Cocaine trafficking keeps Ecuador anti-drug authorities busy

[Zorro]

Guess there have been some unintended consequences to Correa's decision to have the US leave Manta Base.

<snip>

The beat cop quickly discovered why the three men at the entrance to the storage yard had bolted as he pulled up in his patrol car.

Inside the walled enclosure he saw 3 tons of cocaine and a large-scale processing lab, evidence of Ecuador's growing importance as a trafficking hub for illegal drugs.

The mid-December raid in this port city's Bastion Popular industrial zone capped a record year for Ecuador's counter-narcotics police. They seized 63 tons of cocaine, twice as much as in 2008, and destroyed seven drug-processing laboratories, up from two.

Guayaquil's sprawling port and maze of estuaries and waterways have become a favored staging area for drug shipments to the U.S. and Europe. So has the city's international airport, where arrests of "mules," or human smugglers, was up 15% last year from 2008...

<snip>

More at: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/03/world/la-fg-ecuador-drugs4-2010feb04