And yet, by the 1990s Belize had become a key Central American bridge state. Powerful Latin American drug syndicates were frequently calling on homegrown Belizean smuggling expertise, and foreigners were deeply involved in initiating and supervising as well as participating in drug trafficking. While networks of Americans often bought and transported marijuana in the heyday of that trade in Belize, Colombian and eventually Mexican cartels used their extensive resources to stimulate a cocaine-transshipment boom starting in the late 1980s. Thereafter, leading drug-smuggling rings have regularly sent large cocaine loads through the country.
To date, however, very little scholarship has examined the development of Belizean drug trafficking. Why and how have foreign and domestic networks turned Belize into a prominent Central American bridge state? How exactly has the Belizean drug trade evolved? To what extent has it become truly extensive? How has it differed from the trade in other Central American countries? Which routes and methods have drug traffickers operating in Belize preferred, and why? Which principal organizations have operated within the country? Which Belizeans and foreigners have figured most prominently in the trade, and how have they interacted? This chapter addresses these often overlooked questions.
Bridge-Favoring Factors Relevant to Belize
Geography
The geography of Belize is strikingly well suited for drug-trafficking ventures by sea and air. Traffickers opting for maritime delivery have capitalized on the Belizean coastline, stretching for two hundred miles along the Caribbean Sea. The barrier reef, the longest in the Western Hemisphere, might be envisioned as the spine of Belizean territorial waters. It encompasses hundreds of small, deserted islands, many covered by dense mangrove swamps. The country’s tropical climate and frequent rainfall have proven to be ideal for cannabis production, and years of substantial marijuana exports have developed domestic expertise in smuggling by ship and plane.
Belizean antidrug officials have had a difficult time tracking small planes in Belizean airspace. Drug rings have used aerial transportation extensively within Belize, utilizing the country’s many airstrips servicing remote farms or communities. Not only are local radar resources quite limited, but the inland Maya Mountains, densely covered with jungle and over 3,600 feet in height, run north to southwest, east of the Guatemalan border. Belize has the lowest population density in all Central America, and its sparsely populated interior, covered in large tracts by tropical forest, has itself amounted to a bridge-favoring factor. With respect to air transit, the wild terrain and meager transportation infrastructure have greatly challenged law enforcement, while advantaging those transshipping drugs, or growing and moving them to market. Likely named for the Mayan word baliz, meaning muddy waters, Belize also features numerous swamps, lakes, slow-moving rivers, and fresh- and salt-water lagoons.4 These, too, have factored into drug-trafficking schemes involving drops from aircraft.
As a general proposition, law-enforcement officials and imprisoned traffickers alike have acknowledged that traffickers tend to favor bridge states that are closer to markets over those farther away.5 Colombian and U.S. drug syndicates have found Belize to be situated sufficiently far north in Central America that planes could import drug loads into the United States without further refueling stops in Mexico.6 This feature of Belizean geography has attracted traffickers looking to eliminate interception in Mexico or another round of payoffs to Mexican traffickers.
In fact, the other cardinal characteristic of Belizean geography is its position flanking Mexico, a drug market to be reckoned with and the prime gateway for drugs entering the United States. The easily forded Blue Creek, which becomes the Río Hondo, delineates Belize’s northwestern boundary with Mexico. Furthermore, the boundary line between Belize and Mexico, which continues south to divide Belize and Guatemala, runs through dense jungle. Consequently, even by regional standards, Belizean borders have traditionally been quite porous. Any government contending with Belizean geography would be hard-pressed to strictly control what crossed its borders, and that task has proven to be impossible given Belizean technology, resources, and political culture. Mexican cartels have thus found neighboring Belize to be a convenient stepping stone for drug shipments that would then cross Mexico by land or air.
Economy
While enjoying the significant advantages of a mostly literate populace and a political culture wedded to democracy and largely respectful of human rights, Belize has always been quite poor, marked by extensive unemployment and underemployment. This lack of economic vitality has helped to create large pools of potential collaborators for drug traffickers. In 2003 more than a third of Belizean inhabitants lived below the poverty line, and the annual per capita income stood at just over $2,600. By 2009, 43 percent of the population was classified as poor, earning less than $1,800 per year. In light of the limited economic opportunities and few legitimate avenues for personal advancement, some Belizeans have looked to earn pay from drug rings for a wide range of services. Furthermore, the potential for an individual to gain considerable money for cooperating with drug syndicates has greatly outweighed the likelihood of arrest and serious punishment. This fact of life has been plainly evident to poor citizens, government officials, and wealthy elites alike, and it certainly has not escaped the notice of cartels plotting out Caribbean basin routes.7
The nature of Belize’s largely rural and undeveloped economy has attracted drug-smuggling organizations as well.8 From independence forward, postcolonial governments have struggled to bring their citizens a higher standard of living, while making the political and legal systems function adequately despite severe budgetary constraints brought on, in part, by foreign debt that reached $144 million in 1991 and exceeded $1 billion by 2006. In the 1990s well over a third of the country’s gross domestic product was required to service Belize’s burgeoning debt.9 In this respect, Belize has typified many newly independent yet poverty-stricken postcolonial societies that have borrowed extensively to try to meet high social expectations.
Because Belize has by far the smallest population in Central America, an inadequate tax base has led to chronically insufficient revenues. Indeed, up until the early twenty-first century, when a Mennonite farmer digging a shallow well struck a modest oil deposit, the country has lacked very substantial income-producing natural resources.10 Sugar, rice, citrus, and banana operations have not delivered extensive wealth or employment, nor have shrimp, lobster, and other fisheries. Tourism, especially on the cayes and ecotourism inland, has been promising, though with limited impact for much of the population. At the macroeconomic level, ongoing balance-of-payments difficulties have contributed to persistent economic instability, and the always sizable ranks of the unemployed have swollen further when export prices fall, as has happened periodically. Continuing economic woes have thus underlaid many tangled problems of governance.
While these difficulties have constrained antidrug efforts, other national concerns and policies have actually subverted them. One scholar has noted, “The elaborate apparatus of offshore banks, shady lawyers, and anonymous corporations in Panama and the Caribbean obviously benefits the criminal underworld, but it was largely created by upperworld business leaders anxious to avoid regulations, reduce taxes, and maintain government secrecy.”11 In a similar vein, Belizean government decisions, primarily focused on other public-policy issues, have nonetheless created circumstances advantageous to drug networks.12 For instance, not only has the government pegged the currency to the U.S. dollar, but Belizean officials have repeatedly attempted to enhance their country’s revenue streams with plans and policies that have indirectly encouraged the drug trade. For instance, to attract offshore investors, Belizean legislators have fashioned rather lax banking and corporate laws. By the mid-1990s officials had registered thousands of offshore companies under the International Business Companies Act.13
Officials have also earned money for the government, and perhaps some for themselves as well, by selling Belizean citizenship to foreigners, including individuals who turned out to be criminals, and by supplying flags of convenience to vessels, including some engaged in trafficking.14 This has resulted in embarrassing incidents when authorities have discovered immense drug shipments on board.15 In 2001 authorities patrolling the coast of Mexico seized 8.8 tons of cocaine off the Belize-registered vessel Forever My Friend. That same year, in a case illustrating the globalized nature of major illegal undertakings in the twenty-first century and the manner in which