I Get By With a Little Cocaine and My Friends; I Get High With a Little Cocaine and My Friends

June 18, 2009

Mexican Sailors Nab Coke Smuggling Sharks

Mexico's navy has seized more than a ton of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the United States.

Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 sharks filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan, the navy and Mexican media said.

"We are talking about more than a ton of cocaine that was inside the ship," Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters after X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine," he said.

What remained unclear was how the drug traffickers induced the sharks to swallow the slabs of cocaine. "You are not talking about some docile little fish here," said a local shrimper. "They're likely to find a couple of arms in there, too, mixed in with the cocaine."

Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative, although stupid ways of getting drugs into the United States -- in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture - as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.

Some drug smugglers, needing to sell their product before their handlers execute them, have even resorted to throwing millions of dollars worth of drugs in burlap sacks, across the narrow, mostly dry sections of the Rio Grande, to girlfriends, aunts, several nuns, and grandmothers waiting on the U.S. side. U.S. drug authorities are reluctant to bust the nuns and grandmothers, for fear of bad publicity and resulting lower budget allocations by Congress.

President Felipe Calderon has sent 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico to try to crush powerful smuggling cartels. But traffickers armed with a huge arsenal of grenades and automatic weapons are far from defeated, worrying Washington as violence spills over into U.S. states like Arizona. "These guys pack enough fire power to defeat an entire division of the Mexican army," according to a drunk General interviewed in a bar in Ciudad Juarez. He was shot and killed later, as he left the bar. Fortunately, the reporter had recorded the interview, so the General was no longer needed to corroborate the story.

In a display of cooperation with authorities, Mexican drug cartel leaders announced plans to send special envoys to notify all next of kin, of the General's unfortunate passing. "It's the least we could do," said Ignacio Pildora, a highly respected cartel assassin placed in charge of the notifications.

Some 2750 people have died in drug violence in Mexico this year, a pace similar to that of 2008, when 6300 were killed.

Led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, smugglers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa are fighting a turf war with rivals. Guzman seeks to control Mexican and Central American smuggling routes into the United States.

Because of his diminutive size, only 4'2", Guzman has escaped several times from police custody by running between the legs of his guards.

"That little peckerhead (Guzman) is slick as a lizard and can run faster than a half-skinned jack rabbit," said a Mexican commandante, who declined to be identified because he is a member of PETA.