Cocaine barons seek new routes
Guyana Chronicle
July 6, 2004
THE routes ganja traders from Colombia and Jamaica had been using for decades (and still use) to get their supplies directly to the southern United States, or to The Bahamas, became well-established ones through which cocaine from Colombia and elsewhere in South America was delivered after stopovers in Jamaica to make final arrangements.
So, the cocaine trade in and through Jamaica was established:
Through the infrastructure and routes used by Jamaicans and Colombians traditionally to smuggle ganja to the United States;
Through the United States posse connection; and
During the rapid growth of the underground economy, facilitated by informal commercial imports which mushroomed in the 1980s, with scores of Jamaican higglers travelling to South, Central and North America and in the Caribbean, to buy and sell goods, and the concomitant smuggling of contraband.
Millions earned
International cocaine trafficking syndicates are huge, powerful businesses, earning millions of U.S. dollars in profit. They are run as highly sophisticated and organised enterprises with their own high-performance, fix-it managers and specialists, the latest in computer, communications and other technology and vicious, deadly hitmen, including sicarios (gunmen on motorcycles), who don't hesitate to kill to protect and preserve the secrets of their cocaine syndicates, their bosses' market share, or to clear all obstacles to expanding or preserving turf.
Jamaica's strategic position in the Atlantic Ocean, along the sailing routes from Central and South America, and its proximity to the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba leading up to The Bahamas, make it an ideal way station for large, powerful go-fast boats carrying cocaine from Colombia, which is said to be the source now of 80 per cent of cocaine destined for the United States, Canada and Europe. But even more importantly, international cocaine traffickers operate here because it is a low-risk country that is very conducive to the operation of their businesses. They can buy all the co-operation they want from the police and other officials and they can, with ease, carry out their illicit financial transactions.
Basically, the Jamaica Constabulary and the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard do not have the resources to counter them, but help from the American, British, Canadian and, these days, the Colombian drug intelligence services, is always a satellite phone call away.
The United States Government estimates that up to 12 per cent or 110 tonnes of the cocaine heading to the United States from South America and the Caribbean travels through the Jamaica-Cuba-Bahamas corridor. Most of the cocaine originates in Colombia and gets to The Bahamas via go-fast boats from Jamaica. Depending on the weather, the payload and the power of the engines, a go-fast boat leaving Colombia's north coast in the area of the Guajira Peninsula or Santa Marta, takes an average of four to five hours to make it from there to Jamaica, according to a drug intelligence expert. It takes about the same four to five hours to get to The Bahamas from Jamaica, which is roughly midway between two countries. Drug intelligence sources say go-fast boats are the conveyances of choice for cocaine traffickers as "they are a more elusive means of transportation and the reduced load-size keeps the losses due to interdiction or otherwise, to a minimum."
The INCSR states that these days cocaine smugglers are using the area around the Pedro Cays increasingly, as a staging/re-supply point for go-fast boats travelling from Colombia to Mexico.
Other Means
But cocaine smugglers use several other means to transport the drug from Jamaica to the U.S. and The Bahamas. Light aircraft, the workhorse of the ganja trade in the 1970s and 1980s, are being used increasingly these days, it is reported, with some clandestine airstrips, long out of use, being reactivated in recent months. The planes make air-drops of cocaine in waterproof packaging, at sea, where they are picked up quickly by go fast-boats provided by the Jamaican-based connection, be they Colombian, Bahamian or Jamaican. Sometimes go-fast boats rendezvous at sea to take aboard cocaine or fuel. With complicity and subterfuge, some of these light aircraft even take on their cocaine payloads at official aerodromes here. Also, the traffickers use commercial shipping containers, and couriers who board cruise ships or commercial aircraft with the cocaine ingested or concealed on their person or in luggage.
However, the installation on June 1, 2002 at Jamaica's two international airports Norman Manley, east Kingston, and Sangster, Montego Bay, St. James of Ion Scan drug-trace detection equipment has reduced drastically, the smuggling of cocaine to the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere, by couriers who swallowed the drug in condoms. Thwarted by detection technology here, cocaine swallowers have since been turning their attention to the 'safer' airports of the Eastern Caribbean from which to smuggle the drug. But every so often some get through here only to be caught at airports in the United Kingdom.
Cocaine smuggling by go-fast boats has become something of a cat-and-mouse game, now that the U.S. Government has provided the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard with three go-fast boats to patrol the island's 1,022-kilometre (635-mile) coastline, and the Narcotics Police Division is being supplied with real-time intelligence by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administra-tion. But the security forces' presence on patrol is still a mere drop in the ocean.
Resident Managers
The cocaine market is known for its high degree of adaptability. So the cocaine traffickers who run it are always aggressively seeking to establish new ones in new geographical locations. So although the large criminal organisations such as the Medellin and the Cali cartels which ran the global cocaine market were disbanded in the last 10 years, several smaller syndicates have stepped in to run their own trafficking organisations, where the larger ones haven't re-formed, to an appreciable extent.
What is beyond doubt is that the cocaine trade has in the last five years or so, grown to the point where Colombian syndicates have sent resident managers to Jamaica to oversee and direct their operations, establishing veritable command and control centres here. The new arrangements were made, drug intelligence sources say, after bad experiences the Colombians had with their Jamaican partners-in-crime, some of whom are said to have ripped off the South Americans. In some cases the Colombian syndicates have jettisoned the Jamaicans, making alliances instead with nationals from The Bahamas, thus cutting out the Jamaicans as middle men.
But make no mistake about it, Jamaica has its own powerful native-son cocaine dealers. A profile of the 'Mr. Bigs' of the cocaine trade is not easy to come by; some are pretty nondescript and low-profile, your average 'businessman', whether it be car mart, auto parts store, gas station, entertainment complex, supermarket or store operators. And, of course, there are your dons who live in posh, leafy suburbs, whether in Kingston, Ocho Rios, Mandeville or Montego Bay, but do much of their business daily in the hustle and bustle and noise and dust and grime of their towns.
Social recognition
Some big cocaine dealers have legitimate social recognition through their front businesses, though their drug connections are not widely known. Others aspire to social recognition and to respectability through highly-visible funding of football, cricket, and other sports teams and to charities, and despite what party officials will say to the political parties and candidates of their choice. Politicians will never, these days, hug them in the glare of the media, but they don't refuse the drug traffickers' money. And there is simply no way in small-town Jamaica that the top echelons of the political parties can avoid knowing that some of their most ardent, influential and generous supporters (not the mere gofers and foot soldiers and genuine political grassroots workers), are involved in drugs and extortion and all that goes with serious crime.
Some Colombian capitans of cocaine have been living in Jamaica for the last several years, becoming during the period, firmly embedded into the fabric of the Jamaican society.
Of course, they must never to be confused with law-abiding Colombians who have established families here over the years and are engaged in businesses and other enterprises, the operations of which have always been above board.
Victims
Indeed, in Colombia, thousands of people have paid with their lives over the years in their fight against the cocaine trade. So all Colombians or all Jamaicans can't be corrupt, or the two nations would have imploded years ago. And principled, courageous Jamaicans have been victims of the drug fight here during the last several years. The Colombian and Jamaican drug traffickers rely on corruption and violence to carry out their business.
Their combination of bribes and threats, known in Spanish as plata o plomo (silver or lead) is an integral part of the globalised drug trafficking strategy. In other words, if they can't buy you, bribe you, corrupt, they intimidate, then kill you. Take the case of the murdered divers Carl Lubsey, Aubrey Farr and Donovan Henry whose job was to ensure that drug traffickers did not smuggle out their drugs attached to the hulls of ships. Shipping lines are routinely fined up to US$1,000 an ounce if marijuana or cocaine is found on their vessels in the U.S.
The three anti-narcotics divers had repeatedly refused the drug traffickers' plata (silver) and were in typical Colombian fashion, given instead, their plomo (lead) murdered in cold blood.
Stigmatised
Jamaica, like Colombia, has become stigmatised by the portrayal of both countries and their nationals, as drug traffickers. It didn't happen overnight; for some years now their nationals have been viewed with suspicion at foreign airports, first, for their marijuana connection, now as cocaine carriers. For example, Jamaica hit the headlines in the 1970s and 1980s with the seizure of Air Jamaica, Eastern Airlines and American Airlines planes in the USA for ganja found aboard, or with the arrest of Jamaicans at U.S. airports with ganja. In later years it has been the cocaine swallowers at British airports. For example, from January to August 2001, a total of 266 Jamaicans were arrested at London's Heathrow and Gatwick international airports as cocaine swallowers. During the same period, 444 people were arrested at the two international airports here Norman Manley, east Kingston, and Sangster, Montego Bay on charges of attempting to smuggle cocaine and ganja out of Jamaica.
But there is another side of the undeserved stigma that must be looked at. Drug trafficking is a multi-connect business. The focus tends to be on the Jamaicans or the Colombians caught abroad, but in this very lucrative business, it takes at least two to tango. So the Jamaican or the Colombian or the Bahamian drug trafficker can't operate without their counterparts in the U.S. or Canada, England or elsewhere. It's an organised conspiracy. And officials in several countries will, of necessity, have to be bribed for the trafficking and money laundering to succeed. Drug-smuggling can succeed only with the assistance of people who have the authority to do the things the traffickers want done.
Bribery
So in a country as small as Jamaica, to achieve whatever illegal act is desired, it is necessary to bribe officials at the highest levels, whereas in larger countries you can achieve what is desired much easier, by bribing officials at the lower levels. If, for instance, you wanted to move 1,500 kilos of cocaine from Port Royal to Runaway Bay, you would hardly seek the assistance of a constable you would look, instead, much higher up the totem pole for the guarantees necessary to protect that huge investment. Cocaine is never just sent to Jamaica or elsewhere on speculation. It's usually sent to fill specific orders.
Drug trafficking, cocaine or ganja, can hardly go on without the complicity of the police, so traffickers invariably establish connections with corrupt law enforcement agents. Let's face it, who better to offer protection or escort services to the trade than the police?
Colombian (and Jamaican) drug traffickers fit right into the fabric and framework of the society in which they live. And lest it be forgotten, they don't live in isolation. They are supported by people who provide the services they need couriers, drivers, lawyers, accountants, bankers, police, and experts and suppliers of technical services. But overall, except for the eye-catchingly ostentatious, they tend to be
pretty faceless, blending into the crowds of developers, hardware store operators, car mart operators and your neighbourhood "businessman".
For a long time most of the Colombian trafficking managers posted here were white, but in many cases these days, they have been replaced by blacks who, for some strange reason, are often mistaken for Cubans. But not every Latino involved in the cocaine trade in Jamaica is Colombian. Over the years, for example, men from the Dominican Republic have been playing big roles in the Caribbean in the transhipment of cocaine, working as hired crews for go-fast boats and at whatever other jobs they are trusted to do.
'Jose Colombo'
But Colombians dominate the trade. Their job, and that of the other traffickers, is to take advantage of the strong demand and high price for cocaine in the U.S., Canada and Europe and get it to the market as fast as possible. To ensure that that happens, they put in the infrastructure and controls that their syndicates require.
Take the case of a Colombian national to whom we shall affix the name 'Jose Colombo', to protect his identity. Bilingual and in his early 30s, he came to Jamaica in the late 1990s and lived all over the country from Kingston to Montego Bay for about five years, overseeing cocaine operations for the Colombian syndicate which assigned him here. As an indication of the seriousness of his mission, Jose Colombo was always armed with an unlicensed, and so illegal, weapon. He packed a Ruger semi-automatic pistol. He used several aliases and had as many passports from as many countries to go with them.
(Reprinted from the Jamaica Gleaner)