Over time, more lucrative and violent cocaine trafficking completely overshadowed the earlier marijuana trade in northern Belize. In the mid- to late 1980s Medellín traffickers moved aggressively into Orange Walk, paying top dollar to use its drug rings to assist in forwarding large cocaine shipments.222 Although most of the narcotics escaped interdiction, trafficking ventures were sometimes exposed. Occasionally, DEA informants or undercover operations led to major busts. At other times, local police happened upon crashed aircraft or drugs being stored or transported to an airstrip, or they managed to stop transshipment during vulnerable phases of the operation, such as refueling. In still other cases, foreign authorities seized drugs at their destination and determined that an Orange Walk route had been utilized.223 Thus, in 1989 federal agents in Westchester, New York, seized 2,033 kilos of Medellín cocaine off a plane that had refueled near Orange Walk. The following year authorities confiscated nearly 360 kilos of cocaine after a plane accident at a clandestine airstrip off the Northern Highway.224 In 1991 a suspected Colombian drug plane crashed on another such strip in San Felipe, about fifteen miles from Orange Walk, just after the BDF had partially destroyed a runway.
Through the 1990s cases related to the northern Belize cocaine trade multiplied. In 1991 the DEA used an undercover sting operation to penetrate a Medellín operation that was shipping cocaine into Belize and on for U.S. East Coast distribution. The organization was allegedly led by Pedro Libardo Ortegón Ortegón, identified at trial as “directly below the highest level of the cartel,” and was being assisted by Belizean traffickers led by Armando Grajales of Orange Walk.225 That same year, after a cross-border cocaine deal went sour, a Chetumal kingpin orchestrated a kidnapping of Belizeans.226 In 1992 the DEA and an elite Belizean counternarcotics team captured 212 kilos of cocaine in two villages near Corozal, and in 1995 Corozal police seized a sport-utility vehicle and arrested its two occupants, headed toward the border with 114 kilos of cocaine.227 In 1996 authorities found a rough runway, aviation fuel, and a weapons cache at Revenge Lagoon, on the edge of the Orange Walk district in the wilderness north of Crooked Tree.228
Cocaine transshipment put an even greater premium than had marijuana export on corrupting police and politicians to preclude interdiction. When drug networks operated in remote areas of an unintegrated state like Belize, they might be confident of avoiding official detection without assuming the risk and expense of corrupting authorities. However, in light of the violence freely wielded by Colombian and Mexican cartels, as the size and value of cocaine shipments increased, so, too, did the risk of undertaking trafficking without systematically corrupting counternarcotics officials ahead of time. Hence, evidence of extensive drug corruption in northern Belize increasingly surfaced. For instance, in 1991 a notepad belonging to the pilot of a drug plane captured in this area was found to contain the name, address, and phone number of a Serious Crimes Squad officer with detailed knowledge of antidrug operations and intelligence.229
In another notorious case in 1996 a police car, parked several miles from Orange Walk, was set on fire and burned, destroying documents that reportedly implicated relatives of government minister Elito Urbina in a large drug-transshipment scheme.230 Although the destroyed evidence effectively thwarted prosecution, the U.S. government then canceled the visas of Urbina’s son and son-in-law and raised the case during the 1997 controversy over certification. As for police inspector Lamberto White, responsible for the destroyed vehicle, authorities investigated and suspended him.231 Then, five years after having been compelled to take early retirement, White was arrested in Nicaragua for possessing several kilos of cocaine and numerous Ecstasy pills.232
Over time, trafficking networks operating in northern Belize altered their methods either to perfect techniques or to stay ahead of authorities. By the early 1990s various operators had shifted from ground transport to speedboats and focused aerial delivery on water drops over bays, lakes, and lagoons.Unpredictability in methods as well as routes minimized interception. Thus, after authorities seized 2,700 kilos of cocaine in 1997, for a time Colombian and Mexican organizations reverted to clandestine landings on Orange Walk roads and airstrips. In 1998, as reports of suspected drug flights increased, two senior BDF officers were arrested for allegedly assisting drug planes landing around the Orange Walk district, and one trafficking network was found to have employed heavy construction equipment to widen two miles of road into San Luis village to accommodate aircraft touching down for refueling.233
One example of this trafficking occurred in 2003, when a drug plane landed near Blue Creek Village, an area largely inhabited by Mennonite farmers.234 Several times, the propeller-driven Russian cargo plane appeared but flew away without setting down. Finally, after dark, collaborators on the ground signaled the plane to approach, and five pickup trucks turned on their headlights to illuminate a landing strip. Within forty minutes handlers had removed an estimated 1.8 tons of cocaine that were thought, then, to have crossed the nearby Río Hondo into Mexico, the river there being shallow enough to be readily forded. As this operation occurred, Blue Creek residents repeatedly called the Orange Walk police and politicians, including the mayor. However, no officials appeared until the next morning, twelve hours after the cocaine had disappeared. This case underscores how unintegrated was the Belizean state and how unresponsive its northern authorities tended to be. Despite the logistical problems encountered by the traffickers and the repeated efforts of local people to tip officials, a large cocaine shipment transited without seizure or arrests.
The following year the Anti drug Unit patrolling near San Lazaro village, ten miles west of Orange Walk, received reports of another low-flying airplane. As the plane approached a rough air strip in a cane field, the pilot spotted the authorities and tried to abort the landing. The heavily loaded aircraft did not respond quickly enough, however, and the pilot crash-landed. The six traffickers involved, armed with automatic weapons, then engaged in a fifteen-minute shoot-out with the police. Ultimately, while just over seven hundred kilos of cocaine were seized, all the traffickers escaped, apparently with the help of a circling helicopter, thought to have been sent from Mexico to assist in exporting the drugs.235
Over time, drug syndicates grew even more daring. In 2004 a drug plane undertook a water drop in the busy early afternoon hours, right in the heart of Corozal Bay, in fact, within the town limits.236 Three waiting boats gathered up dozens of packages and sped across the water to Mexico. The police were caught unprepared, and speedy and effective international cooperation with Mexican counterparts failed to materialize. Although authorities intercepted the boats on their return to Belize, the cargo—evidence needed for successful prosecution—had disappeared. Such incidents demoralized law enforcement, while criminal networks gained confidence that counternarcotics operations were unlikely to interfere with their schemes, however blatant.
In 2008 one Orange Walk transshipment ring was so bold as to land a drug plane at about two in the morning right on the Northern Highway.237 Heavily armed masked men dressed in black stopped traffic while a shipment estimated at more than a ton of cocaine was unloaded and a refueling truck carrying 1,200 gallons of aviation fuel serviced the aircraft. Army and police, alerted by an oncoming driver’s cell phone call, rushed to the scene, but, apparently unwittingly, passed the truck heading north packed full of drugs. During the ensuing shoot-out with traffickers carrying AK-47 assault rifles, police shot the driver of the refueler truck, which crashed, and eventually nine other individuals were arrested, although the pilots escaped.
In countries with well-developed criminal-justice systems, prosecutors have used the threat of conviction and lengthy imprisonment to persuade conspirators to provide information in exchange for more lenient treatment. Given the lesser resources and abilities of Belizean authorities, climbing “up the chain” in this manner occurred much less frequently. In this Northern Highway case, too, the government proved to be largely impotent. The Belizean authorities never located the drugs and could only speculate on their probable route out of the country, while those Belizeans who had masterminded the venture were never publicly identified, much less successfully prosecuted.
Juárez Cartel Activities
Mexican