By Ana Arana and Daniela Guazo
In San Pedro Sula, Colon is prime farming and cattle territory in the Honduran Caribbean coast. Its geography extends across eight thousand plus kilometers through mountains, rivers and thick vegetation. It is a strategic territory and middle transit point for drug transshipments from South America to Mexico and the United States. At the helm of these operations are Mexican and Colombian traffickers, according to Colombian and Honduran police reports. Plantations of African Palm conceal clandestine landing strips, which were previously used by crop fumigation planes and where today small planes laden with cocaine land unrestricted, according to the Honduran Armed Forces.
The local chieftains are Javier and Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, brothers and former cattle rustlers who today oversee a multimillion-dollar empire. Their organized crime group is called Los Cachiros, which allegedly picks political candidates and has close links to local police, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Access Control, OFAC.
Until recently, few Hondurans knew about Los Cachiros. Journalists did not dare write about their activities. In fact, few reporters visit Colon, their territory, or other northern territories in this Central American country, where dozens of narco chieftains have built profitable drug trafficking networks with little scrutiny from the local press.
In June of this year, Hondurans finally read in the local press about the Maradiaga brothers and their organization. Something similar occurred with José Handal Pérez, a prominent businessman in San Pedro Sula, owner of a retail empire, which includes clothing stores, auto part shops and restaurants. Local media wrote about Handal Pérez in April, following the release of another report by the OFAC, which identified him as a drug transporter and money launderer.
“We published (the story) because the United States gave us information,” explained without hesitation a local newspaper editor who asked not to be identified in this article. “To investigate such matters in this country is very difficult. We can’t take the risk. Also no local authority would provide us with such evidence.”
Honduras has become the ideal transit spot for international drug traffickers. The country and its government institutions are mired with government corruption and ineffective or compromised public security forces, according to a September 2012 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean.” In the last four years since President Manuel Zelaya was deposed and President Porfirio Lobo was selected, an institutional crisis has hit the country, creating a power vacuum that has been exploited by local and international organized crimes groups, according to UNODC. Today Honduras has the highest per capita murder rate in the world with 91 murders per 100 thousand inhabitants. The crime statistics are higher in northern territories, where drug trafficking networks operate. The country also has one of the highest numbers of journalists killed, or attacked, in a country not at war.
The Mexican cartels—Zetas, Sinaloa y Gulf—have had a presence in Honduras for quite some time. Two Colombian criminal bands, The Rastrojos, who have a working relationship with Los Cachiros, and the Urabeños, have a presence in the country. Maras or organized youth gangs—MS13 and Mara 18, which originated in the nineties with deported gang members who grew up in low-income barrios in California—control barrios in some of the country’s most important cities. In La Ceiba, a Caribbean resort town that has a reputation as an important drug trafficking corridor, and where civil society is desperately trying to rebuild its tourist flow, youth gangs have proliferated and even determine who can live in their areas of control. Youth gangs throughout the country work as low-level level drug distributors and are sometimes subcontracted by the cartels as foot soldiers or enforcers, according to Honduran police and the UNODC.
A dozen years ago, Portugal eliminated criminal penalties for drug users. Since then, those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin are not indicted, and possession is a misdemeanor on par with illegal parking. Experts are very pleased with the results.
The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction has its headquarters in Lisbon and can observe the greatest innovation in this field right outside its door. No drug policy can genuinely prevent people from taking drugs, but the Portuguese experiment is working. Drug consumption has not increased. There is a very good outcome.
Prohibition is simply driving commerce underground, creating enormous black-market profits that attract the most ruthless criminal elements. Illegal drugs constitute a trillion-euro-a-year global industry. Those vast revenues enable the cartels to bribe, intimidate, or kill their opponents at will. Prohibition strategies have never worked. People should consider relegalization, as a strategy to break the economic structure that allows gangs to generate huge profits in their trade, which feeds corruption and increases their areas of power.
Approved in 1919, alcohol prohibition led to a steady rise in both alcohol usage and violent crime. Al Capone and myriad mafiosi showed up. The murder rate rose 50% between 1919 and 1933, peaking at 10 murders per 100,000 population in 1933, when the country finally decided enough was enough. Immediately after the repeal of alcohol prohibition, gangsterism went into a swift decline, with all of the major gangs disappearing within 18 months, and the murder rate dropping every single year for more than a decade.
Now, the drug prohibition is another tragedy. Millions of people are arrested each year, trillions of euros are spent each year, and drug gangsterism is at a level that dwarfs its alcohol equivalent and which has led to bloodbaths, not because of drugs, but because of drug laws. Over 40% of Westerners have used drugs. Most people think marijuana should be legalized.
This tragedy is the result of kleptocrats' refusal to allow people to engage in peaceful choices as to what they consume. Even if drug use were to rise upon a return to the tradition of tolerance, our streets would be safer, innocent people would not have their homes raided and pets killed by narcotics agents entering the wrong house, victims of asset forfeiture laws wouldn't have their houses and other assets seized without due process, and resources would be freed to spend on improving peoples' lives instead of destroying them.
Now, the drug prohibition is another tragedy. Millions of people are arrested each year, trillions of euros are spent each year, and drug gangsterism is at a level that dwarfs its alcohol equivalent and which has led to bloodbaths, not because of drugs, but because of drug laws. Over 40% of Westerners have used drugs. Most people think marijuana should be legalized.
This tragedy is the result of kleptocrats' refusal to allow people to engage in peaceful choices as to what they consume. Even if drug use were to rise upon a return to the tradition of tolerance, our streets would be safer, innocent people would not have their homes raided and pets killed by narcotics agents entering the wrong house, victims of asset forfeiture laws wouldn't have their houses and other assets seized without due process, and resources would be freed to spend on improving peoples' lives instead of destroying them.
Zoniana, near Rethymno of Crete, is a village which produces the best marijuana in the world. Zonianers are very proud about their illicit crop. Zoniana is an oasis of anarchy in the desert of Graecokleptocracy. Police and army would not dare set foot in the last bastion of freedom in Greece, a village protected by Zeus himself!
Those who take the trouble to go to Zoniana can enjoy fine views, eat the best goat's cheese, drink ouzo, smoke the best marijuana, dance like Zorba the Greek, and hear proud tales of how rebellious local herdsmen resisted first Ottoman rule, then Nazi occupation, and now Graecokleptocracy. Police and politicians are just on the dealers' payroll. Zonianers follow the rule of omerta, not the rule of Greek law.
Crete is not that different from Sicily. Both islands have a reputation for feisty, independent people, and both have remote, clan-dominated areas, where the first loyalty is to family. The area has many mountainous regions which are difficult to patrol by car or on foot, and this enables people to cultivate marijuana easily because it is hard to spot. But the temperament of the mountain people is also a difficulty. Their remoteness from the rest of Crete and the traditional toughness of their way of life makes them distinctive. They have a heroic character that resists authority. Marijuana of Zoniana is exported all over Europe at four thousand euros per kilo.
There is plenty of machismo in Zoniana. The sign to the village is ridden with bullet holes. Most of the menfolk, young and old, strut around in black open-neck shirts, a sign of independence and defiance to Graecokleptocracy. The spirit of rebellion has bound Zonianers together. They fight for freedom and independence. Marijuana is just a symbol of their heroism. A nearby cave is where the young Zeus hid from his murderous father Kronos. Now Zeus, the father of all gods, protects Zonianers from piggish Graecokleptocrats!
Venitis Law of Selfownership: You own your body and your soul, and nobody should dictate what you take in and what you take out. Speech, education, heresy, habeas corpus, military service, mating, healthcare, food, abortion, cloning, drugs, guns, and euthanasia should be personal choices.
Government is the #1 enemy of the people and the source of all major problems of humanity. Anarchy is the best political system. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis
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