Booming Puerto Rico drug trade takes deadly toll

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico THE VIOLENT DEATHS pile up every day.

In the little over a week I spent on this tropical tourist haven in the
Caribbean, I began counting the homicides reported in the local newspapers.
I stopped counting at 20.

Nearly all of the victims were young men in their 20s.

The accounts were all curiously similar.

Two unidentified assailants shot a 23yearold as his car was stopped at a
traffic light. Another, aged 19, was cut down on a street corner.

The assassinations have been going on for a year or longer on this island
and there is only one explanation.

Drugs.

The narcotics trade is taking a toll far out of proportion to the normal
crime rate in Puerto Rico, home to just 3.7 million people.

It's the sign of a new shift in this hemisphere's most profitable industry.

``Colombian (drug) cartels are shifting their business in a big way from
Mexico to Puerto Rico,'' Felix Jimenez, the local agentincharge for the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), told me.

``And we're seeing the impact on the streets.''

I went to see Jimenez in the tightly guarded offices the DEA keeps in one
of the suburbs of San Juan.

There was no sign on the low gray building to reveal its purpose.

The harassed agent takes no chances. All U.S. law enforcement authorities
are quietly beefing up their presence here.

There will be 200 FBI agents on the island by next year.

Jimenez won't say how many officers he commands, but he admits it's not
enough to handle the job yet.

The amount of cocaine and heroin seized over the past year alone has
quadrupled to nearly 144 tonnes, a street value that climbs into the
hundreds of millions of dollars.

Why the shift?

It's a revealing glimpse of the economics of an industry that is corrupting
Latin America and the Caribbean.

The reason was only in part the police pressure applied on the Mexican drug
traffic. Cartel leaders discovered they could get a much better deal in
this part of the Caribbean from local ``entrepreneurs.''

In Mexico, the cartels had agreed to turn over half of their shipments to
local gangs in return for their help in transporting and handling the drugs
to the U.S. border.

Puerto Rican gangs offered to do it for just 20 per cent.

``When you add that to the fact that there are 72 flights a day out of here
to the continental U.S., not to mention that we have one of the biggest
shipping ports in the Caribbean, you see why we have a problem,'' Jimenez
said.

The problem is not just in what leaves the island, but what stays behind.
Twenty per cent is a lot of drugs.

Today, nearly all 78 towns in Puerto Rico have blossomed with puntos, the
drug distribution and selling points manned by local gangs.

According to unofficial estimates, narcotics has contributed to the
creation of a huge ``parallel'' cash economy, amounting to at least 25 per
cent of the total $30 billion legitimate economy.

The quiet signs of affluence tell the tale: BMWs and other expensive cars
appearing beside spankingnew mansions in unlikely neighbourhoods.

Another sign: Gated communities have sprung up everywhere to protect
residents from intruders who are mostly drug addicts seeking money for a fix.

There's no evidence yet that the epidemic has led to widespread political
corruption, but it wouldn't be surprising.

The same sad destructive pattern has occurred elsewhere.

Three large gangs and several smaller ones dominate the local trade. When
they fall out, over the control of puntos for example, the violence occurs.

Some estimates put the number of armed drug gang members here at 17,000.
Police say it is much lower.

But the saddest toll of all is the young men who are dying.

Of the 607 murders reported so far this year in Puerto Rico, 359 of the
victims (or 60 per cent) were between the ages of 16 and 29.

It's a story that is by now familiar:

One more lovely place in the sun committing suicide by drugs.