When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Geopolitics

Bodies Pile Up As Drug War Rages Again In Puerto Rico

Drug lords in Puerto Rico seem to be taking cues from their murderous counterparts in Mexico, beheading rivals and dumping bodies in public places.

Agents escort a defendant for processing in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Agents escort a defendant for processing in San Juan, Puerto Rico

EYES INSIDELATIN AMERICA

The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico has once again become a primary battleground in the U.S. government's grueling war on drugs. Drug-related violence in Puerto Rico, a U.S. protectorate, has claimed more than 850 victims so far this year.

In the past two weeks, U.S. federal law enforcement officers have busted three dangerous drug trafficking organizations, arresting their leaders, including a local politician, who also happens to be the son of an influential mayor.

Traffickers in Puerto Rico have begun mimicking their counterparts in Mexico by decapitating rivals and leaving their bodies along the side of roads as gruesome messages for other foes.

Dozens of weapons, including AK-47s and high caliber pistols, are confiscated each month. Investigators say many criminals are now using U.S. postal and delivery services to have them sent to the island from the U.S. mainland.

Federal law enforcement believes that traffickers are also financing the political campaigns of some local lawmakers, especially those serving in the island's legislature. According to the San Juan daily El Vocero, the FBI has several active investigations into some politicians to determine whether they are profiting from narcos.

"It is raining money and drugs here in Puerto Rico," Pedro Janer, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration's Caribbean division, tells CBS News.

This past week, agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) arrested the son of the mayor of the town of Cánovanas after he was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly being one of the leaders of an organization that imported more than 1,000 kilos of marijuana from Mexico through California.

The arrest of 28-year-old Christian Soto, who serves as a member of the Cánovanas city council, sent shock waves throughout Puerto Rican society. His father, Mayor José "Chemo" Soto, is an influential member of Governor Luis Fortuño's pro-statehood New Progressive Party. The son was planning on running of a seat in the House of Representatives next year.

Criminology experts agree that money from drug trafficking is fueling parts of the economy and has influenced the way politics is played out on this island of 3.8 million. "Whether Puerto Rico has become a ‘narco society" or not, is still up for debate among academics, but it is a fact that an economic structure from drug trafficking has been institutionalized," criminologist Gary Gutiérrez tells Inter News Service.

Even U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico Rosa Emilia Rodríguez acknowledged this week that many police officers are on traffickers' payrolls. Her comments reflect the conclusions of a three-year U.S. Justice Department inquiry into the Puerto Rico Police Department. In a scathing report released Sept. 8, the government accused the force of committing rampant and successive civil rights violations while citing dozens of cases of officers who have been arrested or convicted for protecting drug traffickers.

In October 2010, the FBI conducted its largest police corruption operation in its history when agents arrested 89 local law enforcement officers for drug and firearm violations. Among them were 61 members of the police force.

With a 16% unemployment rate, many youths have resorted to helping drug gangs distribute narcotics at different points across the island, especially in public housing complexes. The battle for control of these points has pushed the island's homicide murder rate, which many expect this year will break the 1994 all time high record of 993 murders.

In the early 1990s, the federal government embarked on a major anti-trafficking offense when investigators discovered that Puerto Rico was increasingly being used as springboard for South American cartels to get their narcotics into the United States.

The mainly Spanish-speaking residents of this U.S. territory say they are fed up with what they say is lack of will by local law enforcement, which has allowed a return to the drug wars of an earlier decade. They have begun to hold public protests to demand an end to violence. But in a recent radio interview, Police Superintendent Emilio Díaz Colón insisted that the force was working hard to catch drug traffickers.

Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's non-voting resident commissioner in U.S. Congress and a former justice secretary, publicly called on the superintendent to crack down harder or step aside. Pierluisi and Díaz Colón are members of the same governing party.

Martin Delfín
Worldcrunch

Photo - U.S. DEA

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

food / travel

Meet Blanca Alsogaray, The First Woman To Win Cuba's "Oscar Of Cigars"

For the first time, Cuba's prestigious annual cigar festival recognized a woman, Alsogaray, owner of an iconic cigar shop in Buenos Aires, as the top representative of this celebrated lifeline of the Cuban economy.

Photo of a woman smoking a cigar.

Alsogaray smoking a cigar at her shop in Buenos Aires

Mariana Iglesias

BUENOS AIRES — Cigars are traditionally reserved for a man's world. But this year, for the first time, a Latin American woman has won one of three awards given at the 23rd Habano Festival in Cuba.

Every year since 2000, the Festival has gathered the top players in the world of Cuban cigars including sellers, distributors, specialists and aficionados. A prize is given to an outstanding personality in one of three areas: production, communication and sales. The latter went to Blanca Alsogaray, owner of the Buenos Aires shop La Casa del Habano. She says these prizes are not unlike the "Oscars of cigars."

"It's a sexist world for sure, but I won," she said of a prize which was called "Habano Man" (Hombre habano) until this year, when the word was changed for her.

"It recognizes a lifetime's work, which I consider so important as Argentina isn't an easy place for business, and less so being a woman." She was competing with two men. "In truth," she added. "I really do deserve it."

Alsogaray opened her shop in 1993. At the time there were only two sellers anywhere of Cuba's premium, hand-rolled cigars, the other one being in Mexico. Now habanos are sold in 150 outlets worldwide. "I want to celebrate these 30 years, and the prize. We're going to have a big party," she said. The firm celebrated its 30th anniversary on May 16.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest