According to one book, the illegal drug trade was so extensive that, at the time of my visit in 1990, up to 4,000 tons of Paraguayan marijuana per year were being grown for export to Brazil and Argentina. Indeed, along the Brazilian border, a few years earlier, there had been US-funded herbicide spraying operations of Paraguayan marijuana plantations. The authors claimed that extensive drug crime was sanctioned at the highest levels of Paraguayan society. Indeed, they pointed out that former dictator Alfredo Stroessner often remarked that “contraband is the price of peace” …
Bio:
Ian Birch taught business and finance at universities in British Columbia and Ontario before retiring onto a wooded acreage in the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands to pursue diverse projects. This article is an excerpt from the author’s book The Last Train through the Heart of the Americas: By Rail and Road across Two Hemispheres for which he is currently seeking an agent/publisher (ianbbirch@hotmail.com).