In August, President Donald Trump mobilized a fleet of missile destroyers, fighter aircrafts and over five-thousand Marine soldiers to disrupt Venezuela’s control of their drug empire in the Caribbean.
Whether or not the United States will move into the country and replace Nicholas Maduro’s regime, this mobilization is already hurting families and organizations in the underworld.
The US territory of Puerto Rico is being used as a training zone, and as a temporary parking spot for aircrafts waiting for attack orders from the White House. Simultaneously, the island has notoriously been a major hub port for drugs.
If you have seen action movies where the bad buys transport hordes of tape-sealed blocks preserving crack cocaine, that stuff reaches the island every month from Venezuela and Columbia. It is carried in speed boats, small submarines, and single-engine planes that fly low across the Caribbean Sea.
The cargo is then dropped near the beach shores and is picked up by the Puerto Rican cartel. Some of the merch is caught by law enforcement, but sometimes they miss. Where does that drug go? Do we snort it all? Not most of it.
Think of Puerto Rico as those gargantuan airports you need to stop by to make connections, like Atlanta if you’re flying Delta, JFK with JetBlue, and Miami or Dallas via American Airlines. Cocaine and methamphetamine go through the same.
A few years ago, a task force of local and federal agents uncovered a USPS package containing a tire wheel with cocaine sealed in cast. Yes, the very mail service you use to send your tax papers.
One of the agents said that more than fifty percent of the cocaine that reaches the US passes through Puerto Rico through its international airport, shipping ports, and the postal service, as mentioned.
Now that the Caribbean is being patrolled by the US military, mules, gang leaders, sicarios, and money launderers are facing financial hardships.
“Christmas is over,” a trafficker who wished to remain anonymous testified. “Venezuela is blocked. Nothing is coming in now, and my enemies will kill each other over what’s left. I’m thinking of hiring desperate bitches and open a prostitution ring.”
While some traffickers are putting their entrepreneurial skills to work, others have no legitimate employment experience to make their LinkedIn page stand out when applying for a real job.
“What am I supposed to put on my résumé? Director of logistics for the southern religion? Head of the metropolitan sales force? Chief executioner? Who the hell am I kidding?”
Perhaps the most outrageous strategy traffickers are pursuing to counter their losses is by requesting government unemployment benefits.
“Here in Puerto Rico we pay the highest sales tax in the whole US. Where do you think we get our food from, the Pablo Escobar mini market around the corner? No! We buy at Walmart, Costco, Supermax—everywhere that sells the stuff everyone eats. No, I don’t file taxes, but I pay sales taxes. That should entitle me to benefits!”
High-profile drug lords, who have used their MBA training to engineer money-laundering tactics, are also in favor of requesting unemployment benefits during these troubling times.
“It’s like paying for insurance,” said an anonymous business person. “I laundered the money through legit businesses and paid my taxes religiously. Who is going to stop me from cashing out my policy?”
Mules may be the hardest working employees in the criminal world. Responsible for smuggling small portions of cocaine, craftfully concealed in their own luggage, or ingesting what are called “bullets,” they see this as an opportunity for a long vacation.
“I have made plenty of money to give myself some rest,” said an anonymous woman. “My rectum more than anything.”
I hope you know, by now, that this isn’t factual reporting, but satire. Any resemblance to a drug lord requesting unemployment benefits or polishing their résumé is purely coincidental.
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Don Luis Zavala 