---
category: City
summary: Houston, Texas was a destination for Contra-connected cocaine shipments and
  was monitored by federal agencies tracking the Blandón-Meneses drug network.
tags:
- geography
- contra-war
---

Houston, [Texas](/places/texas/) was a destination for Contra-connected [cocaine](/concepts/cocaine/) shipments and was monitored by federal agencies tracking the [Blandón](/people/danilo-blandon/)-[Meneses](/people/norwin-meneses/) drug network. The city's port facilities and proximity to the Mexican border made it a key node in the southern drug trafficking corridor.[^1]

### Cocaine Smuggling

The same cargo ship involved in the 1983 Pier 96 cocaine bust in [San Francisco](/places/san-francisco/), the Ciudad de Cucuta, was found in Houston the following year with $18 million worth of cocaine secreted behind a steel wall. Both the [State Department](/organizations/state-department/) and the Department of Defense were monitoring Meneses's movements when the group lost a Ford Escort "loaded with cocaine" in Houston in September 1991. Blandón described to an informant how a Canadian associate was bringing in a load from [Mexico](/places/mexico/) through Houston, illustrating the city's role as a transit point for the network's multi-route smuggling operation.[^2]

[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 4.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 4, Ch. 25.