The bitter, decades-long battle with the Latin American tuna industry over the massacre of thousands of dolphins each year in their purse seines is being driven by the dirtiest business in the world: the narcotics trade.

Powerful crime syndicates, including the Cali Cartel, the Sicilian Mafia and the Tijuana Cartel, have bought up most of the tuna fleets and canneries in Latin America in order to smuggle cocaine and heroin by sea and to launder billions in narco-profits. they have also massacred more than a million dolphins in the process.

Two Sicilian Mafia families, the Contreras and the Camanas, set up tuna companies in the 1970s in Venezuela, establishing a base to smuggle heroin into the US and cocaine into Europe. Since the Italian tuna industry is dominated by the Sicilian Mafia, it was a logical business front to establish in Latin America. A major "tuna" pipeline developed between Europe, where the Sicilians owned fish processing and distribution plants, and Latin America.

After the Sicilian families established close ties with Colombia's Medellin Cartel, so much cocaine was shipped out of Venezuela and Colombia in cans and frozen blocks of tuna that the colloquial name for cocaine in port cities of the Caribbean became "atun blanco" – white tuna.

In the 1980s, fleets of tuna purse seiners were purchased by the Colombian cartels; they joined the Sicilians in building tuna canneries along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador mid Panama. Tuna was an ideal product to rise as a cover for narcotics: the prime markets for the high-priced fish are the US, the European Union and Japan, also the wealthiest consumers of drugs. By inflating tuna invoices, gangs easily laundered their drug profits out of the consumer countries.

In the late 1980s, tuna fleets took on even greater importance to the drug cartels. US interdiction of drug-smuggling boats and airplanes in the Caribbean and over Central America was becoming too effective. The Cali Cartel, which was rapidly surpassing the Medellin Cartel in power and production, shifted its major smuggling route into the eastern Pacific, a vast area where there was little surveillance from ships and far beyond the radar net that swept the Caribbean.

In 1987, an industrious young member of the Cali Cartel, Jose Castrillon, was delegated by the cartel bosses to buy up tuna fleets and canneries, and even freighters and yachts, in Ecuador, Panama, Mexico and elsewhere in order to create the Pacific narco-pipeline. Castrillon moved to Panama City, where he established dozens of front companies.

Salinas Ties

In a momentous development for Mexican narco-corruption, Castrillon and his Cali bosses made contact in early 1988 with Carlos and Raul Salinas, the brothers who came to dominate Mexican politics after Carlos became president at the end of 1988. According to several intelligence sources in the US, Mexico, Panama and elsewhere, the Cali Cartel made deals with the Salinas brothers and several Mexican drug cartels to deliver boatloads of cocaine to the 5 Mexican gangs along the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The Mexican gangs took over smuggling the narcotics into the US, and even into Europe via Mexico. Today, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) estimates that two-thirds of the cocaine and more than a quarter of the heroin entering the US comes across the Mexican border.

In 1989, the Salinas Administration began privatizing the Mexican tuna industry, which had been largely created by the government during the oil boom of the early 1980s. Several major fleets and canneries, it turns out, were purchased as joint ventures by the Tijuana Cartel, which dominates the drug smuggling into California, and the Cali Cartel. Castrillon, supplied with several Mexican passports, is a co-owner using the Mexican alias Jacinto Natalio Ruiloga.

Not only did the two notorious cartels own tuna fleets in Baja California, home base of the Tijuana Cartel, but they also bought the largest tuna operation in the Western Hemisphere, the ten-boat Pescadora Azteca de Mazatlan fleet. And they bought the giant PINSA tuna cannery in Mazatlan, which is supplied by the Pescadora Azteca fleet.

The tuna/cocaine pipeline was first exposed publicly in July 1995 when a US Coast Guard cutter intercepted one of Castrillon's Panama-flagged tuna boats, the Nataly I, as it sailed north 780 miles west of Peru – far beyond the range of the anti-drug radar net. It was headed for a desert island 700 miles off the coast of Mexico, a regular rendezvous point for the Cali Cartel fleets to transfer multi-ton cocaine shipments to Mexican tuna boats, which then delivered the drugs to canneries in Ensenada, La Paz, Mazatlan, Manzanillo and other west coast ports.

The Coast Guardsmen tore the Nataly I apart. It took four days to find the first secret compartment, holding a ton of cocaine, that had been welded into the ship's hold in a cartel-owned boatyard in Balboa, Panama. Twelve more secret compartments, holding 11 tons of cocaine, were later found on the Nataly I. The tuna boat was towed to San Diego, where the ten-man Colombian crew, all from the mountain city of Cali, was prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison. Other tuna boats loaded with cocaine were subsequently busted off Ecuador, Panama and Mexico, and two entire fleets were seized in Baja California by Mexican authorities following leads from Panama.

Amazingly, Castrillon continued his "atun blanco" smuggling operation untouched for many months after the Nataly I bust, even though US, Mexican and Panamanian authorities knew he was the owner of the ship through one of his Panamanian companies, Pesquera Azteca. In April 1996, American and Panamanian agents finally arrested Castrillon in Panama City and confiscated the voluminous records of his criminal operation. These records reportedly tell a remarkable tale of not only massive drug smuggling, but also of the laundering of tens of billions of narco-dollars and the bribery of hundreds of officials in virtually every country north of Colombia.

Even though Castrillon was jailed – but not prosecuted in Panama for two years – and then extradited to the US last year – the tuna/cocaine connection continues to operate, according to sources in the region. It seems that there are too many important political figures involved.

When conservation groups in the US and Mexico started asking questions about ownership of the dolphin-killing tuna fleets, there was an amazing silence in Washington and Mexico City. Was it a coincidence that Castrillon's tuna fleet in Panama was named "Azteca," the same Mexican word used by the largest tuna fleet in Mexico? Nobody wanted to reveal the truth.

US conservation and animal welfare groups wrote three detailed letters to the Administration about the tuna/cocaine connection in 1996 and early 1997, addressed to President Clinton, Vice President Gore and drug czar General Barry McCaffrey. No response was ever made, although high-level sources reported that the letters sent shockwaves through the State Department, White House, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies.

This reluctance to investigate and shut down the major cocaine pipeline from Colombia to Mexico apparently reflects the extraordinary power of the crime syndicates and a general reluctance in Washington to expose such top-level corruption in Mexico and Panama. In particular, nobody wants to talk about the direct partnership of Raul Salinas in the Mexican tuna fleets and canneries that are jointly operated by the Cali and Tijuana Cartels.

Mexico's Interior Minister

Even though Raul Salinas is now jailed, convicted of murder conspiracy in Mexico and drug-money laundering in Switzerland, there may be another important political figure involved in the tuna/cocaine connection. This is Francisco Labastida, the current Interior Minister of Mexico. He is also a leading contender to be the next presidential candidate for Mexico's ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He was recently in Washington vowing all-out war on narco-trafficking and corruption.

Labastida was governor of Sinaloa State, a notorious drug smuggling center on Mexico's west coast, from 1987 to 1993. This is the period when the Cali Carrel set up its tuna/cocaine pipeline in partnership with the Mexican cartels from Tijuana, Juarez, Sonora, Guadalajara and elsewhere. Mazatlan, the major port city of Sinaloa, became the trafficking center. Governor Labastida made "agreements" with the drug cartels to allow them to operate freely in Mazatlan, according to a Central Intelligence (CIA) report leaked a year ago. His "long-standing ties" to the drug cartels touched off a bitter debate within the US government after Labastida was appointed Interior Minister in January 1998, the top-secret CIA report stated.

Conservation and cocaine collided in 1991 when a US federal court ordered embargoes of tuna from Latin American nations that had refused to adopt adequate dolphin-protection measures. The Latin American tuna fleets were drowning more than 50,000 dolphins each year in the eastern Pacific. A year earlier, the major US tuna canners, Star-Kist, Chicken-of-the-Sea and Bumblebee, adopted the dolphin-safe standard, buying only tuna caught without chasing, capturing or killing dolphins. Major European tuna companies followed suit.

Suddenly, the drug cartels' huge investments in tuna fleets and canneries, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, were shattered. The largest, most profitable markets were lost. And the easiest method to smuggle cocaine into the US and Europe, in shipments tuna, was blocked.

Environmentalists bent on halting the mass slaughter of dolphins – more than seven million had been killed in the eastern Pacific fishery since 1958 – had inadvertently sabotaged the drug lords' tuna/cocaine connection.

The cartels were very, very unhappy about the US embargo. In Venezuela, the Sicilians and allied Venezuelan officials launched vitriolic attacks on local and foreign environmentalists. Two leading Venezuelan conservationists were forced to flee the country for their lives. The Mexican government, encouraged by the Bush Administration, filed a free trade challenge against the embargo at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In 1992, GATT ruled that the dolphin-protection provisions of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act were an illegal, non-tariff barrier to free trade.

Dolphin Death Act

Mexico demanded that the US Congress repeal the dolphin-safe tuna standard. Congress was reluctant, but in a 1995 summit meeting with President Zedillo, President Clinton pledged to gut the dolphin protections in the name of free trade. The Administration attended a treaty meeting with the Latin American tuna industry in Panama City to draft an agreement promoting the "dolphin-setting" practice that has decimated the species. Mr. Trina/Cocaine, Jose Castrillon, reportedly attended this meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission.

In 1996 the Administration submitted to Congress legislation, dubbed the "Dolphin Death Act" by conservation and animal welfare groups, that would allow dolphin-deadly tuna into the US by redefining the term "dolphin-safe" that is found on tuna cans. A public outcry and strong opposition on Capitol Hill blocked its passage.

But in 1997 the Administration, backed by anti-environmental Republicans and heavy lobbying from Mexico, rammed a bill through Congress, although a filibuster threat by Senator Barbara Boxer forced compromise language that requires a new international agreement for inspection, a study of the dolphin populations, and better dolphin-protection measures. Vice President Gore helped sell out the dolphins by personally lobbying dozens of Senators and Representatives over a period of more than two years, and high-level State Department officials lobbied furiously to kill the dolphin-safe standard.

Ironically, the hundreds of millions of cans of dolphin-deadly tuna sitting in warehouses in Mexico have still not reached American market shelves. Mexico has balked at allowing international observers on its tuna boats or in its canneries. A US study of the impact on dolphins of chasing and capturing by tuna fleets indicates that the practice is deleterious to dolphin populations. The three major US canners informed Commerce Secretary Daley in February that they won't purchase or sell any such fraudulent "dolphin-safe" tuna. Dozens of conservation, environmental and animal welfare groups have pledged to launch a global boycott against dolphin-unsafe tuna. Ignoring the strong evidence and opposition, Daley in April lifted the embargo on Latin American tuna.

Troubling Questions

The revelations of the Tuna/Cocaine Connection raise troubling questions about the policies and practices of the US government, as well as those of other governments in Latin America:

1) Why was Jose Castrillon allowed to set up his huge drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation in Panama under the government installed by the US after the 1989 invasion, and to ship hundreds of tons of cocaine north over a six-year period untouched?

2) Is Castrillon, now residing in a Florida prison awaiting prosecution, being interrogated about how he bought up most of the Latin American tuna industry to use as a front for smuggling and money-laundering, and entered into partnerships with the Mexican drug cartels and high officials such as Raul Salinas? Is Castrillon being questioned about the hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes he doled out to key officials in Mexico, Panama and other countries in this Hemisphere for protection?

3) Why is the tuna/cocaine connection still operating, with major tuna fleets and canneries in Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and elsewhere in the hands of the crime syndicates?

4) Why is the Tijuana Cartel, which owns Mexico's largest tuna fleets and canneries in partnership with the Cali Cartel, and pours mountains of cocaine and heroin across the US border, apparently untouchable in both Mexico and the US?

5) Why is the Clinton-Gore Administration so actively aiding the tuna industries of Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela – and by extension the Cali Cartel, the Sicilian Mafia, and the Mexican drug gangs – to the detriment of the dolphins, who are still drowning by the thousands in tuna nets, and US consumers and tuna companies, who want only truly dolphin-safe tuna?

6) Are narco-dollars so important to the economics of Mexico, Colombia and Panama – and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – that the US is unwilling to take actions against drug-running and money-laundering that could crash their economies? Does the US tolerate narco-corruption at the top of Latin American and Caribbean governments as long as those Countries obey larger US political, economic and military interests?

Craig Van Note has battled to protect dolphins and whales for more than thirty years. This report on the Tuna/Cocaine Connection was part of his March 1999 speech at Taft University's Symposium on Global Crime, Corruption and Accountability.

Joel Blatchford and Ross Schaeffer are native Alaskans who once hunted the beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet. Now, after this genetically separate population of belugas has plummeted from 653 whales in 1994 to 347 by 1998 (National Marine Fisheries Service data), they are working to enlist other native hunters to curtail the annual hunt. Blatchford joined a coalition of groups in March of 1999 in petitioning NMFS for an emergency listing of the whales under the Endangered Species Act. Schaeffer, who directs a beluga organization in Kotzebue, was quoted in the Seattle Times as saying, "There are no controls for Alaska Native subsistence hunting. That is no problem if you are hunting just for what you need. But people are not hunting for subsistence. They are hunting commercially, and there's a big difference."

According to the Seattle Times "at least one market near Anchorage sells vacuum packed beluga for $6 a pound. It's a big seller with customers seeking the pink muktuk or blubber still attached to its gray and white skin." The article also states, "Inexperienced hunters have a tough time aiming from a skiff coming over the water at 25 miles an hour. For every whale harvested, another is often shot and lost in the silty water." If they are to be saved, all killing of Cook Inlet belugas must cease and the whales must be listed as an endangered species.

Secretary of Commerce William Daley has made a mockery of the "dolphin safe" label by his decision to include tuna obtained by chasing and harassing dolphins. Daley fatally weakened the dolphin-safe label under pressure from Mexico and Venezuela whose fishermen still fish "on dolphin."

But the big three American tuna companies (Bumble Bee, Chicken-of-the-Sea, and StarKist) have pledged to remain true to the present definition of "dolphin-safe" for all the tuna they buy or sell. Now Disco, Safeway, and IGA Stores, Subway sandwich shops, Garden Fresh Restaurants and the Walt Disney Company have also taken the pledge not to buy or sell dolphin-deadly tuna.

In November, the Makah tribe of Northwestern Washington state rejected an initiative by Benjamin White, International Coordinator of AWL to accept a package of economic and environmental assistance in lieu of exercising their claimed treaty right to kill a gray whale. The United States government is supporting and partially funding the tribe's drive to kill up to five California gray whales yearly. The proposal has prompted heated debate both in and out of the International Whaling Commission because the Makah have not whaled in over 70 years, insist on their right to whale commercially, and have shown no nutritional need for the whale meat. The Makah were not able to kill a whale last year. But on may 10, the Makah pursued a mother and calf pair for hours, in direct contravention of international law. Then on May 17, they killed a whale by first hitting it with a harpoon and then opening fire with a distinctly non-traditional 50-calibre rifle. Protestors were kept at bay by the Coast Guard enforced exclusion zone.

On March 10, the Icelandic Parliament voted to resume whaling "as soon as possible." But Iceland's Prime Minister, David Oddson cautioned that any resumption of whaling must be weighed against the cost to the country in terms of lost tourism and fish export revenue. Whale watching in Icelandic waters continues to grow rapidly, and Keiko, the star of "Free Willy" is thriving in his sea pen (see the Summer 1998 AWI Quarterly).

The wolves of Alaska's Denali (Mt. McKinley) National Park have a rich and interesting history (see "Threatening Wolves' Families Threatens Their Survival," Spring.1998 AWI Quarterly). The wolves have been studied and loved since the 1930s; they are perhaps the most observed wild wolves in the world. Today, however, their numbers are down, due in large part to short-sighted trapping and increased human encroachment on their long-established territory.

One group of wolves, the Toklat family, has dwindled from 10-12 adults to only two. This is a precarious situation for these wolves, whose accustomed territory includes a swath of land that is outside the park's borders, and therefore open to hunting and trapping. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance and other groups have repeatedly called for state officials to close this area to hunting, trapping, and snowmobiles, but to no avail. Another group – the Savage wolves – were completely obliterated by a single hunter in 1983. A trapper illegally killed the last surviving member of the Headquarters group in 1995.

One of the wolves studied by Adolph Murie as drawn by Olaus Murie, half brother to Adolph and co-founder of the Wilderness Society.

The Denali wolves' decline has disastrous consequences, most urgently for the wolves but also for humans. The study of the Toklat wolves was the life's work of naturalist Adolph Murie and of his successor, Dr. Gordon Haber. The legacy of that continuous study has been increased understanding of how wolves live, relate to each other, and learn. This legacy is in severe danger of being lost, when we have so much left to learn. Murie's and Haber's findings strongly suggest that many of our current attempts at wolf "management" are tragically short-sighted and have catastrophic effects on wolf family groups, which are the only means for transmission of the information the wolves need to live (see "In Disagreements over Their Biology and Behavior, Wolves Are Losing," Spring 1998 AWI Quarterly). When a wolf family group is disrupted, that continuity is lost – and a storehouse of vital knowledge about feeding grounds, the rearing of pups, and survival in the wild is lost as well.

"I don't regret anything. I haven't done anything abusive to harm any of my animals." Mary Chipperfield, prominent "animal trainer" from Britain's oldest best-known circus, spoke these words as she made a reprehensible attempt to justify the cruelty she inflicted upon the animals in her care. Unbelievably, Chipperfield argued that striking animals did them no harm, going on to proclaim that she would beat her animals again.

After viewing a videotape showing Chipperfield brutally beating a chimpanzee, a camel and an elephant, a British court convicted her of twelve Counts of cruelty toward animals. The videotape captured Chipperfield thrashing and kicking a whimpering 18-month old chimpanzee named Trudy into a woefully small cage – where she was routinely imprisoned for up to 15 hours a day. The tape went on to record Chipperfield ripping away Trudy's only comfort, an orange ball, while screeching at the sobbing baby, "You call bloody cry."

Mary Chipperfield was not the only abuser at her farm. Chipperfield's husband, Roger Cawley, also was convicted of cruelty. Cawley – a zoo inspector allegedly responsible for ensuring the well-being of zoo animals – was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. Cawley whipped Flora, a terribly ill elephant--forcing her to perform circus tricks-to determine exactly "how sick it really was." Farm employee Stephen Gills was also caught on video and eventually spent four months in jail for his brutal actions. During one beating, Gills struck Tembo the elephant with such force that Gills actually broke an iron bar oil the elephant's hide.

The cruelty conviction was not the employee's first run in with the law for a violent act. In 1966, Gills was convicted of manslaughter after stabbing a woman to death on a train.

Charges were brought against the trio after members of an animal protection organization, Animal Defenders, secretly filmed conditions at the Chipperfield farm which houses animals from British circuses during the winter.

For her abuse of Trudy, Chipperfield was fined £7,500 ($12,000 US) and ordered to pay nearly £12,500 ($20,000 US) in court costs. Roger Cawley was filled L1,000 ($1,600 US) for beating Flora the elephant. As the despicable pair left the courthouse after their sentencing, a large crowd pelted them with harsh words, rotten eggs, and tomatoes.

Sadly, Chipperfield and Cawley could purchase new animals to abuse. The English magistrate had the power to ban the two from ever owning an animal again, but for reasons unexplained, chose not to. Elephant biologist Ian Redmond, an expert witness for the prosecution, was not satisfied with only a fine for the circus couple, commenting, "If this sentence means that the Chipperfield's can purchase more chimpanzees and elephants, the law has failed .... If a man is prosecuted for severely beating a dog, he is banned from keeping dogs. The same principle should apply here."

Several experts spoke out in behalf of the animals persecuted by Chipperfield and her crew. Jane Goodall testified that Trudy the chimpanzee was "vocalizing fear and a kind of despair" as Mary Chipperfield brutally beat the little chimp with a riding crop. The world renowned authority on chimps stated that Trudy was "dealt with in a harsh, totally inappropriate and cruel fashion."

Perhaps now the cruel legacy of the Chipperfield family will end. Since 1683, members of the Chipperfield clan have coerced and tortured wild animals into performing for commoners and royalty alike. Mary Chipperfield's conviction is a long time coming for any animal who has had the misfortune of being held in the clutches of this "circus dynasty."