www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Spanish police have arrested 3 Venezuelans (2 men and 1 woman) attempting to smuggle 8.9 kilos of cocaine hidden in false suitcase bottoms.

Manuel Antonio B. H. (53) is alleged to have had 3.2 kilos when he landed at Barajas (Madrid) airport to take a domestic flight to Alicante.

Jesus J. V. (47) and Beatriz J. M. (51) were arrested in Madrid with 5.7 kilos as they stopped-over on their way to Valencia.

The three, who had flown in to Madrid from Caracas, have been charged with offenses under Spain's public health regulations.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, March 14, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

The Attorney General’s Office and National Guard (GN) Anti-Drugs Command is currently investigating the source of weapons seized during Venezuela’s second biggest drug seizure last week in Sucre State.

• Among the weapons seized were 2FN30s as used by the Armed Force (FAN) before the FAL 7.62mm) was introduced and a caliber 45 sub-machine gun.

Command commander, GN General Jose Antonio Paez says the FAN Armament Office (Darfa) is in investigating whether the weapons belong to the FAN. Paez says the Banking Association has been asked to collaborate in tracing the financial movements of 8 persons arrested during the GN operations to seize the drugs.

5 tonnes of cocaine and 100 kilos of marijuana were seized at a remote fishing village and the fact that armed narco-traffickers had taken over the village has come as unwelcome surprise to narcotics control agencies and the government facing international criticism for sleeping on its laurels during the all-consuming political crisis.

reuters.com Fri March 14, 2003 01:21 PM ET By Missy Ryan

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Texas native Adyadet Cabret, suitcase in hand at Lima's airport, was close to clinching the $10,000 payment for smuggling 11 pounds (5 kg) of cocaine in a corset pressing tightly into her stomach.

Then the Peruvian police woman tapped her on the shoulder.

"I was shaking; my heart was beating fast. I turned around and thought, 'Oh my God,"' said Cabret, 28, clasping her bright auburn hair as she sat on a wooden bench in the crowded prison that has been her home for nearly three years.

Around her, the prison yard buzzed on visitors' day with mothers, toddlers in diapers and friends who braved hot sun to see inmates. Some inmates are foreigners like Cabret including Dutch, Spanish and German nationals and many more are Peruvians who took the gamble as human drug "mules" and failed.

A growing tide of mules, who stash, tape to their bodies and even swallow lucrative drugs cargo bound for Europe and the United States, are a problem for this poor nation that boasts the unenviable title of the world's No. 2 producer of cocaine.

In 2002, Peru snared 239 mules, double the 120 captures in 2001. A push to capture drug mules is just part of President Alejandro Toledo government's plan to quash illegal drugs, on the rise in Peru as neighbor Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine producer, puts the squeeze on its drug runners.

Most cocaine, made from the traditional Andean coca leaf, is snuck out of Peru by truck, in light aircraft, in giant boat shipments and other methods. But officials are worried about a spike in mules who take matters into their own hands.

'A SURE THING'

In April 2000, Cabret, a mother of three desperate for cash, traveled from her home in Waco, Texas, to South America to pick up a drugs shipment and carry it to Switzerland.

Her first trip outside the United States, it was a sure thing, her contacts said.

Three strangers met her in Quito, Ecuador, dressed her in a corset and tight shorts -- both of which, she was told, had cocaine sewn inside -- and sent her on a Lima-bound bus to catch a KLM flight to Europe. There, she would get $10,000.

In Lima's airport, Cabret was nervous and disoriented, sweating in a jacket buttoned up to her neck, when she was pulled aside by police. They strip-searched her, cut the cocaine out of the corset and shorts, and tossed it on a table in front of her.

"At that moment, I didn't care about drugs, about the money. I just wanted to go home," she said. She was sentenced to six years and eight months in jail, but will likely not serve the entire time.

"Drug runners round up people ... and offer them a sum of money that for them is extraordinary -- $4,000, $5,000 -- to carry a drug load," Marco Draganac, head of special operations for customs, told Reuters in a recent interview.

"That will keep them afloat for some time if they take the risk," he said. Most of Peru's mules are headed for Holland, he said, followed by Spain, the United States, and Russia.

Some 50 customs agents are specially trained to spot suspicious travelers -- people with humble clothes and expensive looking luggage, for example, or people bundled up in winter wear for a trip to Miami and passengers with suitcases or backpacks that look like they might have been tampered with.

CAT-AND-MOUSE

Besides the "mummies" who duct-tape drugs around their thighs, shins, or stomach, some mules carry cocaine in false-bottom suitcases, wine bottles, fake shampoo bottles or jars of jam.

In one complex process, cocaine is liquefied and then applied to clothes -- to be worn or packed -- as a "starch" which will later be melted off. Customs agents are also on the lookout for a new scheme that entails solidifying cocaine into flat discs identical to music CDs.

"Human ingenuity in efforts to outwit authorities is limitless," said Gen. Edy Tomasto, head of Peru's anti-drugs police, adding the drug mules often work in small groups -- of which one is caught and others slip by -- to mislead agents.

Agents use high-tech methods to find drugs like X-rays and special wands that detect even minute traces, but they also rely on eyeballing. "We play a cat-and-mouse game," Draganac said. "We're like a soccer goalie just waiting for the penalty kick to see who is better -- (the mule) or us."

Some hardy souls swallow up to 2 pounds (0.90 kg) of drug "capsules" that consist of cocaine deposited in tied-off condoms or fingers from surgical gloves. They are trained to stomach the drugs by swallowing whole grapes and ice cubes.

While the drugs are in their system, those mules take special drugs to stop regular digestive functions such as production of stomach acids that erode plastic, but it is still a dangerous game.

"If one of those bursts, they die immediately," Draganac said. He said several mules have perished, generally from convulsions as a massive amount of cocaine enters their system, in police hands in Peru or on international flights. Just drinking a soda, for example, can trigger those stomach acids.

But it is hard to tell whether Peru is getting better at capturing mules or whether there are simply more to capture.

Fighting drugs is a tough task in Peru, where more than half of people scrape by on $1.25 or less a day and officials struggle for basics like electricity, sewage, and schoolbooks.

"We don't have enough money," Draganac said.

BEHIND-BARS BEAUTY QUEEN

Twenty-one-year old Norlin Mota from Venezuela worked in Caracas promoting cell phone sales until she came to Peru on a mission to smuggle 5.5 pounds (2.5 kg) of cocaine in a suitcase.

The police "grabbed me," she says glumly. "I got cold feet but (the drug traffickers) told me it was my life or the trip."

Mota, wearing a bright blue tank top, her dark hair pulled back loosely, tells with an ironic smile of her election last year as queen of the prison's beauty contest. She won a stereo and beauty treatments like facials.

"I just want to get out ... and start over," she says.

U.S. citizen Cabret's children, meanwhile, are now in foster care and her family has sent word she needs to get herself out of the mess. Looking at the table in front of her through thick glasses, she says she feels used.

"I needed the money and I did it for my kids," she said. "It was my first time and I got caught."

www.economist.com Mar 6th 2003 | BOGOTA, LA PAZ AND LIMA From The Economist print edition

The “success” of Plan Colombia in cutting coca production has started to undermine governments farther south

“A TURNING point” is how John Walters, the director of the United States' office for drug control, jubilantly described figures released by his government last week, which claimed a 15% fall in 2002 in Colombia's crop of coca, the plant used to make cocaine. This follows eight years of steady increases in the amount of land under coca in Colombia, the source of three-quarters of the world's cocaine.

For American officials, last year's fall is evidence that “Plan Colombia”, a programme of mainly military aid begun by Bill Clinton and continued by George Bush, is starting to pay off. Under this plan, the United States has provided Colombia with extra helicopters and crop-dusting planes to spray coca with herbicides. Most of these have finally arrived, and Álvaro Uribe, who became Colombia's president last August, has been happy to use them: he has unleashed a massive spraying campaign which officials say is at last outpacing the ability of coca farmers to replant.

Yet there is a hollow quality to this victory. Over the past three decades, rich-country demand for cocaine has created a monster in the Andean countries. The illegal-drug industry has corrupted institutions, distorted economies, wrecked forests, and financed armed groups such as Colombia's FARC guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. But the “drug war” has imposed its own costs. One is known as the “balloon effect”: local squeezes simply move the industry elsewhere, spreading violence and corruption with it.

Thus, in a reversal of a trend begun a decade ago, drug production is rising in Bolivia and Peru, and this year coca farmers there have mounted new challenges to governments; this “politicisation” of the coca industry is “most troubling” admitted Mr Walters. This shift comes at a delicate juncture: weak economies, weak governments in several countries, political conflict in Venezuela and Bolivia, and Colombia's intensifying wars have all aroused fears about the Andean region's stability.

A second worry concerns the figures themselves. Mapping the coca crop is difficult, and not everyone trusts the American figures. But the trend is clear enough. The UN will next week publish its annual coca census, which is more comprehensive than America's sampling. Having reported an 11% fall in Colombia's coca area in 2001 to 145,000 hectares (358,000 acres), the UN is expected to reveal an even steeper fall for 2002. But its estimate for Peru (46,700 hectares in 2001, with a small increase last year) is higher than America's. The UN also reports that more productive coca varieties are being used in both countries; in Peru it reckons that fields may be producing 10% more coca than a year ago.

Nevertheless, the shrinking of coca land in Colombia will comfort the United States' Congress. It is anxious to see some return from aid to Colombia of around $500m a year. That is especially true after FARC last month shot down an American spy plane apparently on an anti-drug mission, killing one American and taking three hostage. Even so, American officials believe this year will be better still: Mr Uribe has pledged to spray 200,000 hectares. If that happens, Mr Walters thinks, coca farmers will despair of profit and give up. He told Congress that America had “an unprecedented opportunity to seriously reduce the availability of illegal drugs”. Klaus Nyholm, the UN's drugs man in Colombia, says better prices for legal crops are helping: excluding drug crops, the country's farm output expanded by 3.5% last year, double the growth of GDP.

The results are a fillip, too, for Mr Uribe, who faces mounting urban terrorism by the FARC. Some of Colombia's most drug-infested areas are close to giving up coca. Putumayo, where the UN reported 66,000 hectares in 2000, can eliminate the crop by December, says a local official. But the UN reckons it is spreading to smaller plots (to evade spraying) and that output is rising in other areas, such as Guaviare. Mr Nyholm says coca will not be eradicated until Colombia's wars end. Fears of retreat

The guarded optimism in Colombia is mirrored by increasing problems farther south. In recent years, Bolivia was the drug warriors' success story. Between 1997 and 2001, its government eradicated 40,000 hectares of coca in the Chapare, the main growing area; aid money trickled in for alternatives, such as bananas. But American officials are now nervous about a retreat. In the past two years, new planting has outstripped eradication. And increasing amounts of Peruvian semi-processed cocaine-base are now being smuggled through Bolivia to Brazil and thence to Europe. Cobija, a poor northern outpost, has acquired sudden wealth; locals report an influx of heavily-laden, armed “backpackers” from Peru on the logging trails in the surrounding forest.

This year, Bolivia's powerful coca growers' movement has drawn blood against a weak government. Evo Morales, the movement's leader, was emboldened by winning 21% of the vote in last year's presidential election. To head off protests, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada offered to expand the area in which coca can be legally grown for traditional uses (such as chewing and tea) if a study of demand showed this to be justified. To no avail: in January, protests by coca farmers brought much of the country to a standstill for two weeks. Mr Morales played no direct role in violence last month, in which 33 people were killed in riots and clashes between striking police and the army. But these events have left Mr Sánchez (who claims there was a plot to kill him) in no position to take the offensive against coca.

In Peru, too, the politics of coca has become more confrontational. Until the mid-1990s, Peru was the world's main source of the shrub. But the price of coca has been climbing again since 1998, and production rising. Worried about the backflow from Plan Colombia, American officials have stepped up aid to Peru, while also pressing for a tougher policy. In September, the government said it would begin forcible eradication in hard-core coca areas, a policy Peru eschewed in the late-1980s, after Shining Path terrorists exploited discontent over it.

The response was a wave of violent unrest in traditional coca-growing areas. More than 70 people were injured in an 11-day “strike” last month; in Aguaytía, protestors smashed up the government's anti-drug office, burning equipment. For the first time, the coca growers may have a political leader, albeit not with the clout of Mr Morales in Bolivia: Nelson Palomino, who was recently arrested on charges of supporting the (much weakened) Shining Path, something he denies. His arrest was greeted by a protest by thousands of coca farmers in Ayacucho, the Shining Path's birthplace. Such protests are a novelty for Peru. The farmers have now called a three-week “truce”: they want the government to agree to an end to forced eradication and more money for development schemes.

Further afield, there are other worrying signs. This week, Rio de Janeiro's carnival took place under the eye of the army: on its eve, the city's leading drug gang bombed buses and buildings, its second such show of strength against an ineffective state government in five months. And following tougher action by Mexico, more drugs now flow to the United States through Caribbean islands, as they did in the 1980s. The drug industry has an unerring eye for institutional weaknesses. As long as cocaine is demanded, victories over it involve defeats elsewhere.

www.narconews.com By Reed Lindsay Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholar March 10, 2003

Fernando Buendía leads of one of Ecuador’s most powerful political parties, the Pachakutik Movement. A small, balding, sociologist with gracious manners, he speaks slowly and deliberately, measuring each phrase and stopping for long pauses.

Fernando Buendía Photo D.R. Jeremy Bigwood 2003 But his unprepossessing demeanor is soon forgotten when he unleashes the fire in his tongue. Buendía is piercing and direct, and he plays no favorites. His fool’s gallery includes such luminaries as the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund, Plan Colombia and some of the policies of his current ally, President Lucio Gutiérrez.

In an interview with Narco News on the eve of last November's presidential election, Buendía claimed the United States was violating its agreement to use the airbase at Manta solely in drug interdiction efforts. He also raised the possibility of opening a debate about drug legalization.

At that time, he was overseeing the work of those officials charged with drafting a plan of operation for the new Gutiérrez government. Since then, as an independent advisor at the Economy Ministry representing the Pachakutik Movement, Buendía has become an increasingly important player in the new coalition government. He was interviewed recently in Mérida, Mexico, where he gave a keynote speech drug legalization summit co-sponsored by Narco News.

Narco News: What is the legal status of drug use in Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: Under Ecuadorian law, the consumption of drugs is not penalized. It is considered a disease, and the drug user is not persecuted nor punished, although the drug trafficker is…

Narco News: You can use drugs in the street and nothing will happen to you?

Fernando Buendía: It is not socially permitted, but it is not a crime… If you are taking drugs on a street corner and a policeman arrives he can cause problems if you’re obstructing the street, but he can’t bother you for taking drugs…

Narco News: Is drug consumption a problem in Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: It is a growing problem... In the Third World the consumption of drugs has to do with poverty, while in the First World, it has to do with alienation.

Narco News: How has Ecuador been affected by drug trafficking?

Fernando Buendía: Criminalization has provoked grave consequences for Latin America and for Ecuador. We’re paying an extremely high cost for prohibition… In Ecuador’s case, there are thousands of people in the jails who worked as mules, or small-scale transporters of drugs, who lacked other opportunities and turned to drug trafficking as a way out of poverty. The Ecuadorian jails are full of people who were linked in one way or another to drug trafficking.

Narco News: Has drug production in Colombia spilled over into Ecuador?

Fernando Buendía: As a result of the war in Colombia, there is evidence that coca leaves are beginning to be cultivated in Ecuador and that clandestine laboratories are functioning. Last year, two labs were discovered and eliminated… Along with this problem there is an economic problem. The volume of money laundering in the case of Ecuador must be extremely high, because Ecuador has a dollarized economy and the flow of currency can no longer be controlled. Ecuador is now a paradise for narco-laundering, and it is generating serious distortions in the economy because money is being invested in consumption, in real estate, in the financial system, and as a result we have heavy speculation that works against investment in productive industries.

Narco News: Is Ecuador’s economy becoming narcotized, like Colombia’s?

Fernando Buendía: In last year’s trade balance, the country had a deficit of 1.4 billion dollars, or approximately 8 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. This is very high, and it’s explained in part by narco-laundering…

There is a strong pressure on demand. Where do these resources that maintain the pressure on demand, especially on luxury articles, come from? In part, it is explained by the remittances from emigrants, and on the other hand it is explained by narco-laundering…

We also have a political problem, which is that the quality of our democracy is being eroded, because the resources from narco-trafficking help finance electoral campaigns and buy judges and government officials.

Narco News: How can Ecuador resolve these problems?

Fernando Buendía: If we don’t resolve the problem of poverty, we aren’t going to be able to attack the structural causes of the problem of drug consumption…

The other issue that goes to the heart of the matter is foreign policy. We have to begin constructing an international arrangement that would be more balanced in the face of this unilateralism (of the United States), and in this context falls the issues of decriminalization of the drug trade. For this reason, it is important that we construct spaces of alliance among the Latin American countries, of the countries from the South…

We think that we’re on the offensive and that in the coming years there will be important changes in Ecuador, in Brazil, in Venezuela and even in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, which are behind the others, but whose social movements are beginning to make important advances.

Narco News: What can Ecuador do in the face of the U.S.-promoted “Plan Colombia”?

Fernando Buendía: “Plan Colombia” is the form in which the conservative ideology is taken advantage of to channel interests that don’t have to do with the problem of drug production, but more specifically with the imperial efforts to control the Amazon region.

Narco News: Will Ecuador take any action in opposition to “Plan Colombia” or in favor of drug legalization?

Fernando Buendía: Ecuador is 0.04 percent of the world economy. The government wouldn’t last a week if it legalized drugs. For example, look at the (U.S. military’s) Manta airbase. We suspect the United States has come to stay for a good while and they’re here to extend their presence until they convert this base into the one they lost in the Panama Canal. The capacity of the runways is being increased, for example. The asphalt has been raised 25 centimeters and the extension of the runway to 1.5 kilometers. What (drug) interdiction plane needs so much space for this type of runway? Only the Galaxy. And the Galaxy is not a toy plane. It is the biggest plane in the world and it transports heavy war machinery.

We are at the point at which what happened to Panamá under Noriega could happen to us. The Galaxies land, they unload combat vehicles and in eight hours they are in Ecuador’s capital overthrowing the government. Our sovereignty, our capacity of movement is very determined by the broader context.

I was in the meeting with the International Monetary Fund, after the president had resolved to choose the route of negotiation with the IMF. I was conscious that we could demand, criticize and even shout, but we had to reach an agreement with the IMF. If not, the country would become economically unviable. That is, the government didn’t have the money to pay the teachers’ salaries that month. This is a process that has established itself over time. We have a state with limitations on its economic and political sovereignty. The influence that the United States and the international organizations have in this country is huge. (You are) obliged to negotiate because you have a knife to your throat, but it is quite another thing to adopt policies of such a worn-out economic model, of the neoliberal model.

Narco News: How do you evaluate these first weeks of President Lucio Gutiérrez’s administration?

Fernando Buendía: The initial moves by Lucio are very conflictive, from the perspective of economic policy, foreign policy and also as regards political reform. The Pachakutik Movement characterizes this government as transitional. It is not a popular government nor is it a government that is going to make deep changes… In general, the Pachakutik Movement is not content with the policies of President Gutiérrez. They don’t correspond with the accords of the alliance we formed with the government… Now, the president wants to dissolve Congress any way possible, whether it is in according to the Constitution or outside the Constitution. This runs the risk of becoming a new Fujimorazo... Lucio comes from a military tradition. He believes more in presidential systems, in the executive being above all other powers of the state.

Full Disclosure: The author wishes to acknowledge the material assistance, encouragement, and guidance, of The Narco News Bulletin, The Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, publisher Al Giordano and the rest of the faculty, and of the Tides Foundation. Narco News is a co-sponsor and funder of the international drug legalization summit, "OUT FROM THE SHADOWS: Ending Prohibition in the 21st Century," in Mérida, Yucatán, and is wholly responsible for the School of Authentic Journalism whose philosophy and methodology were employed in the creation of this report. The writing, the opinions expressed, and the conclusions reached, if any, are solely those of the author.

Apertura total: El autor desea reconocer la asistencia material, el ánimo y la guía de The Narco News Bulletin, La Escuela de Narco News de Periodismo Auténtico, su Director General Al Giordano y el resto del profesorado, y de la Fundación Tides. Narco News es copatrocinador y financiador del encuentro internacional sobre legalización de las drogas “Saliendo de las sombras: terminando con la prohibición a las drogas en el siglo XXI” en Mérida, Yucatán, y es completamente responsable por la Escuela de Periodismo Auténtico, cuya filosofía y metodología fueron empleadas en la elaboración de esta nota. La escritura, las opiniones expresadas y las conclusiones alcanzadas, si las hay, son de exclusiva responsabilidad del autor

Abertura Total: O autor deseja reconhecer o material de apoio, o propósito e o guia do Boletim Narco News. a Escola de Jornalismo Autêntico, o editor Al Giordano, o restante de professores e a Fundaçáo Tides. Narco News é co-patrocinador e financiador do encontro sobre a legalizaçao das drogas Saindo das Sombras: terminando com a proibiçao das drogas no século XXI em Mérida, Yucatan, e é completamente responsável pela Escola de Jornalismo Autêntico, cuja filosofia e metodologia foram implantadas na elaboraçao desta reportagem. O texto, as opinioes expressadas e as conclusoes alcançadas, se houver, sao de responsabilidade do autor.