Source: Reuters Pubdate: 10 Aug 1998 MEXICO'S CARIBBEAN HOT SPOT FOR DRUGS TRADE - REPORT MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Nearly a third of the illegal drugs that pass through the Caribbean from South America to the United States enter Mexico near the popular tourist resort of Cancun, a newspaper report said Monday. Reforma newspaper said U.S. anti-drug agents were alarmed at the growing importance of Mexico's eastern Yucatan peninsula, where Cancun is located, as a transit point for cocaine. It said that in the last month alone, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registered 64 boats believed to have been ferrying narcotics from Colombia to the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, in the Yucatan. Of those boats, some 38 were registered to Mexicans, Reforma said, adding that Mexican authorities had no comment when showed the list of boats. The newspaper added that the vast majority of the ships -- some with capacity of 300 tons -- unload their cargo on high-speed boats that land in Cancun or very near the luxury resort. U.S. officials have said that because of a crackdown on trafficking through overland routes in northern Mexico, drug traffickers have started to rely more heavily on the Caribbean as a transit point for cocaine -- as they did in the early 1980s. But Reforma has said in recent articles that Cancun has become the 1990s equivalent of the role Miami played then as a key transit point for cocaine. An estimated two-thirds of the cocaine that ends up in the United States passes through Mexico at some point, officials in both countries say. - --- Checked-by: Mike Gogulski