Index for "The Drug Quagmire" series:

Colombia's War On Drugs Getting Hotter
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a05.html

Escobar's Drug Cartel Put Colombian Cocaine On Map
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a06.html

Mules Ferry Drugs Across Borders In Game Of Chance
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n993/a01.html

US Aid Package For Colombia
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a01.html

Colombia Rolling In Cocaine Crop
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a10.html

Despite Risks, US-Backed Crop-Dusters On A Mission
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a09.html

Drug War Options
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1004/a03.html

Officials Urge Farmers To Try Alternative To Coca
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1023.a10.html

MULES FERRY DRUGS ACROSS BORDERS IN GAME OF CHANCE

Couriers Swallow Homemade Pellets That Are Filled With Cocaine, Heroin

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Pumped full of laxatives, Nelson Vergara could not help
but incriminate himself.

As a policeman watched, Vergara ducked into the bathroom of a Bogota
hospital, a roll of toilet paper in one hand. When he emerged, he gave two
white capsules filled with heroin to the officer and returned to his cot to
await nature's next call.

And the next.

And the next.

In a demeaning process that required three days at the hospital, Vergara
discharged 101 thumb-size pellets. Together, they contained one kilogram of
heroin, enough to earn Vergara six to 20 years in prison for drug
trafficking.

Because of the risk of overdose and death, ingesting massive amounts of
narcotics may seem like madness. The technique, however, has become one of
the most effective ways to smuggle heroin and cocaine out of Colombia,
according to authorities here and in the United States.

An agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Bogota said that
swallowers are believed to be responsible for up to half the Colombian
heroin that reaches the United States.

Most of the couriers who ingest cocaine, authorities say, head for Europe,
where profits for the drug are higher than they are for heroin.

"The phenomenon is growing. It's a huge threat, because it is totally
uncontrollable," said Rodrigo Carranza, head of international affairs for
Colombia's Department of Administrative Security, the country's equivalent
of the FBI.

The smuggling scheme involves gulping down scores of homemade drug capsules
that are fashioned from the fingers of latex surgeon gloves and filled with
about 10 grams of heroin or cocaine. The swallowers then board flights to
the United States, Mexico or Europe, where they are met by local pushers and
escorted to hotels to pass the drugs.

The couriers occupy the lowest rung of the drug-cartel food chain. Here in
Colombia, they take their name from a lowly barnyard animal and are known as
"mules." Many of them view smuggling as a lucrative game of chance, their
own version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.

"They offer you a lot of cash, and if you're stupid, you accept," said Jose
Jimenez, 34, a nightclub bouncer who was promised $7,000 if he swallowed 75
heroin capsules and flew to Mexico City. He was arrested at the Bogota
airport.

When Colombian police jailed 49 alleged members of the country's largest
heroin ring this spring, they said the suspects had persuaded human mules to
transport 50 kilos of the drug per month to the United States and Europe.

"They used the unemployed and economic coercion to get these people to carry
the heroin," said Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, who retired last month as chief
of the Colombian National Police.

To arouse less suspicion, the cartels often hire women and children,
authorities say. In April, U.S. Customs agents at Miami International
Airport arrested a 14-year-old Colombian boy who had ingested 80 heroin
pellets.

Of the 175 drug couriers arrested this year at Bogota's international
airport, 108 had hidden the stash in their stomachs. But because airport
X-ray machines scan luggage, not people, the majority of swallowers are
believed to slip through undetected.

The DEA agent noted that authorities recently set up a medical facility at
John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to X-ray suspected
swallowers on the spot.

For Colombian traffickers, dispatching their contraband kilo by kilo with
airline passengers often costs more than shipping the narcotics in bulk.
However, even if a few mules are busted, the tactic reduces the risk of
losing million-dollar drug cargos to police and customs agents.

"You have organizations shotgunning mules," the DEA agent said. "They send
numerous mules on a certain flight, and it's a crapshoot to see who gets
through. It's like the stock market. You're not going to put all your money
on one stock."

Nevertheless, criminal syndicates can still reap outlandish profits. A kilo
of heroin that costs $13,000 in Colombia wholesales for about $80,000 in the
United States.

Authorities say that swallowing drugs is just one in a series of
ever-evolving techniques to camouflage narcotics. Couriers have had heroin
surgically inserted into their buttocks or breasts. Water-soluble cocaine
can be impregnated into clothing and wigs or molded into ashtrays and
handicrafts, then turned back into powder.

"Nothing would surprise us anymore," said Col. Mauricio Agudelo, commander
of the Bogota airport police.

Swallowing drugs may be one of the most inventive techniques, but doctors
point out that it can be a full-course agony for the mule.

Just ask Julio Torres.

Gaunt, limping from a boyhood accident and weighing 120 pounds, Torres looks
as though he'd have trouble cleaning his plate at dinner.

Nonetheless, he said he agreed to warehouse 78 cocaine capsules in his
stomach and fly to Milan, Italy.

Like the chain-gang misfit in the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke who bet
fellow convicts that he could eat 50 hard-boiled eggs and trained by wolfing
down plates of rice, Torres tried to prepare his innards for the onslaught.

Torres said he practiced by swallowing grapes. Then he took Lomotil, a drug
that causes constipation, and began gobbling cocaine pellets. He chased them
with Coca-Cola, though other mules say that they go down better with cherry
Jell-O.

"At 50 capsules, you feel really full," said Torres, 35. "If you start to
vomit, everything comes up. So it's better to stop, rest for 15 or 20
minutes and walk around a little. Then you start again."

Once they have ingested the narcotics, mules are warned not to eat until
they have expelled all the drugs. That's because solid food stimulates the
release of gastric acids in the stomach and intestines. The acids can
eventually burn through the latex capsules, and leakage nearly always means
a massive overdose and death.

Between March 1998 and July 1999, the most recent period for which figures
are available, U.S. Customs reported eight cases of swallowers suffering
fatal overdoses after their drug pellets ruptured.

Though fasting can be a lifesaver for drug swallowers, it can also blow
their cover. After long, transcontinental flights, mules often arrive
feeling faint from hunger and stagger down airplane exit ramps like the
walking wounded.

"It's easier to catch them," said Carranza, the Colombian official.

Because of their demeanor or ill-fitting clothes, mules sometimes stand out
as unlikely candidates for expensive sojourns abroad. Some are detained
before they board flights in Bogota.

Torres was among the unlucky ones. A first-time mule hoping to earn a few
thousand dollars, he was nervous and began to sweat, and the airport police
pulled him aside.

"I was going to invest my earnings in a tomato farm," said Torres, as he sat
handcuffed to a chair at a police station.

Back at the Bogota hospital, a policeman opened a grocery bag containing the
101 heroin capsules that Nelson Vergara had swallowed.

But the officer wasn't especially impressed.

Police still talk about the 76-year-old Colombian man who was arrested, they
say, after swallowing 365 pellets of heroin.