Page 2B
THE BATTALION
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3. 1979
Columbia cracking down on
$2 billion marijuana industry
By MARTIN McREYNOLDS
I'nited Press International
RIOHACHA, Colombia — The
breeze that rustle* the palm trees is
hot and damp. Caribbean waters
wash the sparkling beach.
But beyond the dreamy
waterfront, things change East.
In Riohacha’s rutted, dusty
streets, swaggering men in bluejeans
and straw hats mingle with Indian
women from the countryside, their
faces smeared with ritual black paint,
their bodies wrapped in bright flow
ing dresses.
Accommodations for visitors are
minimal in this city of 70,000 but it
doesn’t matter. Strangers are ad
vised to be well on their way to safer
parts before sundown.
This is the capital of La Guajira
State and the hub of Colombia’s
biggest illegal industry — growing
and smuggling marijuana to the
United States.
It is also a key outpost in the gov
ernment’s battle to chop down the
drug traffic that threatens to over
shadow all of the country’s legitimate
business.
Estimates of the total Colombian
drug business vary, but it is gener
ally guessed to be around $2 billion
annually, a good part of which lands
in the hands of international dealers
based in the United States.
In addition to homegrown pot,
Colombia is one of the countries
where cocaine from Peru and Bolivia
is processed for shipment to the
U.S., mainly by gangs operating out
of the cities of Medellin and Cali.
The w'hite powder accounts for less
than half the dollar total, however,
and involves a much smaller labor
force than marijuana, which employs
up to 150,000 Colombians.
At an army base outside Riohacha,
soldiers in T-shirts and fatigue trous
ers stack scores of large bales wrap
ped in burlap bags. Tons of “Santa
Marta Gold,” prime marijuana from
the slopes of the Santa Marta
Mountains seized in the latest army
operation, are being prepared for a
bonfire of destruction.
A dozen trucks confiscated in the
action are lined up in a row. A few
yards away are the mangled remains
of a small plane that crashed on the
highway near the army base, pre
sumably on a pot mission that went
wrong.
A lot of similar flights have run into
trouble since President Julio Cesar
Turbay ordered the armed forces to
clamp down on the drug traffic last
October.
Through the end of June, the
armed forces had seized 80 airplanes
in Northern Colombia, nears all
U.S.-registered, includinga DC-7, a
DC-6, a Convair and three venera
ble DC-3’s, along with a vast fleet of
small twin-engine planes. Of that to
tal, 23 planes had crashed while at
tempting dangerous landings on
makeshift runways.
A total of 72 boats, 308 vehicles
and 879 firearms were also confis
cated.
During the same period. 1,169
suspects were arrested including 186
foreigners, all but a handful Ameri
cans.
The army says it destroyed nearly
38,000 tons of marijuana including
50,000 bales ready for shipment and
the estimated yield of plants growing
on 25 acres It also grabbed 2.2 mil
lion amphetamine tablets ready for
export and 74 pounds of cocaine ap
parently bein g handled by marijuana
smugglers outside the main cocaine
route.
“We figure we have got our hands
on less than 10 percent of the total
production, an army officer said
grimly.
Marijuana, often masked as
homesteaders’ plots of corn and
other crops, grows vigorously' in se
cluded ravines of the Santa Marta
mountains that rise abruptly from
the flat La Guajira peninsula jutting
into the Caribbean.
Some of the plantations are huge.
The army announced it recently dis
covered a single area of more than
24,000 acres planted in marijuana
that will take months to destroy.
“In the first two weeks, 100 sol
diers pulling up the plants, stacking
them to dry and then burning them
were able to cover only 500 acres,”
the army officer said.
"At that rate, it will take us two
years to finish the job in this one area
alone. We’re trying to get help from
the agriculture department — it’s
not a soldier’s job to dig up plants.”
The root of the enforcement prob
lem is money — bundles of dollars
and pesos that convince farmers to
run the risk of raising the illegal crop
and tempt ill-paid police, soldiers
and even judges to collaborate with
the drug traffic.
La Guajira has long been known in
Colombia as an economically de
pressed area w’here contraband was
considered a normal way of life. The
local populace welcomed outsiders
with the same open-hearted w’armth
that Tennessee mountaineers re
serve for internal revenue officers.
The level of violence has risen as
rival gangs fight for marijuana prof
its. The economy has been trans
formed in an area stretching along
the Caribbean coast from the historic
port of Cartagena through Barran-
quilla, Santa Marta and Riohacha to
the traditional smuggling town of
Maicao near the Venezuelan border.
At Santa Marta, the country’s
third biggest port and one of its
popular tourist resorts, whole
neighborhoods of new houses are
said to be occupied by the dru;
kingpins and their prosperous sub
ordinates. Shootouts by rival gangs
are common.
“This used to be the safest place on
earth, but the drug mafia has
changed all that,” said a storekeeper
in Santa Marta. “Now, when you
walk out the door of your house, you
never know if you’re coming back.
You walk out, but they might carry
you back.”
In Barranquilla, a newsman low
ered his voice when talking about the
“marimberos” — the marijuana
dealers.
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’’The corruption is unbelievable,
he said. “Nobody can resist the
amounts of dollars the marimberos
offer — nobody. But don’t say I told
you that. I don’t want to turn up
dead.”
The marijuana, dried and wrap
ped in “bultos” (bales) or “pacas”
(tightly compressed bricks made in
portable presses), is taken by mule
train and trucks to any of the 100 or
so clandestine airstrips that dot the
peninsula or to countless anchorages
along 300 miles of coastline.
“It’s easy to make a landing strip in
a few hours almost anywhere in La
Guajira,” said an American source
who follows the drug business in
Barranquilla. “You bulldoze the
brush out of the way, pack down the
sandy soil and you’re ready for busi
ness. Of course, there are no lights
for night landings and it’s very
risky. ”
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