LIMA, Peru -- A body discovered in Peru's violent cocaine-producing region was identified as vacationing Tampa Tribune reporter Todd C. Smith, who was investigating the drug traffic in the northern Peruvian jungle, the newspaper said Wednesday.
Smith, 28, disappeared last Friday near the Amazon zone of Uchiza, 260 miles northwest of the capital of Lima.
Officials found his body sprawled alongside a highway leading to Uchiza, described by journalists and U.S. Embassy officials as a 'cocaine boom town.'
A contingent of embassy officials and journalists who knew Smith made the identification late Tuesday, said Tom Leary, assistant press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Peru.
'They identified the body and he had a taxi receipt in his pocket with his name on it. He'd been tortured and beaten,' said Carl Crothers, Tribune metro editor.
Authorities said Smith had been shot, leading them to believe the killing was an act of communist rebels or hit men hired by drug traffickers.
British journalist Simon Strong, who accompanied U.S. Embassy officials to Uchiza, said a placard found with Smith's body suggests the murder was the work of the Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso. The Maoist insurgents are said to protect cultivators of the coca plant, which after chemical processing yields cocaine.
The wooden sign read, 'In this way die North American spies linked to the Pentagon who are carrying out an anti-subversive plan in Latin America and especially in Peru.
'Death to the North American imperialism. Long live the Communist Party. Long live the war of the people.'
Smith was spending his vacation in Peru to gather information on drug activities in the Upper Huallaga region, the world's largest source of coca. He had interviewed Peruvian officials about the Shining Path and the country's coca eradication efforts.
'He was one of those seven-day-a-week journalists who lived and breathed the story,' said Crothers. 'He really thought Peru was the untold chapter in the drug war.'
Journalists said the region has been in turmoil since the Shining Path recently started extorting money from peasant farmers and Colombian traffickers. The terrorists use the profits to fund their guerrilla war against the Peruvian government.
'It's an area where any outsider is suspect, especially if you're a foreigner. They could take you for a DEA agent. The Sendero could think you're CIA. Everyone is armed,' said Michael Smith, a correspondent for The Washington Post and Newsweek who has lived in Peru for 16 years.
Todd Smith was last seen Friday by the driver who took him to the airstrip when their vehicle was stopped by a group of men at the roadside, according to a report by a United Nations team in the area.
The driver said he left Smith with the group and returned to town, the report said.
Smith had been scheduled to return to Tampa Monday and hadn't been heard from since Nov. 15.
'This is very, very sad news we've received,' Tribune Managing Editor Lawrence McConnell said.
'It was one of his dreams to become a foreign correspondent,' McConnell said. 'He exhibited a lot of drive, savvy and just plain smarts for this business we are in. Beyond that, those who knew him on the staff agree with me that he was just a fine, fine man.'
Smith was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and grew up there and in Tallahassee. A 1983 graduate of Washington and Lee University, he was fluent in Spanish and had spent 10 weeks with the Nicaraguan Contras in 1987. His chronicle of that experience appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.
'He was a Latin American expert,' said Crothers. 'He was not wandering around like some innocent. Why he went into that area by himself, I won't ever know the answer to. Other reporters in that region don't go into that area, but recently some people had said it was less dangerous.'
Smith was the first foreign journalist killed in Peru, but more than 47 Peruvian reporters and editors have been killed since the rise of the Shining Path in 1980.
Smith, a bachelor, is survived by his parents, Robert and Cecelia Smith of Tallahassee, Fla., and two sisters, Cecelia C. Smith and Carolyn B. Smith, also of Tallahassee.
