Such critical comments emerged during the annual process through which the U.S. Congress has compelled the State Department to certify those countries cooperating in antidrug endeavors. Since denying Belize certification might threaten multilateral development bank funding supportive of democracy and development, the administration opted to invoke the national-interests exception. And U.S. criticism did prompt significant Belizean action aimed at raising interception rates. Later in 1997 Belizean officials organized and financed Operation Ides of March, through which seizures of 1,323 and 1,083 kilos helped to set an annual confiscation record.151
U.S. pressure, followed at first by Belizean denials and resistance and then by additional antidrug efforts, thus played into the larger process observed in various Central American bridge countries in which a state, confronting the wealth and power of transnational drug networks, retreats, persists, and at length reasserts itself in relation to the illicit global economy.152 In Belize, the 1998 elections then brought to power a new PUP administration, which publicly ranked “combating narcotics trafficking and associated crime as a top priority,” increasing the prospects for more sustained national antidrug efforts.153 By March 1999 the U.S. government was again certifying Belize as cooperative.154 More bilateral counternarcotics initiatives ensued, with the new extradition treaty coming into force in 2001, a mutual legal assistance agreement in 2003, and a Caribbean antidrug accord the following year.155
Certain tangible results followed renewed U.S.-Belizean cooperation. In 2001 Belizean authorities granted permission to the U.S. Navy to board the Belizean-flagged vessel the Zvesda Mardu, off the Mexican coast, leading to the seizure of twelve tons of cocaine, at the time the largest maritime cocaine bust ever recorded.156 Yet the underlying problems that made Belize such an attractive bridge state remained unaddressed. In 2004 U.S. counternarcotics officials complained, “After five years in power, the People’s United Party continues to advocate combating drug trafficking and associated crime as a top priority, but avoids providing the appropriate units with resources.” They noted that an array of U.S. intelligence sources active in the narcotics field continued “to gather increasing evidence and information pointing to the fact that the [government of Belize] suffers from serious corruption problems at all levels.”157
Thus, although U.S. pressure influenced the priorities of the Belizean government and stimulated increased cooperation, it did not dramatically alter Belize’s place within the multipolar system of Central American drug trafficking. While occasional busts and arrests have occurred, foreign and domestic law enforcement efforts within Belize have yet to stem the flow of hard drugs for a sustained period. Although the U.S. government has provided particular useful resources—computers, a coast guard vessel, refurbished speedboats—such assets did not lead to steadily increasing interception rates, nor did they alter the fundamental institutional weaknesses that prevented more effective counternarcotics campaigns from being launched.
Drug-Trafficking Routes and Organizations in Belize
As Central American drug transit climbed, foreign and domestic criminal syndicates used an array of routes to try to slip drugs past Belizean authorities. Although the drug trade eventually touched virtually all parts of the country, the five most prominent centers of activity were Belize City, the Guatemalan border and western Belize, Orange Walk in northern Belize, Big Creek in southern Belize, and Ambergris and the other Belize cayes. Examining them illuminates how and when the marijuana and cocaine trades enveloped much of the country and spotlights certain of the principal actors.
Belize City
Long maligned by its critics for its inadequate sewage and extensive petty crime, while hailed by its supporters for its rakish tropical charm, Belize City has traditionally stood as the country’s largest urban area and chief port. The city’s flaws have been well chronicled: “the destruction of periodic tropical storms, overcrowding, narrow streets, open sanitary sewers, poor health conditions, inadequate water supply, continual subjection to insects, rats, pests, invasions of land crabs, extreme heat, and high humidity.”158 Nevertheless, by the 1990s Belize City, located just north of the midpoint of the Belizean coastline, contained nearly fifty thousand residents, or roughly a fifth of the population. After observing that Belize City inhabitants “are not in an easy position to obtain any kind of wealth,” one scholar noted that “much of the population . . . gains its income mainly from informal opportunities.”159 Unsurprisingly, as Central American drug-trafficking increased the city swiftly became a vital drug-transshipment hub.
In words strikingly applicable to Belize and Belize City, one authority has written of narco-criminality in Caribbean states, “Drug barons, dons, . . . ‘bigmen,’ and international entrepreneurs all have connections with government, commercial houses, and political party bosses. Overlapping, vertically-integrated chains of patron-client relationships, ripple throughout society connecting top to bottom, eventually to the unemployed, disaffected youth who hustle, scrap, scuffle, retail, and kill each other.”160 By the early 1990s serious gang activity, fueled by international cocaine trafficking and a booming domestic crack-cocaine market, very much plagued Belize City, particularly its poverty-stricken south side. While Rastafarians and others had long dealt marijuana, the more lucrative local crack distribution stimulated deadly competitive contests.161 Furthermore, for at least the past two decades, gangs have provided muscle for international trafficking ventures, while increasingly participating in moving drug shipments, at first largely within the city’s vicinity and then much farther afield over time.162 Foreign connections of Belizean gangs have also involved members in distribution abroad, and, with time, certain gang leaders have risen to international prominence in the drug trade.163
For many years significant drug loads have transited right through Belize City, either via air, over land, or through speedboats, small freighters, or coastal fishing and supply vessels. One striking trend has been the ever-larger individual shipments involved. A U.S. federal court case in 1964 detailed marijuana smuggling inside foot lockers.164 By the mid-1980s typical trafficking in central Belize involved luggage or boxes containing at most 100 or 200 kilos of marijuana, directed through the port or airport.165 Eventually, cocaine transshippers adopted the very paths through the Belize City area once established by marijuana smugglers.
As these routes proved successful, drug syndicates utilized them for bigger shipments. In a key drug case in 1988 the Serious Crimes Squad found about 5.5 kilos of cocaine at a motel just outside of Belize City.166 Two years later, authorities intercepted nearly 190 kilos of cocaine just north of the city; discovered flight plans, cash, and another 55 kilos in a city hotel; and broke up a Miami-based operation involving Colombians, Hondurans, and Belizeans.167 In 1991, 273 kilos of cocaine slipped past the authorities when a plane transiting the country landed for refueling at the municipal, not the international, airport.168 Over the next two years cocaine smugglers sent into Belize from Honduras on commercial airliners a series of 100-kilo shipments inside filters for hot-water heaters.169 In 1995 the Belize police confiscated 650 kilos of Cali cartel cocaine, hidden in the ceiling of a city apartment.170 Considerable rhetoric followed, with promises of tougher enforcement and joint Belize-U.S. law-enforcement missions. In 1996, however, the smell of drugs so thoroughly overcame a U.S. counternarcotics canine unit, sent to Belize City’s central port buildings, that the dogs suffered from sensory overload and had to be pulled out of the warehouses!171
Two leading twenty-first-century cocaine-trafficking cases, one centered on a foreign trafficker, another on a Belizean, illustrate both the growing magnitude of drug-transshipment operations through Belize City and notable characteristics of this dimension of the Belizean drug trade.
Jorge Torres Teyer
In 2001 Belizean authorities stumbled onto Jorge Torres Teyer, alleged to be, since 1995, the Mexican trafficker in charge of transshipment through Belize for the Southeast cell of the Juárez cartel.172 On the run from Mexican police Torres had gained Belizean citizenship for fifteen thousand dollars just eight days before his arrest. He was initially brought into custody after police stopped him for driving the wrong direction on a one-way street in Belize City, and the trafficker attempted to bribe the officers with cocaine. After further inquiries, authorities conducted a predawn raid that netted 1,532 kilos of cocaine at an apartment complex just north of Belize City, which led, in turn, to the arrest of Torres, three other Mexicans,