Cuba

The 1960s–1980s

Following the revolution, reports appeared that top Cuban officials, including Che Guevara, discussed creating a drug smuggling network as early as 1961. The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) investigated a purported Cuban government operation to sponsor marijuana and heroin crops in Cuba's Oriente province, using a secret department within their National Institute of Agrarian Reform. The BNDD speculated that the Cuban government participated in the drug trade to acquire dollars after the U.S.-led embargo was instituted. By 1966 the U.S. government believed that both pro-and anti-Castro movements were moving narcotics into the United States.

The Czechoslovakian defector General Jan Sejna, who had been the chief of the Communist Party at the Ministry of Defense, alleged that Raúl Castro went to Czechoslovakia in 1967 to discuss narcotics operations. During the late 1960s the U.S. government collected significant evidence that Cuba and Cuban agents were involved in the drug trade. However, by the mid-1970s Cuban authorities attempted to cooperate with the United States by interdicting drugs moving through Cuba's territorial air space and water. Consequently, Cuba started to seize drug shipments, boats, and crews traveling out of Colombia. Testimony collected by the U.S. Congress alleged that it was during the period of cooperation between Cuba and the United States that members of the new Medellín cartel approached Fernando Ravelo Renedo, Cuba's ambassador to Colombia, to negotiate the release of their crews and ships.

The U.S. Congress collected other evidence against Cuba. The Guillot Lara case showed that Cuba helped facilitate narcotics to the United States, but that it also used the proceeds from the operation to finance a Colombian guerrilla organization, the M-19, which had been defeated and forced to become a tool of the Medellín cartel after it had kidnapped Fabio Ochoa's daughter. Other allegations were put forth that Castro personally mediated between Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and the Medellín cartel in 1984. Noriega had received $4 million from the cartel to protect a processing plant in the province of Darién, but then had Panamanian Defense Forces seize the plant under pressure from the Colombian government to act against the Medellín cartel's presence in Panama. Castro intervened on Noriega's behalf because Noriega had served as a go-between for Cuba and the United States and Noriega had given assistance to Cuba-backed guerrillas in Colombia, including the M-19. In 1988 the United States filed an indictment against 17 of Castro's agents, who were using Cuba as a transshipment station to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Florida. The indictment charged that a ton of cocaine was moved though Cuba with the aid of Cuban military and government officials, who even provided a MiG fighter escort for the cargo plane carrying the narcotics.

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