Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Mechanics
The mechanics of drug transit including both routes and modes of conveyance shift
continually according to national, regional, and international counterenforce-
ment measures (de Albuquerque, 1996b) as dealers display remarkable ingenuity
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keeping one step ahead of detection. During the 1970s and 1980s most cocaine
was airlifted in small planes from Colombia either directly to the Bahamas (or
indirectly through Jamaica) where air-dropped cargo was loaded onto high-speed
“go-fast” boats for a final run to the US mainland. Because of increased air and
sea anti-drug enforcement, now most cocaine is shipped in bulk cargo freighters
along more circuitous routes: through Jamaica to Haiti, the Dominican Republic,
and Puerto Rico, then on to the United States; or through South America to the
Eastern Caribbean, and on to the United States and Europe (US DEA, 2003). In
addition, small amounts of cocaine and heroin are transported by courier in com-
mercial aircraft at busy tourist airports.
As an example of the ubiquity of trafficking activity, the Leeward Islands of the
Eastern Caribbean have provided a new corridor to North America. The new routes
include Puerto Rico, the “new Miami,” and the USVI where shipments arrive by
sea and air, are repackaged as domestic freight, and are transported north by cargo
or courier, taking advantage of the anonymity created by large-scale tourist traffic
and perfunctory Customs checks through these US territories. Today about a third
of all cocaine in transit winds up in Puerto Rico (UNODC, 2003). Sophisticated
satellite positioning systems are often employed by traffickers to coordinate
drops in the least policed waters (US DEA, 1998). To elude US radar, traffickers
often use stealth boats made entirely from wood and fiberglass as well as semi-
submersible vessels (de Albuquerque, 1996b).
Further to the north, cocaine traffic has been deflected toward Haiti and the
Dominican Republic—states ideally suited because of their location, poorly mon-
itored coasts, mountainous and underpopulated interiors, significant poverty, and
poorly paid and underequipped security forces. Cocaine shipped to Haiti quickly
finds its way to the Dominican Republic, and then by go-fast boats or fishing boats
to Puerto Rico or the Bahamas. The Dutch Antillean islands of Aruba, Curacao,
and St. Maarten have also become prominent transit routes to the United States and
Europe for heroin and cocaine smuggled by passenger and cargo flights as well as
on cargo vessels and cruise ships. Their main attraction is that they function as
free-trade zones that allow containerized contraband to escape inspection before
reexport (US DEA, 2003). Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines also func-
tion as bulk pipelines for drugs en route north via the American and the French ter-
ritories (Guadeloupe and Martinique) while St. Lucia and St. Kitts-Nevis have
become staging and stockpiling points for cocaine to be on-loaded into go-fast
boats or fishing boats to Puerto Rico and the USVI.
These drug flows are facilitated in part by the lack of drug-sniffing dogs at
Caribbean airports and by sophisticated concealment methods. In addition to hid-
den compartments and fuel tanks in maritime vessels, drugs have been stashed in
every possible human orifice, especially the swallowing of cocaine sealed in con-
doms and heroin in latex-wrapped pellets. They have been hidden in every type of
clothing, footwear, fruits, vegetables, furniture, appliances, vehicles, cigarette car-
tons, false amputee limbs, bibles, surfboards, live and dead animals, and even a
“ganja guitar” fashioned completely of compressed marijuana (Griffith, 1997,
p. 82). Lax customs inspection and local corruption facilitate the lucrative trade.
The former is particularly true of cruise ship passengers and crew as they
disembark in Puerto Rico or Florida ports. Couriers are often women recruited for
up to $3,000 per trip, cruise ship crew members, or older couples on a cruise.
Jamaica is the major source of air couriers. Over one third of the so-called mules
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arrested in the United States are from Jamaica (
Economist,
1999) while British
authorities claim that one in ten passengers flying Air Jamaica (so-called Cocaine
Air) to Great Britain are transporting cocaine (UNODC, 2003, p. 15).