DRUGS-CUBA: Major Antinarcotics Offensive

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jan 24 2003 (IPS) - Authorities in Cuba are conducting an intense series of antinarcotics police raids, after recently recognising the existence of an ”incipient” domestic market for drugs in this Caribbean island nation, the Cuban Workers Central trade union (CTC) confirmed Friday.

”The Interior Ministry is carrying out important actions to combat this problem,” the government-affiliated CTC stated in a communique.

The police operations are being carried out around the country, but no information has been released as to the quantity of narcotics seized, the number of people arrested or their nationalities.

The searches and raids apparently began two weeks ago. On Jan 10, the socialist government of Fidel Castro admitted that the drug trade had penetrated Cuba, whose geographic location makes it vulnerable to the trafficking of narcotics destined towards the United States and European markets.

”Last weekend, there was a raid near my house, in downtown Havana,” Juan Cortés, a 27-year-old plumber, told IPS. ”They closed off the whole block, and said they found cocaine hidden in several egg cartons.”

Each egg had been emptied through a tiny hole, filled with cocaine, closed up again, and placed in the egg carton with the perforated end pointing downwards.

”The CTC and Cuba’s 19 national trade unions vigorously support the anti-drug actions and will back everything the country does in the future to safeguard the population from such a harmful” phenomenon, said the statement.

The trade union urged its members to ”increase their vigilance” in their workplaces and to ”stay alert” in their neighbourhoods to ”discover and report the criminals.”

According to the communique, the people involved in the sales of narcotics tend to organise ”their operations out of homes that are rented in violation of the existing regulations” on letting rooms, which are strict in Cuba.

Landlords authorised to let rooms to foreign tourists are obliged to pay taxes and register their guests with the immigration service.

”The police have not bothered us because we have everything in order, but I imagine that those who illegally let rooms are not having a very good time,” said a man who was standing in line in a bank to pay his taxes.

The current battle is part of ”the one that we Cuban workers are waging against all forms of crime, illegalities and corruption – evils that constitute a breeding ground for the proliferation of scourges like drugs,” said the CTC.

In an editorial two weeks ago, Granma, the official publication of the governing Communist Party, reported that between 1995 and November 2002, 252 foreign nationals were arrested on drug trafficking charges, 146 of whom are still serving prison sentences or awaiting trial in jail.

The newspaper acknowledged that narcotraffickers from other countries have set up partnerships with ”local elements, who are also willing, at any price, to engage in such practices” in Cuba.

But Granma did not report on the arrest of Cubans involved in the drug trade, which brings stiff penalties in Cuba.

”There will be impunity for no one,” said the CTC, which pointed out that in many countries, drug trafficking ”is already a plague with its related effects of violence, corruption and deterioration of physical and mental health.”

However, drug consumption is classified as a health problem, not a crime, in the Cuban penal code.

Cuba is located on the route between the main cocaine-producing countries, especially Colombia, and the United States, the world’s biggest market for drugs.

According to local authorities, incursions by international drug traffickers into Cuban airspace and territorial waters as the drugs make their way north ”lead to the presence of large quantities of packages of narcotics in the sea.”

The drug deliveries are dropped from the air and picked up at sea by narcotraffickers who ride out in speedboats from the U.S. state of Florida, located just 170 kms from Cuba.

Since 1991, ”we have perfected our methods of cracking down on drug trafficking,” the head of the Interior Ministry’s National Antidrug Office, Jesús Becerra, said on Jan 17.

The official added that during that period, more than 77 tons of narcotics – he did not specify which ones – headed for ”northern markets” were seized, including 47 tons since 1997.

At a conference on drug control in the Caribbean, Becerra reported that operations carried out last year in Cuba’s international airports detected people of 19 different nationalities used as ”drug mules” or couriers.

The most widely-used method used by the couriers who transport small amounts of drugs is to swallow them in capsules or other forms. A less common method is to conceal them in suitcases, clothing and cosmetic containers.

”Generally speaking, drug traffickers select couriers among people in difficult economic straits, without warning them of the mortal danger they are running,” he said.

United Nations statistics indicate that the market for illegal drugs in the Caribbean generates annual revenues of around 3.3 billion dollars, equivalent to 3.1 percent of the region’s Gross Domestic Product.

In Cuba and the Dominican Republic, consumption is ”far below” the global average, although both countries should continue to invest human resources in prevention efforts, according to the United Nations.