Blow Up
May 13, 2019 9:03 AM Subscribe
How half a ton of cocaine transformed the life of an island.
In 2001, a smugglers’ yacht washed up in the Azores and disgorged its contents. The island of São Miguel was quickly flooded with high-grade cocaine – and nearly 20 years on, it is still feeling the effects.
In 2001, a smugglers’ yacht washed up in the Azores and disgorged its contents. The island of São Miguel was quickly flooded with high-grade cocaine – and nearly 20 years on, it is still feeling the effects.
Next thing they knew it was dawn, and their record collection was spread all over the floor in front of the stereo.
posted by incomple at 9:11 AM on May 13, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by incomple at 9:11 AM on May 13, 2019 [17 favorites]
“There were rumours that housewives were frying mackerel in cocaine, thinking it was flour, and that old fishermen were pouring it into their coffees like sugar. ”
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 AM on May 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 AM on May 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
...old fishermen were pouring it into their coffees like sugar.
“First you get the sugar...”
posted by darkstar at 9:18 AM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
“First you get the sugar...”
posted by darkstar at 9:18 AM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
they would find tens of millions of pounds worth of uncut cocaine,
Man I sat there struggling with that for about 5 minutes. OOOOh right, The Guardian. Dumb me.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:24 AM on May 13, 2019 [22 favorites]
Man I sat there struggling with that for about 5 minutes. OOOOh right, The Guardian. Dumb me.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:24 AM on May 13, 2019 [22 favorites]
Thanks for posting, poffin boffin. You beat me to it. It's a good if, er, sobering read. I loved the detail about the smuggler's four different passports.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:29 AM on May 13, 2019
posted by Bella Donna at 9:29 AM on May 13, 2019
This is basically the plot of the heartwarming Scottish comedy Whisky Galore, or more specifically its gritty reboot Heroin Galore.
posted by kersplunk at 11:17 AM on May 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by kersplunk at 11:17 AM on May 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
It's a good if, er, sobering read.
Holy hell this article hit hard on issues concerning another island place I care a lot about, slightly tangential, but related: the Bahamas. I do a lot of science research on/around in the Bahamas and thus have seen a lot of the non-tourist areas of the country - lots of cays and some of the bigger islands besides New Providence (where Nassau is).
The area I'm most familiar with is the islands that make up Andros. There's no way I can claim to know enough to go into it in a deep, meaningful way, and I'm not trying to claim it, but it's obvious just as a visitor to the less-touristy localities how much the drug trade has affected the island, particularly cocaine, even now, and it's really sad. Though it's not about "found goods" as much as it is being used as pit stop, the evidence is there. You can just be puttering around and come upon the remains of a crashed plane, or the guy that's running your boat will be adamant about not going ashore in a particular place. More than anything, I really wish I knew enough to go into the socioeconomics of it all, which on many levels must echo São Miguel's. And similar to São Miguel, it's a situation that still ongoing: it's not just about the aftermath of cocaine smuggling in the 80's-90's. Just this last February, the Coast Guard - the U.S. Coast Guard - smelled pot "from the air" while patrolling Andros Island and burned down a large marijuana farm there.
That U.S. tax dollars is being spent to combat marijuana in the Caribbean in another country entirely, while actual U.S. citizens on another Caribbean island are being denied help after a hurricane and over half of our country as voted for legal weed in one form or another, is an observation that naturally leaps to mind. And of course U.S. presence there is definitely not a surprise - see the entire history of the U.S., particularly the chapters in the Western Hemisphere in the last century - and there may be some political considerations I'm unaware of (like maybe the Bahamian government has requested help versus "help" being forced upon them - we've a friendly enough relationship that the US Park Service has been working with their government to develop some programs), so I'm kicking that out as a side observation only. The overall point I'm getting at is that there are multiple island nation/islands affected by the drug trade and drug "war" - sad, almost hidden casualties in a "war" we've been losing for decades for many many reasons, in which the effects keep rolling on.
So maybe it's not too much of a reach to say these places serve as microcosms of what's been going on everywhere, whether it's cocaine in New York City/Madrid or an opioid crisis in a small Appalachian town. Maybe it's plausible to say a place like São Miguel or Andros Island are accessible, small scale examples of a much bigger picture (and the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling another country for weed smell is part of that picture), a situation so large that it's difficult to grasp and overwhelming due to the multiple, also huge complexities involved, from stubborn, rigid "black and white" policies/outlooks/responses to racism to mental health issues/knowledge to more and more and more issues, all the way down to the effects of capitalism. And as such, they're heartbreaking.
Anyway, thank you for posting this.
(On another note: for another, slightly less depressing story of how some "found drugs" transformed a place/culture, the story of the weed plane that went down in the Sierras and affected the climbing culture in Yosemite is an interesting one. It's got more of the "they turned profits from found drugs into a coffee shop" vibe than addiction etc.)
posted by barchan at 12:15 PM on May 13, 2019 [13 favorites]
Holy hell this article hit hard on issues concerning another island place I care a lot about, slightly tangential, but related: the Bahamas. I do a lot of science research on/around in the Bahamas and thus have seen a lot of the non-tourist areas of the country - lots of cays and some of the bigger islands besides New Providence (where Nassau is).
The area I'm most familiar with is the islands that make up Andros. There's no way I can claim to know enough to go into it in a deep, meaningful way, and I'm not trying to claim it, but it's obvious just as a visitor to the less-touristy localities how much the drug trade has affected the island, particularly cocaine, even now, and it's really sad. Though it's not about "found goods" as much as it is being used as pit stop, the evidence is there. You can just be puttering around and come upon the remains of a crashed plane, or the guy that's running your boat will be adamant about not going ashore in a particular place. More than anything, I really wish I knew enough to go into the socioeconomics of it all, which on many levels must echo São Miguel's. And similar to São Miguel, it's a situation that still ongoing: it's not just about the aftermath of cocaine smuggling in the 80's-90's. Just this last February, the Coast Guard - the U.S. Coast Guard - smelled pot "from the air" while patrolling Andros Island and burned down a large marijuana farm there.
That U.S. tax dollars is being spent to combat marijuana in the Caribbean in another country entirely, while actual U.S. citizens on another Caribbean island are being denied help after a hurricane and over half of our country as voted for legal weed in one form or another, is an observation that naturally leaps to mind. And of course U.S. presence there is definitely not a surprise - see the entire history of the U.S., particularly the chapters in the Western Hemisphere in the last century - and there may be some political considerations I'm unaware of (like maybe the Bahamian government has requested help versus "help" being forced upon them - we've a friendly enough relationship that the US Park Service has been working with their government to develop some programs), so I'm kicking that out as a side observation only. The overall point I'm getting at is that there are multiple island nation/islands affected by the drug trade and drug "war" - sad, almost hidden casualties in a "war" we've been losing for decades for many many reasons, in which the effects keep rolling on.
So maybe it's not too much of a reach to say these places serve as microcosms of what's been going on everywhere, whether it's cocaine in New York City/Madrid or an opioid crisis in a small Appalachian town. Maybe it's plausible to say a place like São Miguel or Andros Island are accessible, small scale examples of a much bigger picture (and the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling another country for weed smell is part of that picture), a situation so large that it's difficult to grasp and overwhelming due to the multiple, also huge complexities involved, from stubborn, rigid "black and white" policies/outlooks/responses to racism to mental health issues/knowledge to more and more and more issues, all the way down to the effects of capitalism. And as such, they're heartbreaking.
Anyway, thank you for posting this.
(On another note: for another, slightly less depressing story of how some "found drugs" transformed a place/culture, the story of the weed plane that went down in the Sierras and affected the climbing culture in Yosemite is an interesting one. It's got more of the "they turned profits from found drugs into a coffee shop" vibe than addiction etc.)
posted by barchan at 12:15 PM on May 13, 2019 [13 favorites]
The hidden story here is the one Couto tells, of leaving for the US as a small child and then being deported back to this tiny archipelago where he could barely speak the language and there's fuck-all to do. It's a real problem.
posted by chavenet at 12:16 PM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 12:16 PM on May 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
the story of the weed plane
posted by figurant at 12:49 PM on May 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
“I knew Jon Glisky and Jeff Nelson were dead,” [Glisky's attorney] Steinborn remembers. “I just had this romantic notion that someone should smoke that beautiful weed those guys were bringing back from Mexico.”You don't want a criminal lawyer... you want a criminal lawyer.
posted by figurant at 12:49 PM on May 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
humboldt32: same! Must be a big boat! But then, next paragraph: "began offloading the cocaine, which was bound with plastic and rubber in hundreds of packages the size of building bricks."
Hundreds of bricks are tens of millions of pounds? That's some heavy bricks.
posted by ctmf at 7:40 PM on May 13, 2019
Hundreds of bricks are tens of millions of pounds? That's some heavy bricks.
posted by ctmf at 7:40 PM on May 13, 2019
You Yanks need to get out more.
posted by deadwax at 3:48 AM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by deadwax at 3:48 AM on May 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
Since when is 7 figures in US dollars equivalent to tens of millions of GBP? I thought everyone was aware by now that police "estimates" of the value of drugs are always an order of magnitude greater than reality, at minimum. Even valuing based on retail doesn't get this to more than one ten of millions.
(It's a disease.. When I see something so wrong I can't take the rest of an article/story seriously)
posted by wierdo at 7:31 AM on May 15, 2019
(It's a disease.. When I see something so wrong I can't take the rest of an article/story seriously)
posted by wierdo at 7:31 AM on May 15, 2019
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posted by kevinbelt at 9:07 AM on May 13, 2019 [32 favorites]