of a Central American Bridge State
Since transferring tons of drugs from farmer to consumer requires extensive activities en route, smuggling organizations have carried out numerous functions within the bridge states. Drug enterprises have hired truck drivers, mechanics, loaders, bodyguards, and longshoremen. They have employed pilots familiar with flying small aircraft around Central America, preferably with a daredevil or outlaw mentality, often paying a per-kilo price to transship drugs.203 They have also contracted with local captains to traverse coastal waters, avoiding law enforcement and hidden hazards alike. At sea, Central American fishing vessels have refueled speedboats. On land, associates have supplied aviation fuel to drug planes. Indeed, the essential bridge-country function has been to serve as a pit stop, where aircraft, ships, and vehicles could be refueled, repaired, or serviced. During ongoing transshipment, safe houses have been provided for traffickers so that drivers, pilots, captains, and crews could be rested or rotated. After drugs have been imported, bridge states have functioned as forward staging bases, in which supplies could be warehoused while awaiting shipment to market.204
Some Central Americans have been hired to perform discrete tasks, such as leasing a private airstrip. Others have become more integral and multipurpose members of an organization, taking on different jobs in a series of aerial, maritime, or overland drug ventures. Leading bridge-state traffickers have even invested in transshipment schemes or masterminded aspects of them.205 Mid-level associates have hidden drugs in legitimate merchandise or repackaged them to make their transit more secure, such as vacuum-sealing them for water drops. When transshipment operations have gone awry, drug rings have called on Central American cells or cartelitos to salvage what they could from botched deliveries or compromised shipments. Sometimes an organization’s fugitives have been hidden from the DEA or other foreign police forces. Central American colleagues have assisted pilots and route supervisors looking to evade capture or to flee from jails and prisons. They have plotted out escape plans and furnished plane tickets, false passports, and new identities.
Valuable Goods and Services
Before his murder, U.S. trafficker Barry Seal, a convicted cocaine smuggler turned government witness, appeared before the President’s Commission on Organized Crime and claimed that the Medellín cartel was “as professional as any Fortune 500 company.”206 Certainly, the leading Colombian drug organizations once ranked among the wealthiest multinational businesses, with resources that could outstrip those that any state in the region could devote to combating them. With transit costs a small fraction of potential profits, traffickers have had money to finance tasks such as sending operatives to spread disinformation, while keeping tabs on the authorities, the competition, and informants.207 To determine changes in police tactics and strategies, drug organizations have developed informants within law enforcement and recruited local people—janitors, clerks, cab drivers, prostitutes, gang members, low-level employees— to assist in surveillance or provide useful tips.208 Major drug organizations have had the ability to bug phones and intercept and record conversations.209
While social scientists may be disinclined to focus attention on technological factors,210 the ability of transnational criminal groups to acquire and utilize high-technology items has vitally affected the manner in which traffickers and law enforcement have contended with one another in the bridge states. One reason that drug organizations have posed such a challenge to those aiming to curb their activities is their ability to spend lavishly on goods as well as expertise. They have purchased automatic weapons and such accessories as night-vision goggles and laser-equipped guns, most far superior to those of Central American authorities.211 Drug rings have invested in electronics: global-positioning systems, cell phone encrypting devices, voice-disguising scramblers, and spy equipment, sometimes employing former intelligence officers to operate them.212 Planes with sea-sweeping radar have been sent out in front of large maritime cocaine loads to try to ensure that the way was clear for following speedboats.213 These planes, some costing six-figure sums, have been outfitted with multiple 200- or 300-horsepower engines, enabling maximum speeds of up to fifty knots that provide the ability to outrun local pursuers.214
To maximize effective trafficking while minimizing losses of product and personnel in transit, drug rings have cultivated links to officials in the bridge states, including judges, politicians, military personnel, and law-enforcement agents. The most prominent traffickers, whether domestic or foreign, have routinely developed networks of friends and acquaintances from whom favors might be expected. They have aimed to extend their influence by giving generously to needy individuals, political campaigns, and particular communities. Drug rings have thus taken full advantage of the patron-client relationships long ingrained in Latin American life, expanding business contacts, utilizing extended families, and nurturing relationships with the influential.
Associates within the bridge states have assisted in identifying targets for bribery, and local “bagmen” have delivered payoffs. A great range of corrupted officials have then worked to thwart the seizure of drugs and the arrest and imprisonment of traffickers. However, drug organizations at work in the Central American republics have been so intent on increasing their profits and market share that their political interests have been strictly limited. Central American traffickers have not aimed to overthrow regimes, create parallel government functions, or overtly install themselves in political power, objectives that have occasionally influenced the substance of local and national politics elsewhere in Latin America.215 Rather than seeking to destroy the political system, as a terrorist might, drug rings operating in Central America have opted to work within the established social order, manipulating it to their benefit.216
Drug organizations have also frequently wielded violence and intimidation in the bridge states. Of course, this is an industry naturally prone to bloodshed: possible prosecution discourages written records; criminal transactions often go sour; discreetly informing on a partner or competitor may well benefit a trafficker; and, at least in certain places, drug loads are regularly stolen.217 All such activities have spilled into Central America, causing drug-related violence to soar. Moreover, to coerce the support of reluctant officials and to interrogate, cow, or eliminate rivals, untrustworthy or uncooperative employees, and others who might potentially threaten their activities, drug rings active in Central America have utilized thugs and gunmen.218 While foreign drug enterprises have sometimes dispatched their own professional hit men to the bridge states, they have also employed local associates to strong-arm people or even to carry out contract killings.219 In these activities present or former members of the police and military have often had access to weapons and useful local knowledge, including contacts among gangs and arms and drug dealers. They have often been eager to supplement painfully inadequate salaries, and some have had extensive experience in intimidating officials, frightening the populace, and carrying out extrajudicial killings.
In the face of
