RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In mid-1977, U.S. pressure to return to democracy in Bolivia forced Hugo Banzer and his allies to call elections. The pro-government candidate was Bolivian Air Force (FAB) General Juan Pereda Asbún, who won more votes than the number of voters.
In 1978, Banzer tried to resist the handover of the government, but he was finally forced, and Pereda assumed the presidency. The army was not satisfied with an aviator in the Palacio Quemado and succeeded in replacing him with General David Padilla, who announced elections for May 1979.
Hernán Siles Suazo, Víctor Paz Estenssoro, and Banzer, now head of the National Democratic Action (ADN), competed with relatively even chances in the elections. None of them obtained an absolute majority, and the Parliament had to designate the president of the Senate, Walter Guevara Arce, as interim president until new elections could be held.
On November 2, Colonel Alberto Natusch Busch, Banzer’s former minister, carried out a new coup d’état, but the National Congress resisted the uprising, and the officer returned with his troops to the barracks after getting Guevara to resign and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Lidia Gueiler, to take over the government.
The interim president called elections for June 29, 1980, but three weeks before, her cousin, General Luis García Meza, intimidated her on behalf of the Board of Commanders of the Armed Forces to suspend the elections.
In the first days of June, the White House spokesman, Hodding Carter, had said in Washington that ”a coup d’état is brewing in Bolivia to prevent the elections because the military fears that a civilian president would expose the gigantic cocaine trafficking to which many of them are directly linked”.
The elections were held on June 29, and on July 11, the provisional results announced Hernán Siles Suazo as the narrow winner. However, the small difference again forced the Parliament to decide who would occupy the government house.
On July 17, a bloody coup d’état aborted the return to democracy, and the Junta de Comandantes appointed General Luis García Meza as the country’s umpteenth de facto president.
The government of Jimmy Carter went back on the offensive, accusing the ministers of the Interior and Education as active participants in drug trafficking.
In February 1981, two weeks after the inauguration of the Republican Ronald Reagan as president of the United States, the State Department set three conditions for reestablishing relations with Bolivia: a program of institutionalization, the replacement of ministers linked to drug trafficking, and effective control of the drug mafia.
In August, García Meza was replaced by a military junta made up of Generals Celso Torrelio, Waldo Bernal and Oscar Pammo.
Despite the apparent diplomatic arrangement, an active press campaign was launched in the United States, Europe, and various Latin American countries to reveal what was going on in Bolivia, implicating most of the country’s armed forces’ top commanders.
”Trafficking personally or providing protection to traffickers, some officers have received millions of dollars,” said The New York Times on its front page on August 31. According to the newspaper, the information had been provided by diplomatic sources and anti-narcotics agents.
The accused were generals Hugo Banzer Suárez, former president of the Republic; Luis García Meza; Waldo Bernal, commander in chief of the Air Force; Oscar Pammo, commander of the Navy; Hugo Echeverría, delegate to the Inter-American Defense Board; and colonels Luis Arce Gómez, former minister of the Interior, and Ariel Coca, former minister of Education; Ariel Coca, former Minister of Education; Faustino Rico Toro, director of the Military School; Norberto Salomón, military attaché in Venezuela; Arturo Doria Molina, commander of the Tarapacá regiment; Alberto Gribosky, commander of the Ingavi regiment; and, Rolando Canido, the current minister of the Interior.
According to several publications, the processing and shipment of cocaine in Bolivia were concentrated in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, on the border with Brazil, where four large organized groups operated: three dedicated to illegal production and export and a fourth that ”removed” drugs and then exported them, also charging protection to the other three gangs.
The New York Times and the Brazilian magazine IstoÉ agreed that General Hugo Banzer led the oldest group and that its area of operations was located in the small towns of San Javier and Rio Grande. In 1980 alone, it had invoiced US$480 million for the sale of 20,000 kilos of cocaine hydrochloride with a purity of 99%.
The second group was led by Colonel Arce Gómez and operated in Okinawa, Monte Verde, and Perseverancia. Its 1980 production had reached 30,000 kilos of cocaine, and its income reached US$640 million.
General Waldo Bernal headed the third group, and its operational centers were in Yapacani, Puerto Virrarroel, and Montero. The U.S. newspaper added that the most powerful organization was that of General García Meza, the only one that did not have its own production.
His method of working consisted of confiscating the work of small independent traffickers and protecting the other organizations by assuring them impunity in exchange for large sums of money.
The real strongman of this organization was Colonel Arce Gómez, former Bolivian army intelligence chief and cousin of Roberto Suárez Gómez, considered the largest single exporter of cocaine in the world at the time.
García Meza had been convinced to stage a coup d’état at a meeting held in Santa Cruz, in the house of Sonia Atala, where the big traffickers offered US$4 million in financing. The meeting was attended by José Paz, a prominent mafia figure; Edwin Gasser, owner of the largest sugar mill in the country; and Pedro Bleyer, president of the Industrial Chamber of Santa Cruz.
One of the conditions for financing the coup that overthrew Lidia Gueiler was the appointment of Arce Gómez as Minister of the Interior, who had proposed to protect the impunity of their operations in exchange for a biweekly payment of US$75,000 per group, plus a tax of US$40 per drum of coca leaf sold to the traffickers by farmers in the producing areas.
Arce also prohibited the direct sale of coca from the farmers to the traffickers, making the Ministry of the Interior the obligatory intermediary. One metric ton of coca leaf packaged in barrels was sold for US$3,000 to get an idea of the volume of the business.
Another of the big drug traffickers was the commander-in-chief of the Air Force, General Waldo Bernal, who had received payments of up to US$100,000 for each plane loaded with coca leaving Bolivian airports. At the airport of San Cruz alone, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, 25 airlines operated more than 160 planes of different types.
Each of these organizations was also made up of numerous civilians of different nationalities, many of whom would gradually rise through the mafia structures until the 1990s when they would occupy positions of preeminence.
Most of the arrested major traffickers and the heads of the cartels began in the 1970s, under the protection of the military dictatorships.
HOME TO INTERNATIONAL DRUG TRAFFICKERS
Bolivia, a country with a surface area of more than one million square kilometers, where some ten million people live, has been transformed in recent years into the new abode of Colombian and Peruvian traffickers trying to elude the anti-drug forces of their countries and the DEA.
Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru are the countries where the cocaine consumed worldwide is produced. The Bolivian production of this drug takes place in the coca plantations of the Yungas and Chapare regions, although it also draws on leaves and base paste of Peruvian origin.
The key to Bolivia’s importance lies more in its location and the increasing difficulties in effectively controlling its highly porous borders.
Argentine academic researchers Mariano Bartolomé and Vicente Ventura have conducted investigations into drug trafficking from Bolivia. These studies provide the basis for a number of the data included in this article.
Bolivia has a border extension of 6,834 linear kilometers with Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, and Chile. For the most part, the border is highly vulnerable, with more than thirty points that are particularly critical due to their constant use by cross-border criminal flows.
More than 80% of Bolivian producers have up to two maceration pits, with a production capacity of up to 4 kg of cocaine base paste (CBP) per week.
Under the Evo Morales administration, the area of cultivable coca fields was increased to 22,000 hectares.
The political opposition insisted that the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) position encouraged cocaine production because, according to them, the domestic demand for coca could be satisfied with only about 14,000 hectares under cultivation.
In Bolivia, foreign organizations with substantial economic resources control practically the entire cocaine trafficking business abroad. These criminal groups make strategic-level decisions in their places of origin, and in Bolivia, they only decide on tactical issues.
Between May 2018 and July 2019, more than a dozen foreign criminal kingpins were arrested in the country, the last of them the Italian Paolo Lumia, from the Sicilian mafia.
These organizations include the Brazilian First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (Comando Vermelho) from Brazil; the Sinaloa Federation and the Zetas from Mexico; the Peruvian Shining Path; and even Russian mafias.
There is also a strong presence of Colombian sub-state actors such as the Norte del Valle Cartel; various paramilitary groups that have become criminal gangs (Bacrim), including the Autodefensas Campesinas de Casanare (ACC), Los Rastrojos and Los Urabeños; and, finally, residual elements of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Local narcos are a close second. In recent times, there have been arrests of major domestic drug traffickers whose operations were linked to international trafficking networks and who used links to the world of politics and the judiciary.
The most prominent cases were Pedro Montenegro Paz and Mayerling Castedo (a member of the Candia-Castedo family clan), captured in May and June 2019.
The entry of drugs into Bolivia from Peru is reportedly controlled by some twenty Peruvian family clans, also known as “criollo cartels.” In 2020, it became public that at least six high-ranking Peruvian drug traffickers, including Clever Bernardo Ambrosio (alias “Chila”) and Reyna Gozme La Fuente (alias “Reyna”), had set up their headquarters in Bolivia.
About 35% of Peruvian cocaine production enters Bolivia fully processed, or as base paste, to be transformed into a hydrochloride in local laboratories.
Peruvian drugs enter Bolivia by land and air. In the first case, the routes are oriented to the localities of Desaguadero, Copacabana, Puerto Acosta, and Pelechuco in the department of La Paz, and Cobija, Filadelfia, and Puerto Gonzalo Moreno in the department of Pando.
Regarding air transport, Bolivia is said to receive approximately 95% of the “narco flights” that take off from Peru, using aircraft that are usually registered in Bolivia and transport, on each trip, an average of 300 to 350 kg of cocaine, although this cargo can reach 500 kg.
Most of these flights land on clandestine airstrips in the department of Beni, where the criminal presence is otherwise intense, particularly in the towns of Magdalena, San Ramón, San Joaquín, San Borja, Trinidad, Santa Ana del Yacuma, and Guayaramerín.
A recent journalistic investigation states that an average of 30 planes take off daily from airstrips located in the department of Beni to neighboring countries, each carrying up to half a ton of cocaine.
A significant part of the Bolivian drug enters Chile through Argentinean territory because there are more than a hundred clandestine border crossings. Seventy percent of the merchandise smuggled into Bolivia comes from Chile through illegal crossings that, in the opposite direction, can be used to traffic drugs.
Most of these illegal crossings are concentrated around Pisiga, Tambo Quemado, Sabaya, Todos Santos, Huachacalla, and the Salar de Uyuni. The main route used for cocaine trafficking from Bolivia to Chile has been reported to run from Santa Cruz to Oruro and from there to Colchane, a Chilean altiplano city from where it links up with the local road network.
OTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The National Prosecutor’s Office of Chile reported that, in 2021, of the total amount of drugs seized during the years 2015-2020 (187,160 kg), it was identified that Paraguay attempted to transport the largest amount of drugs into Chilean territory, consisting basically of marijuana, registering 63,191 kg (34%), followed by Bolivia with 50,952 kg (27%), containing cocaine and base paste, followed by Argentina with 38,541 kg (21%), Peru with 15,576 kg (8%), Ecuador with 10,995 kg (6%) and finally Colombia with 7,905 kg (4%).
Under an agreement with Chile, Bolivians can ship cargo to Chilean ports that is not controlled by local authorities. Anti-drug authorities presume that many drugs traveling to southern Chile and other countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe travel by sea.
With information from Interferencia