Bribes, Bullets, and Intimidation. Julie Marie Bunck
. . . This is ideal for marijuana cultivation.”70 As early as the 1970s high-quality varieties of Belizean marijuana, under such labels as Belize Breeze, had gained an international reputation for potency, with THC levels reaching 11 percent.71 Not only did Belizeans have a valuable product to export, but Belize was much closer to the U.S. marijuana market than was Colombia. This proximity has been particularly advantageous for smugglers, because marijuana is the bulkiest drug to transport, a fact that increases the likelihood of its interdiction and raises costs and risks.72
Just after the country completed its transition to independence, these various factors led to a stage of extremely large-scale marijuana production in Belize, as fig. 2.1 illustrates. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics Matters (BINM) estimated that in 1984 the yield of the Belizean marijuana crop had reached 1,053 tons. As fig. 2.2 demonstrates, only a relatively small amount was consumed domestically, and of the remainder, 85 percent was exported to the United States and 14 percent sent to other countries, including Mexico.
Fig. 2.1 Marijuana production in Belize, 1982–1990
Sources: INCSR (1993), 145; INCSR (1992), 133, 135; INCSR (1989), 116; INCSR (1985), 42–43.
Note: After 1991, with international attention focused more single-mindedly on cocaine and heroin, the U.S. government noted in annual drug reports that the amount of cannabis being cultivated in Belize was unknown.
The Belizean marijuana industry long capitalized on the country’s lack of integration. Producers recruited illegal aliens to tend fields, typically located in quite remote areas, such as the jungles along the Guatemalan boundary or bordering the New River south of Orange Walk.73 Indeed, the New River zone has witnessed continuing violence, including numerous clashes between rival growers.74 The unevenly populated northern Orange Walk district and the Red Bank region south of Dangriga also became noted for considerable cannabis production. In contrast to the enormous, extensively fertilized and irrigated marijuana plantations that authorities discovered in rural Mexico at this time, Belizean marijuana farmers traditionally planted plots of about a hectare, or roughly two and a half acres, hidden in the jungle or within fields of legitimate crops.75 As a U.S. government report noted, Belizean marijuana “is normally grown using the slash-and-burn technique of clearing fields. A grower employed by a trafficker will hike into a remote jungle area, hack out a plot, burn the debris, and plant marijuana. After the crop matures, he harvests and delivers it to the trafficker.”76
Fig. 2.2 Marijuana yield and exports from Belize, 1982–1990
Sources: INCSR (1990), 167; INCSR (1991), 136.
Note: The estimates of Belizean and U.S. authorities differed a bit, disagreeing, for instance, on whether the best estimated yield in 1986 was 550 or 605 tons, and in 1987, 198 or 220 tons. See “Belize Bucks Regional Trend in Drug Production,” TR (BZ), 27 March 1988, 12, and “‘Drug Problem Is Alarming,’ Says PRIDE Director,” BT (BZ), 17 December 1989, 3, 27. The differences were not marked, however, and a high-level U.S. official with responsibilities in Central America declared, “The statistics in the [Belizean] newspapers on crop eradications and crop seizures appear to us to be fairly accurate. Belize is too small a country for the statistics to be misleading and no one to suspect [it]. The statistics match up pretty well with computer programs tracking drugs coming from Latin America.” Confidential interview, 1990.
As in the Colombian marijuana industry, small, hard-to-locate plots minimized risk.77 When authorities might need to hike for much of a day to reach a cannabis field previously identified from the air, those cultivating the site were often forewarned and fled. Although arrests linked to marijuana production occasionally occurred, these tended to snare unwary individuals hired to guard or plant small plots. In part because the poverty-stricken farmers involved have often been viewed sympathetically, neither the Belizean legislature in passing drug laws nor the courts in sentencing offenders have seriously penalized marijuana production. Cannabis has frequently been grown on public land, and when fields turned up on private holdings, owners have routinely disclaimed all knowledge. In fact, absentee owners might be collecting substantial fees to permit marijuana production; however, with their strictly limited investigative resources, authorities have found this difficult to prove. And, lacking a strong rule-of-law tradition, officials have usually been disinclined to pursue elites when marijuana has been found on their land. Thus, apart from the peons caught tending marijuana fields, those involved in cannabis production have rarely faced prosecution, much less conviction and serious penalty.78
On the national scene, although no strong movement has ever coalesced to legalize growing and trafficking marijuana, whether stamping out enhanced production would become a top government priority immediately after independence was unclear. At the time other pressing tasks and problems occupied politicians. Some appreciated the foreign exchange and employment that the marijuana industry delivered, and a number were beholden to the trade, either corrupted by it or cognizant of its influence within the communities they represented. Moreover, the chief marijuana organizations have traditionally been headquartered in northern and southern Belize. Law enforcement there has been even more erratic than in central Belize, with the influence of elites, kinship networks, and patron-client relationships exceptionally strong. And, some doubted whether an unintegrated new state lacking financial resources and robust institutions could counter marijuana traffickers very effectively.
The economics of the marijuana trade proved to be nettlesome as well. By the early 1980s, even as sugar profits slumped, Belizean intermediaries paid producers fifteen to thirty dollars a pound for marijuana and then charged foreign syndicates fifty to a hundred dollars per pound when it was packaged and prepared for export. Cannabis could be harvested in both the fall and spring, and it eventually helped support numerous small farmers.79 In addition, those who could furnish airstrips, weapons, laborers, aviation fuel, mechanical skills, and alike skimmed considerable sums from the trade.80 In 1985 one Belizean citizen commented, “Almost everyone you meet in this country is at least tangentially involved in the marijuana trade. Most never see the stuff. But they may rent a plane or an airstrip to someone. Or a truck. They may lease out some land or ignore someone’s use of it.”81 In fact, with Belize ranked as the fourth largest exporter of marijuana to the United States, its annual crop was estimated in the mid-1980s to be worth $350 million, a figure more than triple the country’s $111 million in legal exports.82
Nevertheless, within two years of independence, the government had moved decisively to stem the trade. The prime incentive involved the country’s bid to cultivate positive U.S. relations. To gain enhanced foreign assistance, Belizean officials felt that marijuana production had to be curtailed. Determining the best strategy to do this, however, proved problematic. As one outside consultant put it, “Destruction of the marijuana by personnel on the ground [was] thought to be prohibitively slow, expensive, and dangerous.”83 By contrast, spraying weed killer from the air was markedly more effective, but also considerably more controversial.84 In the first year of spraying, starting in 1982, officers of the BDF Air Wing flew two loaned U.S. crop dusters and destroyed about 85 percent of the crop. Furthermore, U.S. authorities seized certain sizable marijuana shipments that Belizean traffickers had managed to export. For instance, in 1983 U.S. Customs officials hid a transponder on a Cessna 404 airplane; tracked from Belize to New Mexico, it contained 1.1 tons of marijuana.85
It has been theorized that increased antidrug law enforcement often has the effect of “cartelizing” a drug industry.86 That is, enhanced eradication and interdiction adversely affect the smaller and less-capable traffickers first, thwarting or eliminating them and strengthening their larger, better-organized, more influential, and often violent competitors, who gain market share. This dynamic occurred in Belize. While more vulnerable rings—small Belizean or U.S. operators exporting marijuana—fell during law-enforcement campaigns, the most entrenched Belizean drug organizations carried on. These were primarily headquartered in Orange Walk in the north and Big Creek in the south, and they capitalized on their connections not only to continue to export marijuana but to diversify to cocaine transshipment.
Thus,