Experimental spraying with SPIKE
Experimental spraying with the herbicide SPIKE in the late 1980s in Uchiza, San Martín, as part of the coca eradication strategy. These actions contributed to the decline of Uchiza as a drug trafficking center and the displacement of coca growers to other areas.
In the late 1980s, experimental spraying with the herbicide SPIKE was carried out in the Uchiza area as part of coca eradication strategies. These fumigations were part of a series of obstacles that affected the town of Uchiza, which since 1984 had been an open drug trafficking center and perhaps the largest market in the valley. Experimental SPIKE spraying, along with the subsequent spread of the Fusarium Oxysporum fungus, contributed to the destruction of farmland in the region. As a result of these actions and other pressures, coca growers and drug trafficking firms would move into the Lower Huallaga (Juanjuí, Bellavista, Picota) and to a greater extent into Aguaytía and Pichis Palcazu.