71. “Conspiracy to Corrupt,” Financial Times, 14 February 1987, 1.
72. Waldorf, Reinarman, and Murphy, Cocaine Changes, 281–82, quoted in Wilson and Zambrano, “Commodity Chains,” 299.
73. See INCSR (1998), 9; Shannon, Desperados, 374, 388; “Drug Smugglers Join,” 1A; and “Stemming the Drug Flow,” TT (CR), 3 December 1999, 17.
74. The most authoritative U.S. estimate, a 2006 interagency assessment, concluded that 517–732 tons of cocaine were departing South America for the United States annually, with more directed to Europe. INCSR (2007), 15–16.
75. Coca shrub leaves contain fourteen alkaloids, that is, psychoactive compounds naturally found in various plants. Although coca will grow in tropical lowlands and has been cultivated in such places as Africa, India, Taiwan, Okinawa, and Indonesia (Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 73, 125–31), there “‘life is too easy’. . . . In the intense and humid heat it produces dense foliage, but the leaves have little potency. Lower-altitude plantations are also prey to a butterfly, the ulo, whose larvae feed on the leaf, and to various destructive lichens.” Nicholl, Fruit Palace, 296. “In the mist-filled valleys on the eastern slope of the Andes . . . water vapor from the Amazon rain forest rises upward, providing the proper warmth and wetness for the shrubs that bear the coca leaf.” Gugliotta and Leen, Kings of Cocaine, 120.
76. For Suárez Gómez, see Gamarra, “Criminal Organizations,” 175–83, and Henkel, “Bolivian Cocaine Industry.” While Bolivian and Peruvian organizations undertook some international transshipment, as Colombian syndicates assumed a dominant position, the Suárez organization came to supply Pablo Escobar.
77. A DEA agent who worked undercover in South America during the late 1970s noted that Colombian
traffickers would then buy base in Bolivia to convert to cocaine in Colombia because Bolivians grew the most potent coca. Levine, Deep Cover, 34. He estimated that Bolivia’s “Santa Cruz Mafia” supplied 80 percent of the world’s coca at that time. Levine, Big White Lie, 10.
78. Wilson and Zambrano, “Commodity Chains,” 304.
79. Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 303–4.
80. Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 29, 37.
81. CIA, Allegations of Connections, 7. The U.S. Southern Command likewise figured that in 1995 Peruvians had cultivated 115,300 hectares of coca (54 percent of world production), Colombians 50,900 (24 percent), and Bolivians 48,680 (22 percent). “EU mantiene centro antidrogas desde 1992,” LP (PA), 26 September 1996, 2A. For earlier figures, see INCSR (1992), 27.
82. See INCSR (2002), 2:3, and “Colombia produce dos tercios de hoja de coca en el mundo,” LA (PA), 23 January 2001, 4A.
83. In 1998 the U.S. government reported that Colombian organizations were refining 80 percent of the world’s cocaine, a figure that rose to 90 percent by 2004. INCSR (1999), 3; INCSR (2005), 13.
84. For an estimate by a former member of the Federal Commission on Organized Crime, see “Colombian Chieftains Rule Drugs in U.S.,” Chicago Tribune, 3 April 1988, 6, and for a statement by the FBI assistant director of intelligence, see U.S. Senate, Structure, 46.
85. CIA analysts frankly conceded, “There are no authoritative estimates of the quantities of cocaine moved through Central America in the 1980s.” CIA, Allegations of Connections, 7.
86. For Judge Miguel Izaguirre’s estimate, see “En dos años Honduras puede ser como Panamá en asuntos de drogas,” La Prensa (Honduras) (hereafter cited as LP [HO]), 2 July 1988, 5.
87. See “Una tonelada semanal de cocaína pasa por el país,” El Gráfico (Guatemala), 30 May 1990, 7. For the U.S. estimate of one ton weekly, see “Guatemala Seen Slipping into a Haven for Drugs,” LAT (US), 30 August 1989, 1. See also “Guatemala: A Major Cocaine Player,” TR (BZ), 12 April 1992, 4.
88. See “Investigan base ‘narco’ en el Pacific Sur,” LN (CR), 2 June 1991, 10A, and “Embajador critica lucha antidroga,” LN (CR), 13 September 1991, 6A.
89. “Ruta de centroamérica preferida para los carteles de la droga,” La Hora (Guatemala) (hereafter cited as LH [GU]), 8 June 1991, 11.
90. “‘Narcos’ suramericanos abren nuevas rutas en centroamérica,” LP (HO), 2 April 1993, 46.
91. DEA, Resources, Guatemala (2001), 5–6. For references to the four-hundred-ton figure, see, for instance, INCSR (2003), 5:21.
92. By late in the 1990s the CIA estimated that traffickers shipped only about 10 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply directly from South America. Another 30 percent was transshipped via Caribbean islands, and the remaining 60 percent traversed the Central America–Mexico corridor (land territory and adjacent sea lanes). CIA, Allegations of Connections, 7. For nearly identical U.S. Army Southern Command figures, see “Drug Cops Agree to Cooperate,” TT (CR), 3 March 2000, 1A.
93. Andreas, Border Games, 43.
94. According to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the Organization of American States, in 1995 the Central American states, including Belize, arrested 5,582 persons for drug offenses. CICAD, Total de detenidos, 2.
95. See U.S. Senate, Law Enforcement: Report, 1–2. For similar estimates, see “Agents Take Record Haul of Cocaine,” St. Petersburg Times (United States) (hereafter cited as SPT [US]), 20 November 1987, 1A, and “Aims of ‘Drug War’ Questioned,” TT (CR), 21 May 1999, 1A.
96. At an antidrug conference in San José, Costa Rica, in March 1998 both Guatemalan and Costa Rican counternarcotics authorities declared that they would be satisfied to intercept 2 percent. “Heroin: A Growing Threat,” TT (CR), 27 March 1998, 1.
97. See Farrell, “Global Rate of Interception,” and Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 93.
98. See, for instance, United States v. Grayson, 597 F.2d 1225; United States v. Navarro-Varelas, 541 F.2d 1331; and United States v. Gomez, 457 F.2d 593.
99. See “Embarazadas . . . de marihuana,” LP (HO), 18 October 1989, 29, and Centro, “Narcotráfico en Hon-duras,” 8.
100. “Cargaba heroína en su estómago,” LP (HO), 2 September