Cocaine Cowboys

Cocaine Cowboys is a 2006 documentary that delves into the issues and aspects of cocaine trafficking from Medellin, Colombia to Miami, Florida. In Cocaine Cowboys, the first hand accounts given by the participants in the documentary seem hard to believe. The many people involved in the cocaine trafficking in America, particularly Florida, were ruthless, and they would stop at nothing to make their money.  Money was the ultimate reward, and there was a lot of  it to be made. John Roberts and Mickey Munday devised a plan to bring in cocaine themselves from Medellin, and what resulted from this is a very profitable business. The documentary also shows the intricacies involved in the shipping process to the coast of Florida. There are many issues that arise because of the popularity of cocaine in America. Trafficking becomes the biggest.
Because of the outbreak of drug trafficking in the United States, many presidents have either initiated or continued a war on drugs. These wars include pumping millions of dollars into the economies of Latin American countries in order to gain control of the coca producing and exporting groups. In Colletta A. Youngers’ article, Collateral Damage: The U.S.“War on Drugs” and Its Impact on Democracy in the Andes, Youngers states that “In short, several billion dollars have been allocated to Andean counter drug efforts in recent years. Yet there is hardly a dent in overall coca production, and cocaine… is just as cheap and readily available” (Youngers 131). Tons of taxpayer dollars were pumped into these countries in order to man military bases and to construct and operate attacks on coca distributors. Nothing seemed to work. The cocaine production industry was too profitable for anyone involved to stop their role in its production and transport. It also brings into question whether or not national government agencies were buying cocaine themselves in order to get a piece of the profits.
“Coca-growing regions have become a melting pot of people from all over Colombia: those fleeing right-wing paramilitary or leftist guerilla violence, peasants forced off their land, and young men with no prospects for employment in urban shantytowns” (Younger 144). Coca leaf farming created jobs for those who needed them and did not want to resort to the gangs of the shanty towns to survive. “The primary victims [of violence in Bolivia] are not drug traffickers but poor farmers who eke out a subsistence-level income through coca production” (Youngers 139). The popularity of cocaine only fueled the need for more coca production.
In Paul Gootenberg’s article, The “Pre-Colombian” Era of Drug Trafficking in the Americas: Cocaine 1945-1965, Gootenberg states that “Havana’s notorious gambling and pleasure clubs, and freewheeling prostitution industry, became the era’s pioneer test markets of cocaine” (Gootenberg 150). This was in the 1950’s, and from here the demand for cocaine grew, which again added to the increase and need of supply. The issue was that growing coca was not legal. “Illicit cocaine from overseas was born in Peru in 1947-50 with the suppression of a declining legal cocaine sector, and then pushed on to Bolivia, where the revolution progressively fostered cocaine’s development” (Gootenberg 172).
The documentary Cocaine Cowboys  displayed the effects the cocaine had on an American society. Conveniently left out are the underlying issues that have been going on for years with the production and harvest of the product. Mentioned but very little is said about the war on drugs, and how it affected the people of Medellin and other cities heavily invested in the coca crop.