Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It

by Magnus Linton

  Besides two simple roads linking seaports Buenaventura and Tumaco to the inland, the 1300-kilometre coast consists exclusively of dense rainforest inhabited by the descendants of slaves and isolated American Indian tribes. The multitude of rivers — the sophisticated nervous system of the cocaine trade — flow from the western mountain range, down through the jungle, and then out to sea. At the far end, closest to the mountains, are the fields and the paste labs. Further out, usually just a few kilometres from the coast, are the refining laboratories: las cocinas, or ‘the kitchens’. In many of the thousands of estuaries, well-packed boats — simply called ‘go-fast boats’ by the Coast Guard and the US drug squad, the DEA — are hidden, ready for departure to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Mexico.

  Every year around 200 tonnes of cocaine passes through the water outside Pozón, and since the Coast Guard acquired more helicopters, a better radar system, and a faster armada, more and more overloaded boats have been caught as they make their dangerous, high-speed journey to the north. As soon as they are discovered but before the police catch up to them, the smugglers throw their cargo overboard. Once caught, they attempt to convince the officers that they have ‘just been out fishing’, but since these boats are always equipped with four 250-horsepower motors, these kinds of excuses tend to fall on deaf ears. The young men end up in prison; but as the Colombian Pacific coast is one of the poorest regions in Latin America, there is never a shortage of new recruits ready to step in and replace them. They have nothing to lose, and the mafia has jobs for everyone.

  ‘The drums that come floating in are of two varieties,’ Leo says. ‘Either 20 or 60 kilograms. Sometimes they break, and then the kilo packets drift around freely.’

  In the rest of the country ‘miracle catch’ is a slang term for the guerrilla kidnappings of wealthy people, but here it refers to the attractive stuff that may be found in the water. Lucho, a young man from the area, has found goods on a number of occasions and now owns a large plastic boat equipped with two Yamaha motors. Today, all he ever does is surf and look for coca. For him, fishing is a thing of the past.

  Leo’s wet arms glisten as he gazes out to sea longingly. For the last 20 years he has been taking his canoe out at 5.00 a.m. six days a week, in the hopes of catching one, two, or three marlin, the mighty swordfish of the Pacific Ocean, and selling them in town for 20,000 pesos, 11 USD, each. But for a while now he has been crossing his fingers every morning, hoping that he will soon be able to leave this profession behind and spend his time drinking beer and watching television, activities he would like to indulge in once he has met with the same good fortune as the many other villagers whose prayers have been answered.

  As the rain subsides, the men reach the area where marlin always congregate in abundance. This place is the primary source of income for the village, a small circle in the green sea where the loyal fish come every morning just to be caught. And so it has been from year’s end to year’s end. Their well of food is a blessing, but the problem here is that the quiet lifestyle, filled with repetition, gets boring. Nothing ever changes. Yesterday and tomorrow are always the same as today, while the people in Pozón dream about doing the things they see others do on television: driving around in cars, going to the movies, shopping, studying.

  Shadows from a flock of pelicans overhead pass over the water like a rolling chain just above the surface. Yet again, Leo searches the approaching waves. Up to now he has always come back empty-handed, apart from fish. ‘All the same, I feel good. Maybe it’ll be my turn today.’

  POZÓN IS JUST one of the many villages in Colombia where every absurd facet of the modern cocaine complex is represented. The town’s fate was determined by its location on the largest smuggling route in the world, and whether they like it or not, the inhabitants have been subjected to the consequences of drug trafficking, thanks to all the valuable cargo that floats ashore and somehow has to be dealt with.

  The first time cargo drifted ashore was more than two decades ago, when the villagers still hadn’t developed the more modern sense of commerce that would later refine their way of handling it. Pozón is located in Chocó, the poorest region in Colombia, and is just as cut off from the rest of the country socially and culturally as it is geographically. More than 70 per cent of los chocoanos are illiterate — three times the national average — and since 1819, when the Republic of Colombia was established, the central government has ignored the region in every respect, with the exception of the military. But gold prospectors, gem hunters, and loggers have occasionally, with the blessing of the state, come out every now and then from the white interior with their private mini-armies, and, convinced of being on a holy crusade, executed the few savages who have dared to stand in their way. This is how it still works today, though now cocaine is the cause of bloodshed and the guerrillas have become yet another stakeholder. Wise from experience and naturally sceptical of the state, many chocoanos have difficulty in identifying as Colombians, and whether they are the descendants of slaves or indigenous people, cooperation and collectivism have, for better or worse, been their only means of survival.

  When the inhabitants of Pozón gradually became aware of what the strange goods bobbing up from the sea were, they sold it all to Leopoldo — the only man in the village who expressed an interest — for a song. It still seemed quite a sizeable amount to the fishermen, who were not used to handling large sums of money, and after sharing the cash, weeklong parties broke out in the village. No one went fishing again until a food shortage caused the women and children of the town to revolt. Once the money gave out, it was a return to the toils of everyday life.

  Today the village still consists of little more than a muddy collection of shacks. The place is surrounded by tropical rainforest, with an incredible range of plant and animal species; a huge lagoon, which is home to mating whales every September; and long black-sand beaches with occasional odd-looking limestone pillars sticking up. It rains here almost constantly. Only a spot in Hawaii, atop a volcano, has more annual precipitation than Chocó, and when the sun does manage to break out following a thunderstorm, both the rainforest and the largest ocean in the world are cast in a dramatic and beautiful light.

  Yet as more fishermen returned home with a plastic-wrapped white catch instead of fish, the sense of community began to deteriorate, and new forces started to steer the village in a different direction. The increased presence of policemen, and the villagers’ growing knowledge of what cocaine is actually worth, made for more discreet business dealings, and the fishermen began to divide their fortune between as few, instead of as many, as possible. But here everyone knows everyone else’s business.

  Leopoldo is still the most talked-about person in town and, according to the village gossips, he is still the one who purchases the found cargo, though he has gradually had to pay more for it. The prerequisites for managing the logistics of getting the illegal cargo into another boat heading north — especially dealing with the essential police and mafia contacts — include both money and personal connections, qualifications that only Leopoldo has.

  Another person who has made a great deal of money and is the object of Leo’s envy is Lucho, who distinguishes himself from everyone else by his expensive shorts and surfboard, and by taking frequent trips out to sea on his new boat, equipped with large motors. When asked how his life circumstances changed overnight, Lucho just smiles and says ‘no comment’, though a number of men in the village confirm Leo’s version of the story: Lucho found two undamaged 64-kilogram drums five years ago and sold them right away for what was becoming a standard price — 2.7 million pesos, or 1500 USD, per kilo — and with his newfound fortune purchased a fast boat. This made it possible for him to find floating cargo much more easily than all the slow-canoe fishermen; over time, the inhabitants of Pozón have learned how to assess the ocean currents and have realised that drums dumped far out at sea tend to be drawn towards a particular ba
y located several nautical miles southward, and the only way to get there is by motorboat. By now Lucho and some other men have somewhat of a monopoly on the business, and they search this treasure chest of nature regularly. The relationship between these men with motorboats and the police and guerrillas grew, leaving the poor fishermen, with their patched-up canoes, more and more often without their share of this modern maritime bounty.

  Iván, a fisherman with leathery skin, is one of the many village elders to have found large quantities of cocaine, although the only place it took him was down a slippery slope. While chronic alcoholism is common in the village, when Iván pulled up no one knows how many kilos, he took a mental vacation by another means: pot. Using cocaine goes against Chocó’s cultural norms, and considering how quickly it can be turned into cash, it rarely occurs to the villagers to use it themselves; cannabis, on the other hand, is a well-established drug. Iván’s children watched their father’s status as the most prosperous fisherman in the village decline, and today he compensates for his glorious past with overblown mythomania.

  ONE DAY A man named John Wayne comes walking into town. His arrival follows yet another tropical rainstorm, and all the dirt roads in the village are flooded. He pronounces his name ‘John Veiner’, and explains that his mother idolises a film star he does not really know much about, except for his name.

  ‘I got here yesterday,’ he says. ‘Things were getting too intense down there.’

  There is a rhinestone stud in his left ear, and it is readily apparent that he is not a local. It is not so much his clothes or features that give him away as an outsider as his anxious expression, nervous body language, and obvious desire to participate in whatever is going on, to get involved. He is looking to make new friends. Someone with a lancha — a motorboat. He has heard of Lucho.

  John Wayne is from Buenaventura, a city inhabited primarily by mothers who have lost sons and daughters to drug-related warfare. One of these women, Fabiola Rodriquez, had a son named Jeffrey, who was shot by a paramilitary. Shortly after the murder, two men came to her home and warned her that if she reported the incident to the police, they would kill the rest of her family. But soon after that, the murderer was killed. Luz-Dary Santiesteban, a mother from the Buenaventura district of La Gloria, was recently informed that the six neighbourhood boys who had left a few weeks prior to ‘work in Chocó’ were all dead. Melba Canga, who lives in the Punta del Este district, found her son Pepe’s body one day in a pile of 12 massacred youths. The murderers — five policemen were involved, according to Melba — had poked out the boys’ eyes, doused the bodies with acid, and flayed them. The process is referred to as ‘rendering unidentifiable’. But they had neglected to burn the clothes, so Melba and the other mothers — fathers are usually missing — could identify whose son was whom based on their jeans, shoes, and body parts.

  ‘My mum told me to leave,’ says John Wayne. ‘It didn’t matter where. Just to get away.’

  The cocaine industry — in the modern guise of decentralised ‘mini-cartels’, which often work in cooperation with the police or the guerrillas — has been the largest employer in Buenaventura for a very long time, and the range of available jobs is endless: hiding weapons, moving packages, fetching boats, packing, purchasing fuel, killing snitchers, recruiting workers, collecting money, bribing authorities, conveying threats, diverting guards, and so on. But it was not until a new role started to generate a large number of jobs that rumours began to make even those at the bottom of the ranks uncomfortable. As the drug squad gained more resources and a better intelligence system, drug syndicates suddenly needed young people who could act as decoys and create confusion. Successfully launching a boat with, for example, 500 kilos on board will often require dispatching several other boats with smaller amounts to distract the law-enforcement officers so that the big loads can make it out while those on guard are busy elsewhere. The people running the decoy boats are either captured and end up in prison, or are lost at sea once their fuel runs out, while the people running the big loads stand to make 25,000 USD. The problem is that the young people doing the running never know what sort of trip awaits them: death or dollar. But Rodrigo, one of the teenagers in the town, claims that half of his classmates from high school are now working in drug trafficking, and thinks that the prospective payoff is worth the risk of getting caught: ‘All the young people in Buenaventura dream of being approached by someone asking them if they’d like to take a boat to Panama for 50 million pesos [25,000 USD] for eight days’ work. Who would say no to that? Who?’

  At first John Wayne is not completely sure why he has ended up in Pozón, of all places, a little hole in the ground in a dense rainforest landscape several days’ travel from his hometown. A huge rainbow behind him forms what looks like an enormous halo around his weather-beaten face, a rainbow that ends in what could be Panama, the place where most of the drugs are reloaded and the desperate adventurers get paid. With his back to the colourful arch and the scent of wet forest surrounding him, John Wayne says that, judging by his own family’s track record, the odds are stacked against many of these types of trips going well. He is willing to take risks to make money, but not any risk. His father is in prison in Panama, having been caught on arrival; his brother is also in jail for the same offence, as is his godfather. But this notwithstanding, the cocaine coast is still a more attractive destination than that forced upon so many other internally displaced people, who end up having to relocate to Bogotá or Medellín for a life in the slums. Being on the lookout for abandoned cargo is relatively easy, and it isn’t really considered illegal: it’s considered a passive crime to find and retrieve a drifting load, not something one does with malice aforethought. And not even the authorities consider it feasible to demand that poor people turn in any cocaine they find.

  But to succeed in this harmless yet occasionally very lucrative activity, John Wayne needs a boat, preferably a motorboat, plus someone to work either for or with. He looks up. ‘Where does Lucho live?’

  WHEN VIEWED FROM out at sea, the coast looks like a giant oil spill has just washed up over the beaches, cliffs, and jungle. All is black and white. When the sun is behind the clouds and the rain pours down, the forest is black and the sea grey. But as soon as the sun comes out, colour returns and the sea becomes a beautiful emerald green again. The water is soft and warm, and the scent of the sea permeates the air. Life.

  Leo bites down hard on a thick fishing line, more like a rope, and proceeds to measure out how many arms’ lengths from the plastic can, a sort of float, he will attach the hook, which has a freshly caught sardine on it as bait. His friends do the same, and soon the little waves are capped with homemade fishing floats in a vast array of colours. It should not be too long before something big happens.

  But when it does, it is not what they have been hoping for.

  Leo sits, sets his paddle down like a spatula against the edge of the boat, and begins bailing out water with a decapitated plastic bottle. But he only manages three scoops before a huge steel-blue body shoots up out of the sea like a rocket.

  ‘Hijoepucchhha! Oh my God!’

  The fish shoots up towards the sky, taking the hook, line, and sinker with it, only to plummet down helplessly with a giant splash some ten metres from the canoe. The little boat rocks from the backwash, and the other guys give congratulatory whistles. But they do not have the chance to watch how things develop, as several hooks suddenly get bites. In the middle of a circle formed by the seven canoes — each about a hundred metres from the next — blue bodies shoot up out of the water all around, like miniature explosions. Each fisherman has three buoys, and the one that Leo has a bite on spins like a bobbin, causing water to squirt up as he sits back and calmly begins to bail water again. ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Now you just have to wait. The dog will soon be tired.’

  When a marlin — they call them perros, dogs — bites down on a hook, it jumps up li
ke a dolphin. Then it disappears beneath the surface until the water suddenly becomes ablaze with silver and black, five metres down in the bathtub-green sea. Leo watches contentedly, explaining that he usually lets it jump three or four times before hauling it in because otherwise it’s impossible to handle.

  In a few minutes the calm water is disturbed again. Soon the marlin starts flapping around in the open air before collapsing on its fin, rather than diving down with its sword in front, like a dolphin unable to complete its loop in the air.

  ‘Now it’s time,’ Leo says.

  He drifts over to the buoy and begins to haul in the line. Calmly, with his left hand, he pulls the line towards him metre by metre until the fish appears. The marlin is tired now, but still occasionally spasms. Leo swings the canoe around, bringing it closer to the fish. Like a stern master holding a leashed dog, he grips the line. Just half a metre of it separates him from the fish. He fumbles for the paddle.

  The long sword has lost all its firmness and droops to the left, like a large machete bouncing in and out of the water, while the marlin’s mouth hangs open dejectedly. The fish is half the length of the canoe.

  One of the other men pulls up. ‘Mátalo,’ he yells. ‘Kill it!’

  Leo lifts up the paddle and stops for a moment like a matador just about to drive his sword through the head of an exhausted bull. He concentrates on getting his aim just right, and then strikes with full force, banging the skull right between the eyes. The fish gives a final jolt and lies there, like a log floating in the water. Leo kneels, shoving his entire arm down the throat and ripping out the heart. He throws the red lump at his friend as a joke. ‘Listo. Done,’ he says.