The Media Portrayal of Cocaine Production in Peru

The topic I have chosen for my National 4 added value unit is “Cocaine Production in Peru” and a newspaper article about two British females that were caught trying to smuggle 1.5 Million Pounds of cocaine into Peru. I have chosen this topic because I wanted to learn more about Peru and the Drug Trade. Peru is known as the world’s cocaine capital, Most of the world’s drug related crimes come from Peru, In 2012, Peru surpassed neighbouring Colombia as the world’s largest producer of coca, the raw material for cocaine. This was the result of far more aggressive and successful eradication efforts in Colombia. Peru has since stepped up eradication aggressively, meaning that coca production last year was at its lowest level since 1998, and Colombia regained its position as the world’s leading producer. But this does not mean that the problems Peru faces are any less serious. Stacey Dooley investigates the world’s cocaine capital. I viewed the documentary on TopDocumentaries.com. Two british women thrown in Peruvian jail for attempting to smuggle drugs across the border. The source of the Article is “Independent NP”. The purpose of this documentary is to highlight and inform about drug trafficking in Peru, The evidence of this is the title of the documentary. The purpose of text two which is the Newspaper article is to warn people from selling and buying cocaine in Peru. The evidence of this is the title of the article.

In paragraph three I will write about the main ideas in the documentary. I picked the main five, The first main idea is to show the life of cocaine problems. The second main idea is the dangers of trafficking and cocaine. How special forces are dealing with it. The Forth main idea is interviews with people who got caught selling or buying cocaine and then is to show the perspective of how to produce cocaine. The five main ideas in the Newspaper Article are, To show what happened to the women who were apprehended, To give some context to the war and drugs. In MAZAMARI, Peru — It happens about four times a day, right under the nose of Peru’s military: A small single-engine plane drops onto a dirt airstrip in the world’s No. 1 coca-growing valley, delivers a bundle of cash, picks up more than 300 kilos of cocaine and flies to Bolivia. Roughly half of Peru’s cocaine exports have been ferried eastward on this “air bridge,” police say, since the rugged Andean nation became the world’s leading producer of the drug in 2012.Peru’s government has barely impeded the airborne drug flow. Prosecutors, narcotics police, former military officers and current and former US drug agents say that while corruption is rife in Peru, the narco-flight plague is the military’s failure because it controls the remote jungle region known as the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley. The third main idea is to show the amount of people in prison because of cocaine and various other narcotics, To show the cocaine problems and other issues.

In paragraph five I will write about interesting features in the documentary the main five are. Showing how to produce cocaine or other drugs on video. Interview with the peruvian cocaine producer, And people who got caught selling cocaine, There was a man who was producing cocaine for 20 years and he thought he was doing it for only soldiers but he didn’t know that normal civilians were also using it, after a while he got caught by the Peruvian police and the special forces. The third interesting feature is to show what happens when you get caught by the special forces / police The forth interesting feature is to show the life inside a Peruvian jail.

In this paragraph I will write about interesting features in the hit newspaper article “Independent-NP” The format and layout are similar to other newspaper articles, Consisting of paragraphs, Headlines and Colum’s. Word choice is another interesting feature of this article, Some are simple and some are more Most people know what this means so it would be easy for people to understand. An example of a sophisticated word would be “Pensive”. Not everyone knows what this means but the word “pensive” suggests they were apprehensive and a bit anxious. There is a variety of simple and complex sentence structures in the article, An example of a simple one would be “McCollum wore a beige T-shirt, tight dark jeans and had her hair in a bun” And an example of a complex one would be “Despite acknowledging they knowingly attempted to board a plane with the drugs at Lima’s Jorge Chavez airport in August, They went into the sentencing hearing not knowing whether their admissions – made as part of the plea deal – Would be fully accepted by prosecutors”. The way they present the information is Straight-Forward and in Paragraphs. Some other features would be their choice of metaphors such as “War on Drugs”.

I preferred the newspaper article “The Independent” because it has more information about drugs and Peru. I learned what happens if you get caught trying to smuggle drugs out of Peru, I would encourage others to read this that are trying to find out more about punishments for drug smuggling, I enjoyed this task because I got to learn a lot of Peru and what happens when you’re smuggling illegal contraband in and out of Peru.