The Life and Times of a Colombian Cocaine Submarine Captain [Video]

Gustavo Alonso was the captain of a cocaine submarine based in Colombia, until he was arrested at sea with 3.5 loads of coke on board. He soon realized that solitary confinement in prison was better than working for the cartels.

German weekly Der Spiegel interviewed ” Alonso,” who spoke on condition of anonymity for obvious reasons. Alonso served several years in prison, two of that have been spent in solitary confinement. He had worked for years as a fishing boat captain, but when his wife became ill and needed a $40,000 medical procedure which he couldn’t afford, an ” acquaintance” offered to assist Alonso out. After his wife’s operation, Alonso was again approached by the guy, who now wanted a favor in return – to pilot a narco submarine.

In Alonso’s hometown of Buenaventura, a port city on Colombia’s Pacific coast, while you’re approached by the narco traffickers, you could have little choice but to work for them. From Der Spiegel’s report :

The drug gangs do their recruiting within the poor neighborhoods of Buenaventura, where people live in shabby wooden huts. In those neighborhoods, there is little work and only sporadic electricity and running water. The drug mafia controls such areas and finds its foot soldiers there.

A woman was murdered there a couple of weeks ago, and two others disappeared without a trace – an act of revenge committed by the narcos after a botched transport. The crew of a smuggling boat had thrown some of its cargo overboard while fleeing from the coast guard. a couple of days later, the police proudly displayed the confiscated cargo. For the narcos, the incident was an act of betrayal, which needs to be followed by retaliation.

And besides having to fret about getting himself and his family killed, Alonso also had to address days on end at sea in a tiny, shit filled, semi-submersible vessel packed with cocaine. ” I was afraid after they showed me the boat,” he told the magazine. ” Even supposing you’re making it during the hatch to the skin, you’re out in the midst of the ocean, without a life vest or a rescue boat.” But at the very least they’d a lot of blow to pass the time! An underwater, weeks-long sniff off appears like a fine time, no?

The boat was divided into three sections. A hatch within the bow brought about the cargo hold, which was barely a meter (3 feet) high. The crew had to crawl during the cargo hold on hands and knees, passing the packages of medication, to achieve the control station and the sleeping berths. Alonso positioned himself at the wheel, next to a GPS device for navigation and a radio. The diesel tanks were underneath the berths. The engine room, containing two turbo diesel engines, was behind Alonso. There was no light, there were no toilets, and there was simply enough room to arise or lie right down to sleep.

Well, it’s doubtful that greatly sleeping was happening anyway. In step with the magazine, you’ve got a one in three chance of buying coke that arrived within the U.S. by narco sub. And that, friends, is how your Friday night within the LES came to be. The total story is definitely worth a read.

Here’s portion of a National Geographic channel narco sub segment from last year:

For further cocaine submarine stories, take a look at VBS TV’s great narco sub piece .

[Image via AP]

Source

This post is tagged: act of betrayal, act of revenge, cocaine submarine, medical procedure, poor neighborhoods, solitary confinement