As for Central American marijuana exports, this dimension of the trade had multiple effects. Colombian traffickers gained dominance in international cocaine trafficking by adapting methods developed in marijuana smuggling.42 They thus naturally took note of successful marijuana exports via Central America and drew on already existing domestic drug networks there. In fact, the marijuana trade often established Central American criminal groups and then helped bridge-state traffickers to become more capable and elusive, wealthy and well connected.
Marijuana, however, has not been an ideal drug for transnational criminal enterprises. Because it has to be shipped in bulk, rather than in a concentrated form, and its odor is quite distinctive, authorities have found cannabis fairly easy to interdict. Furthermore, marijuana is not as addictive as harder drugs. Since it is relatively easy to grow, global supplies have usually been plentiful, something that has capped its price and resulted in lower profit margins than heroin or cocaine.43 Consequently, experienced marijuana traffickers, intent on maximizing profits and with smuggling methods, routes, and networks already in place, have often moved to the transport of hard drugs.44 Just as marijuana has been a gateway to more dangerous drugs for users, so it has often led to more lucrative drug smuggling for traffickers.
Central American Heroin Trafficking
The Central American heroin trade has diverged from that of marijuana in numerous respects. Traditionally, Europe has been the leading western market for diacetylmorphine, or heroin, originally supplied largely by producers in South and Southeast Asia. Even in North America, Asian producers controlled the heroin supply for many years, with the drug often imported via couriers or inside shipping containers.45 In the late 1950s Colombians did engage in some heroin trafficking, cultivating ties with the U.S. mafia in pre-Castro Havana.46 However, not until the late 1960s and early 1970s did more substantial heroin transshipment occur through Latin America.47 Traffickers came to capitalize particularly on Panama’s role as a busy commercial crossroads and international air hub and on members of its political elite, who could use their influence and social stature to help ensure uninterrupted transit.
Another noteworthy development occurred in Mexico. Here, early in the twentieth century Chinese immigrants had introduced opium poppies (Papaver somniferum L.), hardy and adaptable plants well suited to tropical and semitropical regions.48 With the development of processing and refining skills, Mexican heroin made inroads in the U.S. market. In the 1950s and 1960s Mexican heroin accounted for an estimated 10–15 percent of U.S. consumption, a market share that climbed rapidly in the 1970s, as Turkish authorities curtailed production there.49 Although opium cultivation increased substantially over the next two decades, Mexican civil and military authorities vigorously eradicated it in the mid-1970s and again from 1985 to 1990.50 Nevertheless, the ease of smuggling heroin across the Mexico-U.S. border counterbalanced the relatively high costs of Mexican production.51 In addition, Mexican heroin proved difficult to stamp out, because a handful of powerful, readily identifiable groups has never controlled it.52 Instead, the heroin industry has been highly fragmented, opportunistic, and marked by shifting ad hoc arrangements among farmers, processors, and traffickers.53 The lack of vertically integrated, multipurpose organizations has precluded the “decapitation” of heroin-trafficking groups by killing or capturing kingpins, a strategy commonly employed against cocaine cartels.
In the drug trade widespread trafficking in one country often comes to profoundly affect its neighbor. As one U.S. Customs agent observed, “Agents and police can’t change [the drug business]. . . . It’s like trying to stab a piece of mercury with an ice pick. It just goes someplace else.”54 When counternarcotics authorities pressured Mexican opium producers, some figured turning south would be the best way to maintain profits and outlast antidrug campaigns. Thus, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s and again in the early twenty-first century, significant opium crops were cultivated in the mountains of northwestern Guatemala along the Mexican border.
Then, in the 1990s the prospect of creating a lucrative South American heroin industry attracted attention from many criminal organizations, including remnants of the Medellín cartel looking to increase profits and regain past prominence.55 While two years would elapse before a newly planted coca bush would become productive, and while high-quality coca came only from the Andes, opium poppies were annual plants, could be grown in many places, and had a short 120-day growth cycle. Although most Colombian producers aimed for two crops a year, some found three annual harvests to be possible. And, because immediate replanting after spraying had occurred was economically viable, antidrug authorities could be quickly put on the defensive again, and production could continue.
Just as important, heroin has been the easiest of the major drugs transiting Central America to hide and transport. Since in a typical year heroin might retail at $1,700 per gram, cocaine at $170, and marijuana at $12, to reach identical sales levels a heroin trafficker would have to transport to market only a hundredth of the product of a marijuana trafficker and a tenth of that of a cocaine trafficker.56 Small shipments of heroin, tasteless and odorless, could be slipped past police, customs inspectors, and even trained drug-sniffing canine units more easily than either marijuana or cocaine.57 Furthermore, Colombian syndicates had the wherewithal to hire Southeast Asian narcotics chemists with expertise in the formulas and refining techniques needed to produce high-quality heroin.58 They could also capitalize on some preexisting trafficking strategies and channels for wholesale and retail distribution and marketing. And, while a drug like cocaine is a stimulant that addicts often take for five years or less before becoming overwhelmed, heroin is a depressant that an addict can use over a longer time frame. This has helped to ensure stable demand.
Fig. 1.1 Cultivation of opium in Colombia and Mexico, 1991–2009
Sources: INCSR (2009), 33; INCSR (2000), 54; INCSR (2010), 196.
Note: Figure 1.1 tracks the net of hectares cultivated, that is, total hectares cultivated less hectares eradicated. Although satellite imagery helped to determine the number of hectares cultivated, analysts concentrated their efforts “on those areas that are most likely to have cultivation,” and not “the entire country for any hint of illicit cultivation.” INCSR (2009), 30. Note further that the statistics do not reflect the fact that some hectares could be replanted after eradication had occurred.
The bulk of heroin production occurs far from the North American market, but it has commanded such high prices that transporting a relatively small amount to consumers has brought tremendous profits. With prices reaching $200,000 a kilo in U.S. cities in the early 1990s, the trafficking through Central America of high-purity Colombian heroin climbed thereafter.59 Poppies were first cultivated in