As Honduran drug lords prepare to spill secrets, US faces diplomatic bind
The Rivera Maradiaga brothers lived like kings in Honduras for more than a decade, until an official crackdown — they feared for their lives, fled the country and agreed to tell US authorities all about their business.
The two traffickers, known as Los Cachiros like their drug cartel, negotiated in secret with the US Drug Enforcement Agency and turned themselves in to authorities in Florida, after a spectacular escape through the Caribbean. They are now set to be tried.
After the US Treasury put the gang on its blacklist in late 2013, and as Honduran security forces closed in on the group’s leaders, Javier Eriberto Rivera Maradiaga and Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga felt increasingly unsafe at home.
“Honduras is becoming hostile terrain for narcos and organised criminal networks,” James Nealon, US ambassador to Honduras, wrote last week on Twitter.
The Rivera Maradiaga brothers reportedly negotiated for months with US authorities about the terms of their surrender, and probably turned themselves in last week.
Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga travelled through several Caribbean countries and repeatedly made contact with US authorities, eventually surrendering in the Bahamas, according to the Honduran daily El Heraldo. From there, he was reportedly taken to Florida via the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
His brother, Javier Eriberto Rivera Maradiaga, took a direct route via speedboat from Honduras to US waters, where waiting DEA agents took him to Miami, according to the Honduran daily La Prensa.
Honduran authorities apparently played no part in negotiations. Los Cachiros were believed to be well-connected in the Central American nation, and their surrender to the US could be bad news in powerful circles. Their arrests “may spell trouble for some high-level Honduran politicians and business elites with links to the country’s criminal underworld”, the Insight Crime website wrote.
Los Cachiros was a family-run gang that had dominated the Honduran drug trade since the early 2000s. They started as cattle rustlers who switched to buying cocaine from Colombian gangs and selling it to Mexican cartels.
Law enforcement experts say that 80% of the cocaine in the United States goes through Honduras. According to Insight Crime, Los Cachiros earned upwards of US$2,000 (around 65,000 baht) per kilogramme of cocaine they hauled. The Rivera Maradiagas are believed to have amassed a $1 billion fortune, and they invested their drug profits in a complex business structure.
Although his government was apparently not involved in the brothers’ surrender negotiations, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez celebrated their arrests as a major blow against organised crime.
“The boundaries, the shield that Honduras has built up, by air, by sea, by land, and the permanent raid on those criminal gangs, have turned Honduras into an area where drug trafficking will no longer prosper,” Mr Hernandez said on Wednesday.
US authorities have reportedly agreed to protect the families of the two drug lords and give the pair reduced sentences in return for giving investigators insight on their criminal network.
“If [the Rivera Maradiaga brothers describe] the ties between organised crime and influential Honduran powerbrokers as part of a potential plea deal, that would put the US in an awkward position diplomatically,” Insight Crime wrote.
“Any implication of wrongdoing by prominent Honduran officials would force the US to either re-evaluate their security assistance programmes to Honduras.”