Venezuela Increasingly A Conduit For Cocaine

Though Venezuelan relations with Colombian officials, particularly those on the border, are somewhat better, high-ranking officials in Colombia's security services say cooperation on drug issues has steadily worsened.

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"What changed dramatically has not just been that corruption has grown more profound, but that the cooperation stopped with us and the North Americans," said a high-ranking police official in Colombia's capital who has long coordinated counternarcotics operations. "We used to be able to call and say: 'Show me this.' 'Let's check that.' Now, they won't even take our calls."

The trafficking of cocaine into Venezuela is made easy by a porous border torn by violence and marked by hundreds of dirt trails and dozens of unmonitored rivers.

In recent years, traffickers have transported tons of cocaine on hundreds of short flights from jungle airstrips in Colombia to landing pads just a few miles away in Venezuela -- flights so short that Colombia's air force has little time to intercept.

Small planes then depart from as far south as the Venezuelan state of Apure, nearly 300 miles south of the coastline, and fly north to Dutch islands or Hispaniola, which is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

That's the last step before the contraband is shipped to U.S. cities.

Cocaine is also smuggled to Europe via shipping containers, on clandestine flights to Africa and on airliners using Caracas's international airport, where American authorities say airport workers are bribed to permit the smuggling of a ton of cocaine each month.

The consequences of the cocaine pipeline have been felt across Venezuelan society, which has experienced an alarming spike in homicides and other crimes in recent years.

Before recently extraditing Luis Hernando G¿mez Bustamante to face drug charges in the United States, Colombian police interrogated him about drug operations through Venezuela. G¿mez described Venezuela as a "temple" to cocaine trafficking and said the Venezuelans have no idea what's about to hit them.

In many neighborhoods of Caracas, residents already know. The drug trade has meant gangs fighting for control. When they lose, it can mean death.

One resident, Deivi Alexander Batista, who had hoped to play professional baseball, was killed on a recent night -- shot eight times on the street by gang members. His mother, Mercedes Eloisa Caraballo, rushed to where he had fallen and held him as he died.

"I saw my son be born, and I saw him die," she said, crying softly. "I saw him die in a way that was so cowardly."