Race on the High Seas: LatAm Cartels Feature New, Faster Smuggling Boats Perry Chiaramonte - Fox News
go to original January 17, 2015

A maritime patrol aircraft detected this 40-foot go-fast vessel in the Caribbean Sea. DEA and Bahamian Police officials responded to the location and detained two suspects after locating 40 bales of marijuana. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Latin America's drug cartels are leaving the U.S. Coast Guard in their wake, with new and faster speedboats law enforcement officials say are virtually undetectable by radar.

The new boats, nicknamed "Picudas," after a tropical fish whose long, thin bodies they resemble, are made of fiberglass, making them invisible to radar and efficient with fuel. While older smuggling vessels took as long as three days to make the trip from Costa Rica to Jamaica, the Picuda can make the trip in two.

Dialogo, a newspaper published by the Pentagon’s Southern Command, quoted one Coast Guard source that called the craft “a wave-breaking go-fast wonder that defies radar detection.” The boats give the bad guys a leg up on authorities trying to cut off the flow of South American drugs, according to the article.

“They [cartels] are being forced to do something that they would rather not,” Adam Isacson, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy at the Washington Office on Latin America said to FoxNews.com. “They would like to be able to make one trip. Instead they are forced to divide their load and take these short trips. It means that they are being inconvenienced and it is more expensive.

“But it’s clearly indicative of the cat-and-mouse game they are playing with the law.”

Read the rest at Fox News

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!