Gang Violence Grips Peru as Extortions and Killings Rise

Jorge Tejada examined the charred remains of a bus in the parking lot near his recycling company in Lima. He had been burnt down overnight in what the residents said they were reprisals of a gang that shakes local bus companies.

Mr. Tejada, 50, lost the account of the number of attacks like this struck his neighborhood in the past year. The explosives left for Bodegas. Restaurants riddled with bullets. His own recycling court was burnt down and damaged after ignoring the request for a gang to pay him $ 530 per month.

It could have been worse. A pharmacist was shot down behind the counter of his store and several store owners have hidden, he said.

“It was once a quiet area,” said Tejada, describing how the old slum became an official district of the capital through decades of hard work and community organization. “Now we all live in fear here.”

An increasing number of Peruvians feel the same. The South American nation is struggling with an extraordinary wave of crime, fueled by an increase in extortion systems while gangs exercise growing control over urban areas.

Extortion reports across the country have been skyrocketed since 2017, from a few hundred per year to more than 2,000 per month this year, according to the national police. And the number of murders of Hired Hit Men has also jumped considerably in recent years, according to statistics.

Requests for protective costs reach victims through WhatsApp messages, handwritten notes or visits in person. The reprisals of those who fail to pay are imposed by attacks of dynamite or criminal fire, or armed men on motorcycles who kill victims in the street.

The crime epidemic overwhelmed the authorities and threatens to transform a relatively quiet Latin American country into a source of regional instability. The central bank has warned that an extortion epidemic stifles economic activity, and experts say that this contributes to increased migration.

“Peru seems to quickly climb the ranks of the most dangerous countries in Latin America,” said Eduardo Moncada, political scientist at Columbia University who focuses on crime in Latin America. “And it is a difficult position to participate, because it is very difficult to descend.”

So far this year, two journalists have been killed by armed men in public. In January, Dynamite exploded in the office of a regional prosecutor, injuring two people. And in March, two armed men shot the tourist bus from a popular cumbia group, killing its main singer, Paul Flores.

Subsequently, other musicians, including Christian Yaipén, the principal singer of another group of Cumbia, said their own runs with extorters.

“The whole country is suffering,” Yaipén told journalists. “We are all in Peru who have to go out to earn a living and do not know if we will go home living.”

In one of the worst episodes of violence, the bodies of 13 gold minors were discovered in May on a site operated by the largest gold extraction company in Peru, a massacre according to the authorities was orchestrated by a gang chief.

The efforts of the President of Peru, Dina Boluarte, to fight against violence by imposing emergency states do not seem to have done much to control the crawling crime.

Ms. Boluarte, who has been in power for three years, suggested that the increase in crime levels is partly the result of the large number of Venezuelan migrants who have arrived in the country in recent years, although there is no evidence that they commit crime at higher rates than Peruvians.

The Minister of the Interior of Peru and the police refused requests for an interview.

Ms. Boluarte promised to deploy a more difficult campaign against criminal groups. “Our message is clear,” she told journalists in April. “Under this government, crime has no place and it is our struggle every day.”

The extortion calls on the gangs because it provides a constant flow of money while helping cement to control a territory, said Dr. Moncada, who wrote a book on extortion in Latin America. “This allows you to recruit residents to become a kind of your eyes and your ears,” he said. “You are sort of known to the majority of the population thanks to this extractive relationship, which gives you a lot of authority.”

Extortion also requires frequent use of violence to instill fear and ensure compliance. Some Lima districts were so shaken by crime that schools have passed on online lessons.

Those who strike the most hard by extortion rackets are not the rich – who live in safe enclaves and can afford private security – but workers with small businesses who depend on a police force who lacks staff and who has also been hindered by corruption.

Dozens of police officers have been arrested in the past year and accused of work with gangs or weapons and traffic ammunition, according to local reports.

“The strategy of criminals today is to attack the most vulnerable areas. And why the most vulnerable areas? Because there is impunity there,” said Jesus Maldonado, the mayor of the greatest district of Lima, San Juan de Lurigancho. Hosting over 1.2 million people, the district has only 600 police officers, much less than richer neighborhoods, said Maldonado.

Practically all public operations that deal in cash can be the prey of extorters. Hardware, night clubs, even community popular soups and dog shelters would have been targeted.

A motorcycle taxi driver in Lima said he earned $ 11 at $ 19 per day, but that $ 1.30 for extorters. He said that it knows at least five other drivers who have been slaughtered for withstanding their requests.

Erika Solis, researcher at crime at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, said that violence had started to start the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when the locks emptied the streets and leads criminals to pivot extortion flight using WhatsApp.

The members of the Venezuelan gang who arrived as part of a wave of migration of this nation in difficulty also added to the crime problem, experts said.

Nearly a decade of political disorders, government’s intestine struggles and high -level corruption has ravaged the government’s ability to provide services, including effective police services. Peru has traveled five presidents in the past five years.

Critics claim that Ms. Boluarte and legislators contributed to the crime crisis by facing laws aimed at protecting themselves from prosecution. Ms. Boluarte is the subject of an investigation for possible accusations of corruption and human rights violations. She denied any reprehensible act.

A relatively new law makes it more difficult to maintain people accused of crimes in pre -trial detention and shorten prison sentences for the first offenders.

“It’s out of control,” said Marita Felipe, who lives in Lima, about the crime situation. His father, Luis Felipe, 62, was one of the four people killed inside a minibus in October. He had recently withdrew from the police after 32 years and returned home when a man went on board and started to shoot.

Referring to his father’s mandate as an officer, Ms. Felipe said: “During all this time, nothing happened to him, then we lose it like that.”

Carlos Saenz, a textile manufacturer in Lima, closed his shop in December 2023 after a gang demanding more than $ 5,000 sent him photos indicating that he was monitored. Now he organizes a workshop without public signaling. He also bought a gun.

“What’s going on if they come back after me?” He said. “Who will protect me?”