government for quick action.  “They’re obviously saying... ‘We will not tolerate corruption... even if it’s at the highest level... And so I’m encouraged by that.”^[35]

Meanwhile, in Mexico as in Colombia, the brave and honest had all been slaughtered and the compromisers were forced to dance on their graves.

The Reagan-Bush Andean Strategy was intended to stamp out drug production in Latin America by the end of 1995. Launched a decade earlier with bands playing and streamers flying, it was now dead in the water and aflame from wheelhouse to engine room. Although the drug warriors in Washington struggled to put the best face on it, the facts on the page were overwhelming.  For a view of the global scale of the disaster, it would be hard to beat the State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Despite the always impressive body counts of kingpins and coca fields, the bottom line was unremitting:

"...Worldwide coca cultivation rose to a new record of 530,000 acres in 1995...” “The discovery that Colombian traffickers were delivering multi-ton shipments of cocaine in jumbo jets underscored Mexico’s role...” “The Cali drug mafia has been using Poland as a local hub since the early 1990s, and apparently has been looking for a toehold in Hungary.” “Cocaine now moves freely also to Africa.”  “Cocaine, in short, remains a growth industry in most of the world.”^[36]

Unfortunately that wasn’t the worst of it.  Back in the late 1980s, the market-savvy Colombians spotted an interesting dichotomy. The profit margin on heroin, pound for pound, was more than triple the return on cocaine.  A kilo of coke worth $2000 in Bogota might bring $30,000 in L.A., but the identical block of heroin—only $6000 in Colombia—could go for $100,000 up north.

With typical Colombian zeal, they decided to cut out the middleman.  The high Andes proved perfectly hospitable