key decisions.

Mr Humala's election manifesto spoke of decriminalising coca farmers and even the low-level cocaine processors and smugglers.

Mr Gorriti believes that would be a positive step away from the "repressive" policy of the US-led counter-narcotics efforts, which he says criminalises much of the population in the VRAE.

Mr Vargas, however, says being too lenient with those involved in the drugs trade would be "naive".

The real concern is that if Peru's increasing cocaine production is accompanied by a spike in organised crime and the presence of Mexican cartels, the small coca farmers and small-time producers would be the least of the administration's worries.

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