Will trial of drug kingpins implicate Belize?

In other regional news, the arrest of a suspected Mexican drug baron has drawn more attention to the role played by Belize in the international narcotics trade. Alcides Ramon Magana, one of twelve people listed by the U.S. Government as drug kingpins, was arrested on Tuesday in Villahermosa by Mexican authorities. Officials in the U.S. and Mexico believe that Magana, from his base in Cancun, conspired with former governor of Quintana Roo, Mario Villanueva, to smuggle two hundred tons of cocaine into the United States from 1994 to 96. The cocaine had a wholesale value of ten million U.S. dollars per ton and Villanueva was allegedly paid a half million dollars per shipment to guarantee safe passage through Quintana Roo. A key break in the case against both men–Villanueva was arrested last month after two years as a fugitive–came from alleged co-conspirators who became informants. According to an article in the “New York Times,” one of those informants described the 1995 landing of an official aeroplane belonging to the Governor of Quintana Roo somewhere in Belize and its subsequent loading with one thousand, one hundred pounds of Colombian cocaine. The informer–his nationality was not disclosed–was among those who helped load the aircraft. The upcoming trials of both Magana and Villanueva may shed more light on how the large scale transhipment of cocaine from Colombia through Belize and Mexico into the United States is conducted. During his two years on the run, Villanueva was rumoured to be living in Belize, and while segments of both the Mexican and Belizean news media have often made this claim, no positive proof has yet been offered. Belizean officials, from the Prime Minister on down, have repeatedly denied any knowledge of the fugitive governor’s presence on Belizean soil.