THE ILLICIT PRODUCTION AND MOVEMENT OF OPIATES IN LATIN AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001000040001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 1, 1971
• Content Type: IR

Approved For Release 2001/09/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001 000040 01-9
Secret
No Foreign Dissem
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Report
The Illicit Production and Movement of Opiates
in Latin America
Secret
CIA/BGI GR 71-4
January 1971
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WARNING
This document contains information affecting the national
defense of the United States, within the meaning of Title
18, sections 793 and 794, of the US Code, as amended.
Its transmission or revelation of its contents to or re-
ceipt by an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
GROUP I
Excluded from automatic
downgrading and
dectoniteation
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NO FOREIGN DISSENT
Central America and the Caribbean islands
18. Central America and the Caribbean have
long been at the center of a vast swirl of contra-
band activities. During the 17th and early 18th
centuries the British, using Jamaica as their main
base of operations, carried on a well-planned
program of smuggling to weaken ties linking Spain
and her New World empire. French and Dutch
smugglers were also active throughout the area.
Confederate blockade runners during the US Civil
War and the rumrunners of a more recent era
contributed to the reputation of the Caribbean
as a smuggler's paradise. Illicit trade continues
to flourish today, and narcotics of all types flow
into, within, and out of the region in great
volume. Thousands of small craft cruise the
Caribbean waters and make monitoring of smuggling,
not to mention its prevention, almost impossible.
The pattern of movement of opiates.into the area
from Europe and their subsequent movement to the
United States is shown on the map.
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Central America and The Caribbean: Illicit Traffic in Opiates
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19. Panama, strategically located at the focal
point of the sea lanes and airways of the Western
Hemisphere, is recognized as one of the great
contraband centers of the world. It handles large
quantities of whiskey, cigarettes, and luxury goods
of all sorts in transit to South America, and heroin
and cocaine bound for the United States. Over 14,000
ships pass through the canal annually, and a constant
stream of planes arrive and depart Tocumen Inter-
national Airport near Panama City. Much of the
heroin probably arrives by air from points far to the
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south -- such as Lima and Santiago. Cocaine also
is introduced from these places and from Guayaquil
and Quito, Ecuador, and from points in Colombia.
Ships from Europe and from the Orient also con-
tribute to the supply of narcotics entering Panama.
20. Recently opium poppies have been discov-
ered in Costa Rica. Ornamental varieties of the
poppy (Pa aver somniferum L.) have been grown there
for many years, but opium producing varieties have
not been detected heretofore. Now, however, the
plants have been discovered in a number of places
in the northwestern part of Cartago Province -- in
gardens, in a cemetery, and on the slopes of Irazu
Volcano. Costa Rican authorities uprooted about
500 of the plants on 10 July 1970. Subsequently
more than a thousand additional plants have been
found and destroyed.
21. The opium content of these plants is
said to be high, but the recently discovered fields
are not large enough to have yielded a significant
amount of opium. However, a farmer has reported
having burned a 30-manzana field (slightly over
50 acres) of the opium poppies (without knowing
what they were at the time) in order to plant
toes less than a year ago.
22. The Costa Rican Guardia Civil is
continuing to search the slopes o razu, an
11,260-foot volcano located in the Cordillera
Central about 17 miles east of the capital city
of San Jose. Additional secluded sites in the
Cordillera Central as well as mountainous
country elsewhere in Costa Rica may provide
suitable sites for clandestine poppy cultivation.
Fears have also been expressed that clandestine
heroin laboratories may be in operation somewhere
in the country but no real evidence of this has
been discovered. According to one theory, drug
traffickers are moving into Costa Rica because
of increased pressure by security forces in other
countries.
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23. Nicaragua has also been described W
25X1C as a transit point for heroin
shipped north from South America via Panama to the
United States. Certainly large amounts of other
types of contraband, including small arms from
Costa Rica, cross its borders regularly.
25. Seizures of heroin have been made
recently in. Puerto Rico and in St. Croix in the
US Virgin Islands. The heroin was of European
origin and probably on its way to New York. An
attempt in 1969 to smuggle heroin into the French
island of Guadeloupe on a French ship was foiled,
but now the drug flows from Marseille via the
island to Miami and New York, possibly by air.
26. Curacao, in the Netherlands Antilles
off the coast of Venezuela, is also an active
transshipment point for European opiates destined
for the United States. large
amounts of heroin have gone from Amsterdam to
Curacao and then on to Miami or New York. Numerous
steamships and airlines offer regular and frequent
services between the island and points in Europe,
the United States, Canada, South and Central America,
and practically all of the important islands of the
Caribbean. As is typical of the principal smuggling
centers around the world, the island contains
extensive free port facilities and gambling casinos.
Nearby Aruba is also involved in various types of
smuggling (including cocaine, marijuana, and
contraband Colombian coffee), but specific in-
formation on. traffic in opiates is not available.
27. Trinidad may act as a transshipment
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500 1000 Milee
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South America: Illicit Traffic in Opiates
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35. The air routes used for smuggling within
South America are devious and continuously changing.
Usually, flights up and down the Pacific Coast hug
the lowlands to avoid hazardous flying over the
rugged Andes Mountains and to increase the chances
of finding emergency landing spots in case of
mechanical difficulties. A typical flight north
from Santiago, Chile to the United States might
include stops at Guayaquil, Ecuador,and Panama.
Sometimes flights from the south stop at Cali or
Bogota before continuing to Panama or proceeding
36. Heroin smuggled into Buenos Aires is
sometimes shipped up the Rio de la Plata and Rio
Parana. Offloaded before it reaches Paraguay
(perhaps in the vicinity of Corrientes), it is
then flown to clandestine airfields in that
country. From Paraguay the drug continues by
air to Brazil and then northward to the United
States. Heroin smuggled into Paraguay from
Argentina may also be flown to Santiago, Chile,
and then up the Pacific Coast to Panama and
eventually to the United States.
37. As early as 1966, reports indicated
the probability of narcotics smuggling by air
from France to Argentina, via Spain, and then
on to the United States. 25X6
landing strips.
the smuggl e s ot makeshift clandestine
al rile Ids ,
In April 1970, Argentine police
arrested members of a gang known as "La Pietra
Forte". They were engaged in smuggling European
heroin from Buenos Aires to the United States.
38. French-Italian and Latin American
gangs are also thought to be smuggling heroin
destined for transshipment to the United States
into Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These smuggling
rings apparently have connections in New York
and Naples, and probably in Buenos Aires and
Sao Paulo as well.
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39. The heroin traffic in South America is
becoming closely linked to the more traditional
traffic in cocaine and other well established
contraband items such as American cigarettes.
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