Cocaine-Laden Narco-Subs Set Sail for Mexico Every Week
Stupid-ass economy got you down? It could be worse. You could be making a measly $6,000 to spend fourteen days inside a godforsaken Colombian drug submarine with no bathroom, sleeping on gas tanks and motoring 3,500 miles north to Mexico. Oh yeah, and you might die.
Vice Magazine’s video department VBS.TV has a humbling, new, five-part web series on Narco-Subs featuring jaw-dropping footage of drug-laden speed boats, subs and former traffickers. Vice’s crew headed to the Malaga Naval Base in Colombia where the Pacific Coast Guard has interdicted or captured 36 narco-subs since 1993. They’re all substandard, non-commercial death traps that make you pity any soul desperate enough to climb into the wood and fiberglass heap.
According to the series—the Medellin cartel first adapted their old, high-speed cigarette boat designs by adding depth, a roof and exhaust pipes. Now, the subs are manufactured four at a time in 45 days in godforsaken Colombian jungle sub factories by some of the poorest people on Earth. The subs are then taken out to sea where they are loaded down with cocaine and sent on their way to Mexico. The drugs are offloaded and sent into the States.
The narcos’ designs have improved since ‘93, and in 2007 the Colombian Coast Guard caught a 30-foot-long sub with a capacity of 12 tons. Typically a four-man crew uses two, 250cc motors to power the $1 million subs, which are scuttled when they arrive in Mexico. The trip takes 14 days over 3,500 miles of treacherous open Pacific Ocean, meaning there’s some drug submariners out in the world with some crazy stories to tell and plenty more on the bottom of the ocean who will never speak another word.
A sub captain uses satellite, UHF and GPS to guide the journey. Canned goods, Gatorade, bread, and water nourish the crew. The drugs inside a sub net an average of $175 million per sub, easily making up for the cost of each disposable vehicle.
According to VBS’s sources, the cartels are working on longer range subs that can make it to Spain and likely already have. Even further, the cartels are using their vast wealth to fund research and development of drone drug subs controlled from offices in Bogata using satellites.
Music by The Panthers and Tim Evans adds bleached out, acidic guitar riffs to this bleak, disorienting tale.
It’s cliché to be all, like, ‘legalize it now’. But video like this makes you realize just how fucking insane the drug war has made this world and that there has to be a better way.
[VBS.TV]
