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Houston, Texas was a destination for Contra-connected cocaine shipments and was monitored by federal agencies tracking the Blandón-Meneses drug network.

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Houston, Texas was a destination for Contra-connected cocaine shipments and was monitored by federal agencies tracking the Blandón-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, 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 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 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.

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