Gangs in Peru Extort Schools with Threats of Violence

Gangs in Peru are targeting private schools with extortion schemes, threatening to kill students, parents, and administrators if they are not paid money.

The threats are not idle. NPR reported that police in Lima, Peru, arrested a 16-year-old who allegedly planted a bomb at the entrance of a school being extorted. This is part of a wider pattern of violence in the country’s capital city.

Gangs began to shift tactics as economic activity changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The New York Times. Gangs turned away from robbery and found extortion to be highly lucrative. Peru's national police reported just a few hundred extortion incidents per year prior to the pandemic. This number has jumped to 2,000 per month in 2025.

The extortion schemes are successful because authorities have been unable to stop the gangs from committing high-profile, deadly attacks against those that do not pay the demanded fees. Most of the extortion has been directed at poorer areas and individual shops in marketplaces because areas with more money and larger companies are more highly protected.

“Demands for protection fees reach victims through WhatsApp messages, handwritten notes or in-person visits,” the Times reported. “Retaliation for those who fail to pay is meted out through dynamite or arson attacks, or armed men on motorcycles who kill victims on the streets.

“The crime epidemic has overwhelmed the authorities and is threatening to transform a relatively tranquil Latin American country into a source of regional instability. The central bank has warned that crime was choking economic growth and experts say it is contributing to increased migration.”

However, the gangs soon discovered that private schools could be a prime target.

“Due to the poor quality of public education, thousands of private schools have sprung up,” NPR reoprted. “Many are located in impoverished barrios dominated by criminals—who are now demanding a cut of their tuition fees.”

As a result, many schools instituted online-only classes and a few have simply shutdown. France 24 reported one school moved to online classes for March—traditionally the first month of the school year in Peru—and opened for in-person classes after a month because it was able to obtain protection from five soldiers bearing assault rifles and tactical gear.

“The administrator at [a] Catholic elementary school says his colleagues reported extortion threats to the police,” according to NPR. “But instead of going after the gangs, he says, the police recommended that the school pay them off for their own safety. As a result, the school ended up forking over the equivalent of $14,000. The school is now factoring extortion payments into its annual budgets, the administrator says.”