Miami's "cocaine cowboys" era was marked by legends like Carlos Lehder and Max Mermelstein, both major drug barons, and Griselda Blanco, a Colombian woman whose Miami organization was suspected in at least 200 homicides. Drug violence was so rampant that Miami by then had the highest homicide rate in the
United States. Sandy Gonzalez, a former DEA official in El Paso and a native of Cuba, also served in the Miami area.
"After the 'cocaine cowboys,' the Colombians were the big guys, the cocaine source and suppliers, who dominated the drug trade in Florida," Gonzalez said. "The Cuban gangs were the distributors. After that, the focus changed to the Mexican cartels.
DEA busy
"The DEA's biggest division at the time was based in Miami, and we had a lot of agents working in Florida."
McNenny said "the Mexican cartels are very, very powerful, and in a place like Miami that is heavily Hispanic, they've been able to blend right in."
About a million Latinos of Cuban descent live in Miami. Other Latinos come from Puerto Rican, South American, Central American or Mexican backgrounds.
Gonzalez and other anti-drug investigators worked hard to disrupt the cocaine trafficking routes between Colombia, the Caribbean islands and Florida. He was part of "Operation BAT" that broke up the pipeline that the cocaine dealers had established through the Bahamas.
Fernando Vasquez, a retired Cuban businessman in Miami, said not much has changed since he arrived in Florida about 30 years ago.
Easy to get drugs
"It's very easy for people to get drugs in the Miami area," Vasquez said. "My work focused mainly on the tourist industry, and it was hard not to notice the drug scene. I remember the big deal they made when the police arrested the so-called 'cocaine cowboys,' but nothing's really changed."
Drug investigators said Mexican drug cartels, particularly the Sinaloa cartel run by Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, have filled the void left by the earlier cocaine kings and queens.
Guzman's cartel is the same one that's waging a bloody battle at the border for control of the Juárez-El Paso smuggling corridor.
Florida has two designated High-Intensity Drug-Trafficking Areas (HIDTA's) that keep track of drug-trafficking in the north and south parts of the state.
"Colombian and Mexican (drug trafficking organizations) supply most of the available illicit drugs in the South Florida HIDTA region to African American, Caucasian, Cuban, Dominican, Haitian, Hispanic, Jamaican and Puerto Rican distributors, and to street gang members," according to the HIDTA's 2010 Market Analysis.
"Midlevel and retail-level drug distribution typically occurs at open-air drug markets, in clubs, apartment buildings, motels, and vehicles, (and) on beaches and at prearranged meeting sites such as parking lots," the report also said.
In other words, drugs are everywhere.