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At the outset, the final stage was an amateurish hit-or-miss affair. The coqueros were content to ship cocaine into the U.S. via "mules," who would coat their stomachs with cod-liver oil or honey, then swallow the cocaine wrapped in condoms. If they were lucky, they could flush the drug out once they were over the border. Soon enough, however, the cocaine czars could afford to send bulk shipments into the U.S. in their own DC-6 aircraft or by high-powered speedboats. By 1983, indeed, the system was running so efficiently that the market was glutted with cocaine, and the wholesale price of a kilo in Colombia plunged from $20,000 to $5,000 (it is now roughly $7,500). All the while, million-dollar bribes, backed often by threats, bought the coqueros official indulgence at home and abroad. "These are vicious people with huge amounts of money at their disposal," says Francis ("Bud") Mullen, head of the DEA. "That does inhibit individuals who would ordinarily support law enforcement."
Last year, however, the traffickers' seamless system was disrupted when President Betancur declared a state of siege under which suspects could be arrested in Colombia without warrant. Betancur also revived extradition, which he had previously opposed on philosophical grounds. Signaling his determination to pursue even the most powerful of traffickers, he promptly signed an agreement with Washington for the extradition of Cocaine Kingpin Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, an ultrarightist who is wanted for a host of drug-related crimes in the U.S. In all, Washington has requested the arrests of 85 Colombians for drug-connected offenses in the U.S.
Although Betancur's assault caused the drug kings to lie low for a while, they were by no means cowed. Within a month of the Lara murder, Entrepreneur Escobar and a few colleagues, claiming to represent a group of coqueros controlling 80% of the drug market, met first with Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, a former Colombian President, and then with Attorney General Carlos Jimenez Gomez in Panama City to offer the Colombian government a deal: in exchange for total amnesty, they said, they would dismantle their illicit empires and repatriate $5 billion into Colombia's troubled economy. The government replied ; that it would accept nothing short of the traffickers' unconditional surrender.
To make the point, the 1,500 men of Colombia's U.S.-supported antinarcotics squad persevered in their search-and-destroy missions and, for a time, scored one spectacular victory after another. In early December, for example, they intercepted more than 550 kilos of high-grade cocaine, packed and readied for shipment at a rambling ranch known as Villa Julia, and flushed it down a sewer in nearby Medellin. Four days later, in northern La Guajira province, squad members came upon 1,054 kilos of pure coke that had been stashed in lunch boxes, leather pouches and even official-looking CARE packages,
and dumped it into the Caribbean. In the following weeks they eliminated 32 cocaine- processing plants in the llanos, the sparsely populated areas along the Brazilian border, accessible only by foot, boat or light aircraft.