next noteworthy development occurred in 1994 when, in a cost-cutting measure, the U.S. government removed its spray planes from Belize. This left the BDF Air Wing to attempt to identify marijuana fields and send in ground units to eradicate the crops. Although the United States was prepared to return the planes the following year, the Belizean government chose, on environmental grounds, not to initiate a new spraying campaign, seeking instead to continue aerial reconnaissance and manual eradication. Thus, destruction of cannabis fields by hand became, once again, the centerpiece of the Belizean campaign to curb the marijuana trade.109 After eradicating a mere 12,700 plants in 1994, Belizean authorities took out nearly 300,000 in 1997, and over 200,000 and 270,000 in the following two years.
In response, marijuana farmers tried to confound the authorities with various tactics. Some turned to fast-growing varieties of indica marijuana, which could mature in four months or fewer. Many worked to hide their crop better by interplanting corn stalks with the cannabis plants or by employing the “underbrush method,” in which they cleared low-lying vegetation for cannabis cultivation but retained larger trees to screen fields from detection. Growers also took advantage of the Belizean climate, especially its regular and plentiful rainfall, planting cannabis seedlings and then leaving them until harvest.
Thus, some cannabis cultivation, transit, and export persisted.110 Moreover, even as the industry declined, particular large shipments were still prepared for export, with few repercussions for local traffickers. In 1986 police operating on the outskirts of Belize City discovered that a large shipping container, marked “Empty,” actually contained more than 3.5 tons of compressed marijuana. Businessman Jaime Perdomo was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to a $37,500 fine.111 In 1990, after authorities at Belize City Port searched another shipping container bound for Miami, marked “Empty” and yet holding more than 1.6 tons of marijuana, two Mennonite businessmen were arrested, but later acquitted, and no one else was held responsible.112 Similarly, in 1998 authorities discovered 3 tons of compressed marijuana in another supposedly empty shipping container that had brought imported goods to a Mennonite community and was then trucked around the Orange Walk district before being returned to the Port Authority shipping compound.
This record suggests a number of points. To the surprise of many onlookers, significantly curtailing the Belizean marijuana industry was not a hopeless undertaking. Belizean yields and exports did taper off substantially from the enormous crops of the early to mid-1980s, a testament to national eradication efforts. U.S. and Belizean officials hailed the curbing of the Belizean marijuana trade as an example of highly effective national antidrug actions, stimulated and supported by U.S. aid. However, just as Belize increased its market share with the Mexican antimarijuana campaign of the late 1970s, so Guatemalan producers gained ground as the Belizean yield fell. Even more important, to a much greater degree than occurred in any other Central American state, the extensive export of homegrown cannabis had developed organizations, infrastructure, and know-how in Belize that could be applied to the transit of South American narcotics. Whether antidrug successes against marijuana could be duplicated very much remained to be seen.
The International Trade in Narcotics
Even as the government of Belize trumpeted what had indeed been an impressive campaign to thwart the domestic marijuana industry, a far more serious problem grew rapidly in scope: the transit of cocaine shipments headed from South America toward Mexico and the United States. It soon became apparent that as official pressure on the domestic marijuana industry had crescendoed, various prominent Belizean drug networks had shifted into cocaine transshipment. In retrospect, while successes in eradication and interdiction played the most important part in stemming Belizean marijuana exports, another key factor was the aim of Belizean organizations to increase their earnings by trafficking even more profitable drugs.
The most arresting fact concerning the evolution of the Belizean drug trade is how significant prior marijuana trafficking was in preparing for later cocaine transit. Although a U.S. federal court once noted, “Marijuana and cocaine are different drugs in terms of sources, channels of distribution, methods of shipment and processing, and customers,” this general principle does not accurately encapsulate the Belizean experience.113 Here, drug organizations adapted for use in cocaine smuggling the very routes, methods, and logistics first developed in moving marijuana. Colombian, American, and Mexican cocaine traffickers found well-oiled export machinery in Belize, as well as a plentiful supply of experienced potential collaborators. The existing drug-smuggling infrastructure thus abetted the sweeping transformation of the Belizean drug trade.
As for the characteristics of the Belizean networks involved, a U.S. intelligence report stated, “Most Belizean trafficking organizations are small, tightly knit groups, and their members often are related. A trafficker often divides a large cocaine shipment among several smaller groups to transport it, thus minimizing his risk. Some organizations act solely as support teams to refuel aircraft and go-fast boats, or to transport cocaine overland.”114 Colombian cocaine cartels that had learned of successful marijuana export from Belize paid top dollar to use the same airstrips and networks of collaborators. For instance, a 1992 U.S. federal court case identified Frederick Pou as both a source of marijuana in Belize and an intermediary arranging refueling stops in Belize for aircraft traveling between Colombia and the United States.115
For Belizean traffickers the transition from marijuana to cocaine smuggling often occurred incrementally, rather than as an abrupt switch. In diversifying their operations, various Belizean organizations at first dabbled in moving cocaine. In the 1970s and 1980s some helped to transship very modest amounts of the narcotic, while still mostly concentrating on marijuana exports.116 A few helped to transport much larger cocaine loads. Indeed, U.S. court records reveal that from at least the late 1970s notable cocaine shipments periodically transited the country. For instance, Claude Griffin, a marijuana and cocaine trafficker who eventually turned state’s evidence, described for U.S. authorities three cocaine flights in 1982 that proceeded from Colombia into Belize for refueling and then on to Raceland, Louisiana, carrying a total of 600 kilos of cocaine.117 In general, however, over a period of many months, for one group after another, cocaine transshipment increased as marijuana smuggling diminished.
For that era, the transport of hundreds of kilos amounted to striking cocaine-trafficking ventures. In using Belize as an intermediate stop for flights in small planes, such smugglers did not normally off-load the drugs to be stored or forwarded via another method; instead, they simply refueled and continued north into Mexico or directly into the United States. One ring, broken up by authorities in Miami in 1984, was transshipping cocaine from Colombia right through Belize International Airport. There, with protection from airport and police officials, refueling occurred, prior to an onward flight into Florida.118 Indeed, by the early 1990s various U.S. federal court cases showed cocaine being transported by air from Colombia through Belize and into the United States.119 One prominent network, headed by Richard Lynn, smuggled numerous loads of more than six hundred kilos of cocaine into the southern United States via Belize. In 1988, after police in Marion, Alabama, interrupted a cocaine transfer, authorities captured two of the ring’s pilots, who eventually opted to become government informants. At trial, the pilots testified that in 1987 and 1988 they had often flown to Colombia and returned to the United States after refueling in Belize.120
In fact, since the first substantial Belizean cocaine seizure did not occur until 1990, more can be learned about the country’s early cocaine trafficking by examining U.S. court records. Indeed, to this day, most cocaine-transshipment schemes involving Belize have come to light through seizures abroad, and detailed information about prior successful transshipment ventures have frequently emerged from the testimony of police, informants, and others at foreign trials. This, in turn, reflects the fact that Belizean authorities soon discovered that curbing cocaine transit was a far more difficult challenge than curtailing marijuana production. A cannabis field offered an immoveable target that could be identified, sometimes with foreign technological assistance, approached by air or ground, and expeditiously dealt with. In contrast, opportunities to intercept cocaine were fleeting and required better intelligence and more nimble responses.
