Swampy coast becomes major hub for cocaine

TEGUCIGALPA (AP)::

On Honduras' swampy Mosquitia coast, entire villages have made a way of life off the country's massive cocaine transshipment trade. In broad daylight, men, women and children descend on passing go-fast boats to offload bales of cocaine destined for the United States.

Along the Atlantic coast, the wealthy elite have accumulated dozens of ranches, yachts and mansions from the drug trade.

And in San Pedro Sula, local gangs moving drugs north have spawned armies of street-level dealers whose violence has given the rougher neighbourhoods of the northern industrial city a homicide rate that is only comparable to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Long an impoverished backwater in Central America, Honduras has become a main transit route for South American cocaine.

"Honduras is the number one offload point for traffickers to take cocaine through Mexico to the US," said a US law enforcement official who could not be quoted by name for security reasons. A US State Department report released in March called Honduras "one of the primary landing points for South American cocaine."

Almost half of the cocaine that reaches the United States is now offloaded somewhere along the country's coast and heavily forested interior, a total of 20 to 25 tons each month, according to US and Honduran estimates.