Bribes, Bullets, and Intimidation. Julie Marie Bunck
Belizean drug rings persevered, despite the government’s antimarijuana campaign. In 1983 the country’s cannabis production rose to an estimated seven hundred tons, and though authorities eradicated almost six million marijuana plants, growers then doubled the acreage planted, while aggressively irrigating and fertilizing to improve yields.87 Many in Belize objected vigorously to the aerial-eradication campaign—largely funded by the United States but including some support from Mexican helicopters and crews—arguing that the spraying occurred haphazardly or hampered legitimate activities.88 While marijuana producers and exporters may have engineered certain complaints, others appeared to be genuine and troublesome. Belizeans in widely scattered settlements declared that crop dusters were releasing weed killer where no marijuana plantations existed, harming fruits and vegetables, fish and animals.89 During the early years of heavy aerial spraying, the Belize Honey Producers Federation commissioned a study by an American entomologist that linked the widespread application of weed killer dropped by planes on or near marijuana fields to beehive damage and slumping honey production.90
At the end of 1983 the government halted aerial spraying, with authorities then relying solely on search-and-destroy missions on the ground. Yet manual operations destroyed a much smaller percentage of the crop. The estimated thirty-five tons exported in 1983 approached and then exceeded a thousand tons the next two years. Judith Bertini, DEA chief of operational intelligence, noted that the 85 percent exported to the United States would supply 8 percent of the U.S. market.91 Indeed, a U.S. federal district court concluded that in about the last half of 1984, a single marijuana-trafficking organization, led by Randall Garrett, succeeded in importing into the United States more than three tons of Belizean marijuana.92
Certainly, government policies regarding the marijuana trade interested numerous Belizeans and, hence, could have resounding political impact. The People’s United Party (PUP) administration of George Price had initiated aerial spraying, but by the 1984 election year it was embattled on corruption charges, and leading PUP politicians concluded that further air eradication was politically untenable. In fact, many Belizeans at this time were prepared to tolerate fairly extensive marijuana use and trafficking. One estimate suggested, conservatively, that about ten thousand Belizeans smoked it; another postulated that between ten and thirteen tons of Belizean marijuana were consumed domestically each year. Furthermore, a widespread perception existed that prior spraying had occurred on a politically selective basis, with marijuana going untouched so long as it was situated on land owned by PUP supporters.93
Behind-the-scenes struggles within the Price government illustrate just how interrelated were personal, national, and international interests with respect to drug issues. Certain cabinet members, including Elijio “Joe” Briceno, an influential Orange Walk politician then serving as minister of energy and communication, opposed aerial eradication. With time, hidden motives behind Briceno’s political stance came to light. In 1984 a DEA special agent learned that Briceno, responsible for supervising airports, traffic, and communications, was also involved in the drug trade. Indeed, Briceno met the agent and offered to store and supply high-quality marijuana, to provide a clandestine airstrip for marijuana exports, and to ensure that police not interfere. He even arranged for visiting pilots, in reality undercover DEA agents, to tour possible runways that might accommodate DC-3 planes. Briceno eventually promised to deliver two thousand kilos of marijuana a month in exchange for a 10 percent commission on sales. In April 1985 Briceno flew to Miami to collect more than thirty-two thousand dollars in seed money. After meeting with undercover agents at the Columbia Hotel and discussing security arrangements and the price and availability of marijuana in Belize, Briceno was arrested. Eventually convicted of conspiring to import marijuana and cocaine, among other charges, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of fifty thousand dollars.94 While this incident ended Briceno’s political career, his son eventually launched a political career and in recent years has risen to lead the People’s United Party.
By the mid-1980s a DEA official called drug trafficking “more significant in Belize than in any other country in Latin America,” in light of its modest population and economy.95 While an overstatement given developments in Colombia and elsewhere, numerous Belizeans were quite attracted to the potential remuneration associated with the drug trade.96 With corruption rife, trafficking occurred blatantly. Planes touched down on the principal highways or even at the international airport without eliciting an official response. An informant pilot testified in a U.S. federal court case that in 1983 he had landed at the Belize airport to find trucks loaded with marijuana guarded by an American trafficker and several local residents armed with automatic weapons. In describing how the marijuana trade permeated life in Belize, an airport baggage handler placed the constant drug smuggling in sharp perspective: “Big plane land here, pick up dope. Big plane land in highway, pick up dope. Everybody getting rich but the little people.”97
In fact, although light planes exported most Belizean marijuana during the heyday of production, traffickers also shipped considerable quantities by sea. At its widest, Belizean territory is about sixty-five miles across, so marijuana need not be transported far to reach the coast. This, coupled with such attractive features of offshore waters as the barrier reef and its cayes, encouraged maritime marijuana trafficking.98 In one case that eventually brought about the conviction and resignation of corrupt U.S. federal district judge Robert F. Collins, American Gary Young pled guilty to charges that in 1985 he had conspired to send a maritime delivery of more than 1.1 tons of Belizean marijuana to the United States.99 Then, in the late 1980s U.S. prosecutors exposed a network that had been sending thousands of kilos of Belizean marijuana from Misteriosa Bank off Rocky Point Lighthouse, near Sarteneja, toward Marco Island, Florida.100 In 1990 combined British-U.S.-Belizean maritime operations interdicted fully 7.89 tons of marijuana.101 Whether sent by air or sea, the constant marijuana exports developed capable Belizean drug rings that came to operate quite skillfully, frequently outfoxing authorities by changing routes.
On the national scene, despite having halted the antidrug aerial-eradication program, the PUP lost the 1984 election. The incoming, more conservative United Democratic Party (UDP) administration and prime minister Manuel Esquivel soon confronted renewed U.S. pressure concerning marijuana exports.102 In 1985 Esquivel declared, “The cultivation and trafficking of marijuana has been converted into a serious problem that threatens the country’s security.”103 The UDP government then agreed in principle to resume aerial spraying, though it temporarily refrained from doing so, awaiting the results of U.S. legal proceedings that had challenged the government-sanctioned spraying of paraquat as harmful to the health of marijuana smokers.104 At length, Belize opted to use Roundup, and after a period of limited measures, the government ordered full spraying to resume in 1986.105 Not only did the renewed campaign destroy more than 2.2 million kilos that year and 2.7 million the next, but the government also embarked on a much-publicized effort to use explosives to destroy some of the most suspicious unlicensed airstrips.
These measures, coupled with drought, took a considerable toll on the Belizean cannabis industry, and marijuana production declined steeply from 1986 to 1990. Fig. 2.1 illustrates that, while much more marijuana was cultivated in 1986 than at the beginning of the decade, much more was eradicated as well. Thus, after 1985 exports steadily fell, with eradication reducing the amount available to be shipped abroad from 512 tons in 1986 to 48 tons in 1990. George Price and the PUP then took office again and opted to retain the UDP’s fundamental eradication policies, resulting in a further decrease to 36 tons in 1991. By 1992 the U.S. government declared that by cutting marijuana production 90 percent over five years, Belize had suppressed cultivation to the maximum extent possible.106
Despite these considerable setbacks, Belizean drug networks did not discontinue all efforts to export marijuana. Eradicating fields of cannabis failed to disrupt the long-lived, well-connected, and historically successful domestic networks that had been financing, producing, and transporting the drugs. The attraction of the trade persisted, as did the routes, infrastructure, international connections, and consumer demand that had supported their operations. In 1987 Prime Minister Esquivel observed that so high was foreign demand, traffickers were actually bartering cocaine for Belizean cannabis.107 In addition, significant Belizean producers relocated operations into Guatemala’s El Petén region and substantial quantities of marijuana began to cross the Guatemalan border.108 Nevertheless, while curtailing drug production in one country did lead to enhanced output