US struggling to keep up in drug war

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — With a stucco mansion in the hills outside San Juan and four luxury cars, including a Corvette, Wilfredo Rodriguez lived well for a part-time worker on an airport ground crew.

U.S. prosecutors say Rodriguez, who wrapped cargo in plastic for American Airlines, built his fortune over the last decade by smuggling drugs aboard commercial flights — one small slice of the hundreds of tons of South American cocaine that flow through Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland each year.

His arrest last week highlights the challenges for law enforcement authorities on this U.S. Caribbean territory, as traffickers flood the island with drug money and make it one of the most violent places under the American flag.

While most of the drugs reaching the United States arrive through the southwest border, an estimated 30 percent come through the Caribbean — and of all the islands, authorities say, Puerto Rico is easily the biggest transshipment point. As American soil, it is attractive because drugs leaving here do not have to clear customs to reach the U.S. market.

At least 1,430 metric tons of cocaine reached the island last year, according to the Key West, Fla.-based Joint Interagency Task Force South, which coordinates tracking of drug shipments in the region. The drugs, which have come at similar levels for years, are often spirited ashore Puerto Rico’s 300-mile coastline in boats from neighboring islands.

U.S. authorities say Colombian organizations oversee most of the smuggling into and through the island with help from Dominican and Puerto Rican traffickers.

The middlemen’s profits sustain a thriving underground economy.

Wilfredo Rodriguez is in federal custody on charges that he recruited other American Airlines employees to an operation that smuggled more than 19,840 pounds of cocaine to cities on the U.S. east coast. His lawyer says he is innocent of charges that could send him to prison for life.

While many of the suspected drug kingpins and money launderers live in peaceful, gated communities, the people who suffer most from Puerto Rico’s drug war live in the island’s housing projects — many of them vast concrete complexes, gated off from surrounding communities, that traffickers control as personal fortresses.

From inside the projects, traffickers distribute cocaine and heroin that stay on the island, often as payment from Colombian crime syndicates in exchange for sending the rest on to the U.S. mainland. About a third of the drugs that reach Puerto Rico remain on the island, officials say.

Violence also is increasing. There have been 619 killings so far this year, an increase of 8 percent from last year when Puerto Rico had its bloodiest year in a decade.