A chief of the Ashaninka ethnic group was assassinated on the night of Saturday April 8 to Sunday April 9 in a region of the Peruvian Amazon agitated by violence and drug trafficking. An investigation is underway but Santiago Contoricón was known to oppose coca plantations.
With our correspondent in the region, Eric Samson
He had survived the massacres of the bloody Shining Path Maoist guerrillas in the early 1990s, responsible for the murder of more than 400 Ashaninka Amerindians during the Years of Lead in Peru, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He had survived all those who opposed the self-defense committees he led against narcoterrorism.
Santiago Contoricón did not survive, on the night of Saturday April 8, a hitman – or sicaire – who came on a motorcycle with an accomplice to murder him with several bullets in the head at his home in the small village of Puerto Ocopa, north of the valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, known as Vraem. This acronym is infamous in Peru because this valley is the first coca leaf production area in the country and the last refuge of the Shining Path.
El Programa de Recompensas offers important suma por información idónea y oportuna that facilitates the identificación y capture de los persons in charge of the asesinato del líder asháninka, Santiago Camilo Contoricón Antúnez.
🗞 Lee more ▶️ https://t.co/wwvIS2PPSd pic.twitter.com/KsnxzXyGyt— Ministerio del Interior 🇵🇪 (@MininterPeru) April 9, 2023
enmities
Historical leader of the Ashaninka Indians, Santiago Contoricón had long opposed the presence of coca fields in the region and therefore that of traffickers. He had thus attracted many enmities, in particular settlers who sow coca in the area of the Tambo River, in Otishi National Park. Last December, another indigenous leader who was fighting depredation in the Amazon was also gunned down in Peru’s central jungle.
In a tweet, the former Minister of the Interior Rubén Vargas did not wait for the conclusions of the homicide division of the Peruvian police to accuse drug traffickers of this assassination which was condemned by the authorities. “ Last night drug traffickers murdered Santiago Contoricon “, he wrote.
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