Word: contrabanders
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Over the past decade, as military dictatorships toppled throughout Latin America, Stroessner kept the army's loyalty by cutting it in on contraband, kickbacks and theft. A state of siege, regularly renewed and lifted only two years ago, empowered police to arrest thousands of opponents. Early in Stroessner's regime, critics were routinely branded as Communist subversives, often tortured and killed; in later years, foes were jailed or exiled...
...sting was called Operation Psittacine, from the Latin name of the brightly plumed contraband. Last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that 36 people in six states would be indicted on felony charges for their role in smuggling rare and endangered parrots into the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries. In a two-year undercover probe, the agency seized dozens of exotic parrots worth some $468,000. Such birds, which can be picked up for as little as $100 apiece along the Mexican border, fetch dear prices in U.S. pet stores: $4,500 for a scarlet...
Crossing into the U.S. near the Texas town of Del Rio, I spot an old mailbox that U.S. Customs has converted into a drug drop. DEPOSIT CONTRABAND HERE BEFORE YOU ENTER THE UNITED STATES reads a sign in language that seems more suitable for an antilittering campaign. The lock on the mailbox is rusty, and a spider has built a formidable web over the chute where any law-abiding, English-speaking drug smuggler would drop his neat little packet of cocaine or heroin. While the mailbox is an extreme example of bureaucratic wishful thinking, the larger U.S. approach...
...which a looter was killed. The trail took police and archaeologists to a huge adobe platform at the base of a weathered Moche pyramid near Sipan. When the authorities arrived, they found men, women and children combing the area for artifacts dropped by the huaqueros, who unload the contraband on the black market for buyers in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Driven off by police, the villagers viewed the new diggers as little more than government-protected thieves. Threats followed, including oaths of vengeance sworn by the relatives of the slain huaquero. Nightly, intruders were warned off by bursts...
Embarrassed U.S. officials conceded that the attempted shipping violated the arrangements. They denied that information on Soviet warheads could be gleaned from the contraband. It was all an innocent misunderstanding by souvenir collectors, the U.S. said...