twenty-first century, about 60 percent of the heroin seized in the United States originated in Colombia, and in 2000 the Colombian market share climbed further, given drought and eradication in Mexico.63 Although the underlying statistics are not precise, figs. 1.1 and 1.2 illustrate that by 1992 Colombia had decisively overtaken Mexico as the largest poppy and heroin producer in the Americas, a position it generally maintained for a decade.64 Most recently, an intensive eradication campaign, financed by the U.S. government, reduced net acreage in cultivation and reversed the trend of increased Colombian heroin trafficking. In particular, the U.S. Congress passed Plan Colombia, signed into law in 2000. This comprehensive $1.3 billion assistance package aimed to encourage the Colombian peace process while supporting counternarcotics measures, instituting judicial and democratic reforms, and protecting human rights.65 It was followed in 2001 by the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, which further expanded an array of narcotics policies, including intensive poppy-eradication campaigns.
Fig. 1.3 Heroin seizures in key Central American bridge states, 1991–1999
Sources: DEA, Resources, Costa Rica (2000), 1; DEA, Resources, Costa Rica (2003), 2; DEA, Resources, Guatemala (2001), 2; DEA, Resources, Guatemala (2003), 3; DEA, Resources, Panama (2000), 3; DEA, Resources, Panama (2001), 2, with the gaps in these data filled in by the country reports in INCSR (1991) to INCSR (2010).
Although Colombian heroin transshipment initially occurred primarily via Panama and Guatemala, it was not so confined for long, and by the early twenty-first century, officials across Central America had uncovered significant heroin-trafficking operations.66 While the drug can be transported in many ways, the most typical method has been by courier flown out of the major Colombian airports in Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín, and occasionally Barranquilla. After a layover somewhere in Central America, a different courier, whose documents would not alert customs officials to recent passage from Colombia, would carry the heroin to market. The drugs might be taped to the body; concealed in shoes, clothes, or suitcases; or swallowed in pellets of eight to ten grams, encased in wax or latex. In the early twenty-first century, drug networks started to transship larger individual loads: twenty to thirty kilos, with cocaine and heroin sometimes combined in a single shipment. As figs. 1.3 and 1.4 illustrate, Central American heroin confiscations steadily rose through the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, until opium-poppy eradication dramatically reduced the heroin flow from Colombia.
Fig. 1.4 Heroin seizures in key Central American bridge states, 2000–2010
Sources: DEA, Resources, Costa Rica (2000), 1; DEA, Resources, Costa Rica (2003), 2; DEA, Resources, Guatemala (2001), 2; DEA, Resources, Guatemala (2003), 3; DEA, Resources, Panama (2000), 3; DEA, Resources, Panama (2001), 2, with the gaps in this data filled in by the country reports in INCSR (1991) to INCSR (2011), 137, 206, 272.
Central American Cocaine Trafficking
Although marijuana and heroin exports have helped to initiate extensive drug shipments via Central America, the transshipment of cocaine hydrochloride truly elevated the stature of these small republics within the international drug trade. As early as the late 1970s Colombian traffickers came to grasp the vast, highly profitable potential of dealing in cocaine. Unlike marijuana, cocaine could be compactly packaged for transport. And, to turn a substantial profit, much less had to be stowed in a light plane, making for safer transshipment.67 Authorities periodically noted that the annual supply for all U.S. consumers could be carried by perhaps six to nine tractor trailers, depending on demand in the year in question.68 Cocaine also lacked marijuana’s distinctive smell; indeed, only specially trained police dogs could sniff out cocaine.69 Even more advantageous, in preparation for sale, pure cocaine could be mixed with other ingredients to increase its volume, thus adding profits.70 Most important, the narcotic was highly addictive and resistant to medical treatment, and its alluring image brought cocaine to be referred to as “the champagne of drugs.”71 One U.S. source declared, “In a competitive, achievement-addicted, ‘Type-A society,’ cocaine’s ability to make us feel empowered, euphoric, energetic, and ebullient fits our culture like a glove.”72
Criminal enterprises discovered that South American cocaine production could be readily expanded. Furthermore, they came to see that if cocaine could be supplied in sufficient quantities and at moderate prices, other drug users might well shift to it. Indeed, production rose, prices fell, and demand grew.73 The Rand Corporation estimated that 38–68 tons of cocaine had been smuggled into the United States in 1981, but four years later cocaine imports had increased to 111–153 tons. In 1985 the U.S. cocaine market peaked at 5.7 million users. These developments spurred competition among dealers, and cocaine purity climbed spectacularly. In 1983 the average purity of cocaine on U.S. streets stood at about 35 percent; by 1986 that figure had risen to 65 percent. In that year the U.S. State Department estimated that Latin American coca growers were producing fully 377 tons of cocaine. A decade later, a national narcotics intelligence committee figured potential cocaine production at 760 tons.74
And so, notwithstanding the lengthy history of marijuana transshipment or the extraordinary profits associated with the heroin trade, cocaine smuggling offered drug rings considerable competitive advantages. Most important, South American criminal organizations had easy access to supplies of coca, which were readily expanded as demand grew. For Central Americans the passage of immense quantities of cocaine immersed their countries in the drug trade. Although marijuana could readily be grown in the hills and mountains of Central America, producers failed to follow suit with coca plants (Erythroxylon coca), perennial natives of the eastern slopes of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. Rather, the steps to grow and process coca tended to occur in South America, and its link to Central America was almost exclusively in cocaine transshipment.
The lower reaches of the Andes were thought to provide the ideal location for farmers intent on large-scale coca-leaf cultivation with the requisite high alkaloid levels.75 While Panamanian authorities periodically found and eradicated minor plantations right along the Colombian border, significant modern production never really took hold outside of South America. Instead, the soil, climate, and long growing seasons favored Bolivian, Peruvian, and eventually Colombian coca farming. So, too, did the legions of poor subsistence farmers available to tend the crops, and the long-standing, and entirely legal, tradition within much of the Andean region of cultivating coca to chew to provide vitamins and energy and to ward off the cold and fatigue of high altitudes.
In the 1970s first Chilean and then Bolivian traffickers, most notably Roberto Suárez Gómez, helped to initiate the rapid growth of the cocaine trade.76 Then, through the latter 1970s and into the early 1980s Colombian organizations rose to dominance.77 Just as geographic variables are key to understanding the evolution of bridge-state drug trafficking, so they influenced Colombian ascendancy in cocaine production.
