Nicaragua’s Catch of the Day: Cocaine
It’s white lobster season off the southeast coast of Nicaragua and you don’t even have to leave the shore to collect your bounty. Everyday the currents of the Caribbean Sea gift the autonomous port town of Bluefields with sacks of cocaine weighing in at 75 to 100 pounds each. The floating bales are thrown overboard from speed boats via Columbia that are being intercepted by U.S Authorities in spy planes, Coast Guard helicopters and cutter boats, making this one of the biggest parties ever sponsored by the War on Drugs.
On the streets of what use to be a poor fishing village, a diverse population of Mestizos, Blacks and Miskito Indians are swimming in milk buckets stuffed with cash, somewhere around 28,000 cases a beer per month and an unceasing supply of cocaine affixing a permanent grin upon the town. Through a daily routine of combing the beaches and cruising the isolated lagoons, residents of Bluefields are building beautiful homes, condos protected by security guards, churches and schools without any assistance from the Nicaraguan government. The nations currency, the cordoba isn’t even used here, they use the dollar.
One can buy white lobster in the supermarkets and it is openly used by nearly everyone in the community dabbing their tongues along the streets and partying in Bars like the Midnight Dream. And yet the town has not been infiltrated by the Columbian cartels nor anyone else. A local businessman named Peter warns us, “the Miskitos are guerillas. They have been through war. They have AK-47s and up.” He wore a pistol under his shirt.[SF Gate]
