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1. The trail of bridge-state trafficking studies was blazed in Griffith, Drugs and Security, but this work deals almost exclusively with Caribbean, not Central American, drug trafficking. For the multipolarity of early twentiethcentury cocaine production, culture, and uses, see Gootenberg , Andean Cocaine, 190, 248. 2. Addressing the paucity of research, one scholar wrote, “Anyone attempting to do research on drug trafficking in Central America will come up against a dearth of information on this subject. Therefore, research . . . will have to begin at the most basic level.” Juhn, “Central America,” 389. This book explores one distinctly understudied aspect of the international drug trade: the experiences of “bridge countries,” that is, states that may neither consume nor produce sizable amounts of illegal drugs but that lie on favored paths carved out between centers of production and key consumer markets. In the 1980s the Central American republics became critically important to the international drug trade and have remained so ever since, with illegal drugs continually transiting en route to North American , European, and various emerging markets. Central America is particularly well suited for one of the first comparative studies of bridgestate trafficking, because its trade in drugs has long been emphatically multipolar.1 Significant drug transit has occurred not only across the territories but in the skies above each state and through offshore Pacific and Caribbean waters. By studying Central American drug trafficking, we offer a first examination of social, political, and economic phenomena of extraordinary importance to an often overlooked region of the world. Certainly, by the 1990s massive inflows and outflows of cocaine had come to affect profoundly each small republic. Nevertheless, no sound empirical foundation has yet been compiled, much less have theoretical explanations been offered, to illuminate the manner in which drug traffickers and law enforcement have contended with one another in Central America.2 One Introduction Exploring Central American Drug Trafficking 2 BRIBES , BULLE T S , A N D I N T I M I D A T I O N 3. Reuter, “Political Economy,” 128; Decker and Chapman, Drug Smugglers, 1. 4. Regions rarely “break easily along neatly perforated lines.” Claude, Swords into Plowshares, 11 3. Some might question including Panama, or even Belize, in Central America and wish to exclude them on geographic, historical, or cultural grounds. Vis-à-vis the drug trade, however, it seems to us that both should properly be considered Central American bridge states. 5. The Kerry Commission observed that traffickers want to conduct their business smoothly, which is most readily accomplished in states with stable governments but weak institutions. U.S. Senate, Law Enforcement: Report, 10. 6. In 1985 the first DEA agent assigned to undertake undercover work entered El Salvador. He later wrote, “As I leafed through the files, I discovered the drug war in this corner of the globe amounted to piles of reports documenting traffickers’ identities and movements, but few seizures and arrests.” Castillo and Harmon, Powderburns, 112. 7. See generally U.S. House, Nicaraguan Government , and Cockburn and St. Clair, Whiteout, 283. 8. U.S. Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (hereafter cited as INCSR) (1991), 145. In the early 1990s, one source claims, the Cali cartel bought four 230-kilo cluster bombs from Salvadoran military officials. Strong, Whitewash, 267. 9. Metric tons are hereafter referred to simply as tons. “Costa Rica el guardián de Centroamérica,” Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala), 14 February 1999, 22. 10. The Kerry Commission concluded that “individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the support network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.” See U.S. Senate, Law Enforcement: Report, 36. Once the Sandinista regime took control, the CIA and DEA, through undercover informant Barry Seal, procured photos implicating Sandi­ nistas in cocaine trafficking. A former internal affairs official in Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry, Álvaro José Baldizón Avilés, likewise testified that Nicaraguan officials had trafficked in cocaine. Imprisoned Nicaraguan trafficker Enrique Miranda Jaime stated that from 1981 to 1985 he had been personally involved in Sandinista efforts to raise funds by drug trafficking. And, Medellín insider Roberto Escobar later revealed that Sandinista officials had agreed with the cartel to hide its leading fugitives and to use an leading authority on drugs has written, “The topic of transnational smuggling attracts a good deal of rhetoric but not much that could be called research.” Another recent work...

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