'ZOMBIES' IN COLOMBIA

CRIME: Tourists and residents alike are targets of thieves using a drug
that puts victims into a trance.

BOGOTA,Colombia -- When Colombians talk about the drug problem, it's
sometimes not cocaine or heroin. It's burundanga.

A tasteless and odorless powder, burundanga sends those who consume it into
a voodoo-like trance. Dozens of times a week somewhere in Colombia, a
criminal sprinkles the soluble powder into the food or drink of a victim,
then waits for the person to turn into a disoriented zombie - awake and
talkative but powerless to resist orders.

Criminals tell their victims to take money out of the bank, hand over car
keys and clothing, perhaps deliver narcotics, or even help empty their own
apartments of furniture.

What's more, victims suffer temporary amnesia about it.

"A lot of times, the victim can't even remember what the criminal looks
like. So it's very difficult to arrest anyone," said Dr. Camilo Uribe, a
toxicologist and Colombia's premier expert on the substance.

In the 1960s, when crooks began using burundanga, they picked out victims
in bus terminals or seedy bars. But now no one is safe. Among victims in
the past year are a state governor, prominent lawyers, entire families
doped up by their maids, and thousands of other victims.

Burundanga is so common that a State Department travel advisory warns: "The
drug is administered in drinks in bars, through cigarettes and gum in
taxis, and in powder form. ... The drug renders the person disoriented and
can cause prolonged unconsciousness and serious medical problems."

In Bogota alone, a capital of 6.5 million people, hospitals go through
8,500 kits a year to test for chemical intoxication, and cases in Bogota
exceed 1,000 a month, said Elkin Burunda, an epidemiologist with the city
health department.

Colombia is virtually alone with the problem. Burundanga has been reported
in Ecuador and Venezuela, but criminals there seem to fear the substance,
which can permanently impair or kill victims. If mishandled, it muddles up
the crook instead of the victim.

Burundanga has been around since before the discovery of the New World. Its
active ingredient, scopolamine, is found in a plant from the nightshade
family known as borrachera (drunken binge), which grows in the high Andes.

"Here in Bogota, you can find it in the parks," Urive said.

Most criminals now use laboratory-produced scopolamine from the black
market, mixing it with tranquilizers and other drugs because the pure
substance can make those affected extremely aggressive.

Taxi drivers say victims sometimes flag them down in a trance.

"We call them 'the disoriented ones,'" said Omar Echavarria, a taxi driver
in Medellin, Colombia's third-largest city. "They don't even know who they
are. They get in a taxi out of instinct."

When doped-up passengers arrive at hospital emergency rooms, doctors
normally give them diuretics to flush out their kidneys. Those who get
small doses of the drug usually recover within a half-day.

What happened to Erick Schaffer is a common story. Schaffer, a Nicaraguan,
walked into a discotheque one night a few months ago. After that, his
memory is blank.

"The next day, I came to," he said. "A doorman was trying to open the
garage door of an apartment building, and it woke me. I was sitting down on
the sidewalk in a daze. He took me to my apartment."

Schaffer said the criminals spent about $1,000 on one of his credit cards.

Now, he tells visitors: "Don't go to the bathroom and leave your beer, or
they may toss in the drug. ... Don't accept soft drinks or buy cigarettes
on the street. Or candy. Or anything else."

The use of burundanga is so common - and Colombia so ridden by violence -
that such robberies almost never make the newspapers.

An exception occurred last April, when Juan Carlos Vives, governor of
Magdalena state, was slipped burundanga at Bogota's fanciest mall, the
Centro Andino.

"Two men cane up to me and asked for the time. I don't remember their
faces or anything after that," the 44-year-old Vives said. He led the men
to his apartment. "I don't remember it, but the doormen say that I entered
the apartment with them."

He said he came to the next day to discover that the men had stolen about
$7,000, all his credit cards, some jewelry, a guitar "and even my reading
glasses."

Mauricio Velasquez, 18, sat down to lunch with his brother, sister and
mother in their Medellin home 11 months ago. A young housekeeper hired 10
days earlier served them rice and beans.

"When we got up, I passed out," he said. Only his sister, Paula Andrea, 18,
remained conscious enough to dial a boyfriend on a cellular telephone.

"The boyfriend came, saw what had happened and locked up the housekeeper,"
Velasquez said. He said police arrested her and an accomplice, determining
that the plan was to clean the house of jewelry.

Many victims never go the authorities. Some realize they don't know who
slipped them the drug. Others feel embarrassed.

"I'd say 70 percent of the cases are never reported," said Jairo Martinez,
an expert at Colombia's equivalent of the FBI. "People are ashamed they
didn't take security measures. Or they were somewhere they shouldn't have
been, like a brothel."