In Peru, gangs target schools for extortion : NPR
Parents put their children at the private school of San Vicente in Lima, Peru, which was targeted for extortion in April.
Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images
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Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images
Lima, Peru – In a Roman Catholic primary school on the dilapidated periphery of Lima, the students are exuberant and apparently carefree. On the other hand, school administrators stress.
Gangsters are told that the school requires that school pay them between 50,000 and 100,000 Peruvians Sols – between $ 14,000 and $ 28,000.
“They send us messages saying that they know where we live,” explains the administrator – who, for fear of gang reprisals, does not want to reveal his identity or the name of the school. “They send us photos of grenades and pistols.”
These are not empty threats. A few weeks ago, he said, the police arrested a 16-year-old in the gang wages when he was bombing at the entrance to the school. The teenager had not been a student or had other links with the school.
The schools of Peru are easy objectives for extortion. Due to the poor quality of public education, thousands of private schools have emerged. Many are located in poor barrios dominated by criminals – which now require a reduction in their tuition fees.
Miriam Ramírez, president of one of the largest parents-teacher associations in Lima, says that at least 1,000 schools in the Peruvian capital are extorted and that most of them strive in gang requirements. To reduce the threat to students, some schools went to online lessons. But she says that at least five closed.
Miriam Ramírez is president of one of the greatest associations of Lima-teacher-teacher-teacher and that she says that at least 1,000 schools in the Peruvian capital are extorted and that most of them strive in the requirements of the gangs.
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If this continues, Ramírez says: “The country will end up with total ignorance.”
Extortion is part of a wider wave of crime in Peru who gained ground during the cocovio pandemic. Peru has also seen a huge influx of Venezuelan migrants, including members of the criminal group of Tren of Aragua who specializes in extortion – although the authorities concede that it is difficult to definitively connect the members of Tren of Aragua with these school extortions.
Francisco Rivadeneyra, a former Peruvian police commander, told NPR that corrupt cops are part of the problem. In exchange for bribes, he says, the police denounced gangs on the police raids pending. NPR contacted the Peruvian police to comment, but there was no answer.
Political instability has aggravated things. Due to corruption scandals, Peru has had six presidents in the past nine years. In March, the current president Dina Boluarte declared the state of emergency in Lima and ordered the army in the streets to fight crime.
But analysts say it made little difference. The extractors now operate in the poorest plates of Lima, areas with little police, targeting the walls in walls, the street stalls on the street and even the popular soups. Many members of the gang themselves come from poor backgrounds or the working class themselves, say the authorities, they therefore move in an environment they already know.
“We are barely enough money to buy food supplies,” explains Genoveba Huatarongo, who helps prepare 100 meals a day in a popular soup in the María villa squatters community.
Even so, she said, Thugs stabbed one of his workers, then left a note requiring weekly “protection” payments. Huatarongo reported threats to the police. To avoid similar attacks, nearby popular soups are now paying for gangsters $ 14 per week, she said.
But there is a repression.
Carla Pacheco, who runs a small grocery store in a Lima district of the working class, refuses to make the weekly payments of $ 280 that local gangsters demand, stressing that it takes a full month to win this amount.
Carla Pacheco manages a small grocery store in Lima and refuses to make the weekly payments of $ 280 that local gangsters demand.
John Otis for NPR
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John Otis for NPR
She paid a heavy price. One morning she found her three decapitated cats, her head hanging in front of her store.
Although Horrified, she holds up. To protect her children, she changed the schools of her children to make gangsters more difficult to target them.
It rarely comes out and now dispensation the grocery stores through its barred front door rather than allowing buyers inside.
“I cannot support corruption because I am the police ‘daughter,” said Pacheco. “If I pay the gangs, that would make me fall at their level.”
After a bomb was found at its gateway to March, the San Vicente school in North Lima hired private security guards and went to online learning for several weeks. When the normal classes resumed, San Vicente officials told students to wear street clothes rather than school uniforms to avoid being recognized by gang members.
“They could shoot students in revenge,” explains Violeta Upangi, waiting for school to take her 13 -year -old daughter.
Due to threats, around 40 students from San Vicente left school, explains social studies professor Julio León.
Rather than resisting, many schools have completed extortion requests.
The administrator of the Catholic primary school said that his colleagues have reported threats to the police. But instead of continuing the gangs, he said, the police recommended that the school will reimburse them for their own security. Consequently, the school ended up making the equivalent of $ 14,000. The school now takes into account extortion payments in its annual budgets, according to the administrator.
“This is either that,” explains the administrator, “or close the school”.
