Pubdate: Mon, 05 Mar 2012
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2012 Miami Herald Media Co.
Contact:  http://www.miamiherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262

COCAINE COWBOYS? NOT AGAIN

Crisis Coming As Caribbean Drug-Running Heats Up

The fight against drug trafficking is heating up on South Florida's 
doorstep. Drugs are coming in our direction again, and Puerto Rico, 
U.S. territories and the island nations of the Caribbean are once 
more caught in the middle.

"There's increasing concern that as the pressure increases in the 
Central American corridors, the balloon will expand back into the 
Caribbean zone," Sen. Marco Rubio of Miami said during a Senate 
hearing in December.

Echoing that concern, the U.N.'s International Narcotics Control 
Board last week noted that pressure on drug gangsters in Mexico and 
Central America is diverting cocaine operations to less difficult 
routes through the Caribbean.

The most chilling warning has come from Ambassador William 
Brownfield, the State Department's main drug fighter. He predicted in 
testimony to Congress late last year that when pressure on drug 
cartels in Central America gets too strong, "their old Caribbean 
routes and networks from the 1980s will look very attractive . . . We 
see this crisis coming."

Actually, it's here. According to the government of Puerto Rico, 
drug-related violence has pushed the island's murder rate to more 
than five times the national average. Last year, a record 1,136 
people were murdered in Puerto Rico. More than 70 percent of those 
murders are believed to be related directly to drug trafficking, the 
government says.

Puerto Rico's administration has responded energetically, though its 
resources are strained to the limit. The Puerto Rican National Guard 
has been deployed for periods of time to dampen the violence. By next 
summer, the use of new equipment and security measures will provide 
for 100 percent scanning of cargo entering the Port of San Juan in 
another effort to cut off the drug supply.

The island's government has reached out to South Florida, with Gov. 
Luis Fortuno and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez coordinating 
an agreement to collaborate on ways to combat drugs through the 
Caribbean corridor.

The suggestion that South Florida may soon witness a revival of the 
1980s era of the Cocaine Cowboys should put U.S. officials from the 
local to the federal level on guard.

Last summer, Wifredo Ferrer, U.S attorney for the Southern District 
of Florida unveiled a plan called the Florida Caribbean Basin 
Initiative aimed at combating and deterring drug trafficking in the region.

That's a good step forward, but Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin 
Islands are the front lines in this fight. This is part of our 
southern border. Once the drugs arrive there, they are in the United States.

This is a national security issue that deserves the level of 
attention that has been focused on the U.S.-Mexico border to stop 
drug trafficking in that region.

Over the decades, one of the lessons learned in the fight against 
drug trafficking is that even success comes with a downside. Nobody's 
prepared to declare victory along the U.S.-Mexico border yet, but 
clearly the drug lords are feeling the pressure and are re-routing 
their lethal cargo from the Andean region toward the Caribbean - and Florida.

Gov. Fortuno's administration contends that federal law enforcement 
in Puerto Rico with jurisdiction over drug trafficking are 
under-staffed and badly in need of more resources.

Congress and the Obama administration should respond before South 
Florida once again becomes a major battleground in the war on drugs.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom