Word: guajira
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Colombian officials had heard such tales before. The Guajira region where Spradley and McLemore landed is rich in marijuana-most of America's pot comes from there (TIME, Jan. 29, 1979)-and for months the army has been cracking down on clandestine flights from the U.S. that swoop in, load up and head north. The Colombians were particularly skeptical when Spradley admitted he could not remember the name of the airport he had taken off from, or his Venezuelan destination, or the company for which he was supposedly working. The missing McLemore, he said, had all the details...
...homes in coastal areas like Santa Marta have rocketed. Rolls-Royces and $30,000 beds with built-in stereos are among the signs of the drug traders' conspicuous consumption. Also being purchased by traffickers: Colombia's judges, customs agents and police. The jail in the capital of the Guajira is so corrupted that the army has quit sending captured smugglers there. They routinely escape...
...Colombian drug operations goes not to those who grow narcotics or process them, but to those who get them to the American consumer. One way to get the drugs out is to fly them from one of the hundreds of clandestine airstrips that have been bulldozed in Guajira peninsula. The Colombian army's map of the region is speckled with 150 pinpoints, but an officer admits, "There are so many illegal airstrips we don't really count them...
Violence among traffickers seems to be part of the trade. In the Guajira capital of Riohacha, 92 people were killed in drug wars within a period of two months. In Florida, there have been 27 unsolved drug-related murders in the past year. One case that was solved was the death of Robert Topping, son of former New York Yankee Owner Dan Topping. He was abducted from the Miami airport, robbed of $47,000 he had brought to buy cocaine, stabbed 33 times and dumped on a Miami street. Barry Adler, 19, was sentenced to life in prison plus...
...group, the Judicial Police. Inefficiency and bureaucratic jealousy got the agency off to a slow start: the military, in fact, refused to supply Judicial Police with weapons. U.S. officials ended up smuggling 100 pistols in to them past Colombian customs. Last fall the Colombian army placed the Guajira peninsula under military restrictions, and within two months, the government claims to have captured 15 planes, including a four-engine DC-6; seized 36 boats; confiscated 259 weapons, including an American M16; and arrested 318 people. More than 3,000 troops are taking part in the effort. Says General Villarreal: "There...