Honduras Becomes Main Transit Route For Cocaine Trafficking [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Honduras Becomes Main Transit Route For Cocaine Trafficking
By MARK STEVENSON 10/30/11 10:55 AM ET

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- On Honduras' swampy Mosquitia coast, entire villages have made a way of life off the country's massive cocaine transshipment trade. In broad daylight, men, women and children descend on passing go-fast boats to offload bales of cocaine destined for the United States.

Along the Atlantic coast, the wealthy elite have accumulated dozens of ranches, yachts and mansions from the drug trade.

And in San Pedro Sula, local gangs moving drugs north have spawned armies of street-level dealers whose violence has given the rougher neighborhoods of the northern industrial city a homicide rate that is only comparable to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/30/honduras-south-american-cocaine_n_1066325.html