The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - The Castro Connection- How Cuban Refugees Dominate The Miami Cocaine Trade

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Johnny interviews Apache, a Cuban-American who moved tons of kilos for the Colombians from the late 80's to the mid-90's. He talks about going from small-time dealer to major middleman, and working with Raul Castro and the Cuban government to help him smuggle his cocaine loads to Miami. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In less than three hours, I sold them the 50 birds. And he freaked out. Ever since then, I was his go-to guy, his number one guy. I stashed the dope. I sold the dope, and I stashed the money. Colombians have it. Cubans bring it. Americans use it.

That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, hopped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shanks, like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours.

Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Connect. My name is Johnny Mitchell. Okay, so we've gone through the history of the cocaine cowboys, the first generation of Colombian immigrants to expand and essentially start the cocaine business in the United States in Miami. But no story about drugs and cocaine dealing in Miami would be complete without talking about the Cubans, Los Cubans.

The Cuban Americans were to Miami, what the Dominicans were to New York City back in the day. Yes, the Colombians were the Kingpins, of course. They were the manufacturers who got the product from the factory floor to the hub, in this case, Miami. But the Cubans were the ones with the numbers. They made it move. The west coast of Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida. They say if you stand in Key West, you can actually see the lights of Havana at night. So naturally, Miami has always been a hub for Cuban immigrants,

but especially after the 1959 revolution, and Castro came to power. But it wasn't until 1980 in the Mario Boatlift when the Castro regime dispelled hundreds of thousands of undesirables from the island, did Miami then really see this explosion of Cuban criminals? Just like Tony Montana portrayed in Scarface, they were known as the Marioitos. So this Cuban crime wave coincided perfectly

with the influx of Colombian Coke that was flooding the city. And just like New York City at the time, the Colombians did not have the manpower to supply the demand of their new booming industry. They needed an ally with numbers, and the Cubans had the numbers. And that's where first-generation Cubans like Apache stepped in. So while we were in Miami, we went down to Little Havana, to the famous 8th Street, to interview a man who calls himself Apache. He's somewhat of an underground legend in the Miami cocaine scene.

Apache was one of those first-generation Cuban immigrants in the 1980. who became one of those key middlemen for the Colombian cartels who depended on guys like him to move their product. And like many Latinos in South Florida, he got his start in the drug business from his father.

His father was born in Cuba, but his family immigrated to Barranquilla, Colombia, when he was just a boy. My father met, my father's Cuba. Where was your father born in Cuba? Santa Clara La Villa. From there, he immigrated to Barranquilla.

And this is where he met Apache's mother. He met my mom. and, you know, I mean, a lot of my dad's brothers and sisters migrated as well. And they linked up with Barranquilleros. Now, flash forward to the 1970s, and the cocaine trade starts to boom. They came to Miami. I was born. From there, they sent me back to Barranquilla because they needed to, you know, settle in.

You know, and once they settle in, they brought me back here. Then they moved to New York. My sister was born in New York, and then we came back to Miami. Now, Barranquia is one of those interesting Colombian cities that most people don't talk about. It's on the northern coast of Columbia, and it's the gateway to all of the Caribbean.

Barranquilla is more like Cuba, Miami, is like La Costa. Right. Okay, so they didn't care about the rest of this. Same weather like this. It's same, you know, it's like that 24-7. And although they weren't as flashy or rich as the Collie cartel or Medellín,

the Cartel de Barranquia at the time, was an extremely important player in the drug trade. All or most of the kilos sent up from Medellin to Miami had to pass through Barangiaks. That's what the big ports are. And this is where Apache's father, like many young Colombians at the time, got their start in the drug trade, was at these ports.

He started from the bottom and eventually he became a lieutenant. So Apache, even though he was born a half-cubid in Miami, he had those embedded connections to the old country and to the drug trade. He was best friends with Pablo's best friend, right-hand man guy. I don't want to say names or another. Yeah, wow.

And he met Pablo on several occasions. Right. He was a beast. You know, my dad would get three and turn him into five. So imagine he would get 15 birds and turn him to 20 birds. He told us about the first time

he was involved in a smuggling operation. When I was young, I was my dad interpreter always. I would always interpret for my dad because his English is okay, but I would interpret. He was still in high school, and he went to work for this Colombian guy who had a load to move from Barranquilla to Miami. And I did it just for the heck of it, and I did it for, without getting paid one penny.

I went all the way from Miami, Opalaca, Opa Laca, Bahamas, Bahamas, Kakeas, Kakeas, Kakeas, Baranquilla, Bahamah, Wahira. What was the... I went in a plane, you know, no seats, no nothing, extra gas tanks on the wings, the tips, and from there we came all the way to Miami. He said he didn't even get paid for it. He just went for the adventure.

I did it like, you know, it's not just a job. It's an adventure. I did it for the adventure. But this is how he got his start in the cocaine business was by coming up in the ranks like an employee and a corporation would by learning from the older generation. All right, you guys, let's take a minute to thank our amazing sponsor.

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and get a free five-count pack of gummies with your purchase. You guys, go get high, do it the legal way, do it the right way. Go to hellomood.co. Support them because they support us. All right, let's get back into the episode. I started off small, you know, selling little grams here and there, buying a little ounce, 28 grams, turn it into 31 grams, sell it here and there, you know, all my friends from the neighborhood. And it took them quite a bit of time to actually ascend in the drug trade.

It reminded me a lot of my story back in Oregon moving wheat. Who were you buying ounces from at the beginning? Hey, older guys, older guys that would look out for me and stuff like that. Cubans or Colombians? But he used this opportunity as a small timer to really learn the ins and outs of the business. For example, he learned how to tell the purity of cocaine by the way that it burned. You get a gram, you burn it, it's got to come back 10 lines. If it doesn't come back, if it comes back eight, nine is 80, 90% pure.

Sometimes it will come back five lines. But how does a young Cuban, a middleman, blow up to become a big-time trafficker, especially when the Colombians have a monopoly on the influence? on the import market. Well, first of all, you had to have a supplier, a Colombian, so you'd get in the best price. How did you originally find the Colombian connect in Barranquia, though? How are you connected?

Through family. Your dad? No. No, through cousins. But almost as important, you needed the right buyers. From Barranquilla, they sent me some work. When I say work, some cocaine. And everything got messed up.

So the only thing that survived was two kilos. but it got wet with salt water. So I had those two kilos there, and they were trying, there were people from Columbia were telling me to try to rescue it. I couldn't rescue it. Finally, they connected me with a Dominican guy from New York for him to try to rescue it,

see if you could do something with it. He couldn't do nothing with it. We met on 163rd, North Miami, and I told the Dominican, you know, the Dominican told me, listen, I can't do nothing with this. At this time, I was surviving, wheeling and dealing here and there locally. Guess what? I told the Dominican, I'm like, hey, listen, you want work?

I give you work all day long. It was like, for real? Oh, let's do it. So that's how I started. That was my big break. So cocaine in Miami in the 1980s and early 90s was a lot like marijuana was back in my day in Portland, Oregon. It was flooded. Everybody was selling it. So a guy like Apache, a middleman, could buy it wholesale. A Cuban will make $500. It would get it for like 15, and then he would set it for like 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 5, 16.

So he's only making about a point or a point and a half off of flipping each kilo. You could make a good living, but I think it was difficult to get rich that way. I meet this guy and he wanted to give me work. He didn't know who I was, but my cousin was in the way. And I was like, listen, you know, he had like 50 birds, you know? And I was like, let me get him. I'm moving right now. He was like, oh, it's a lot of work, you know, what happens?

If you lose it, if, you know, you get caught or something, who's going to respond? Who's going to pay for him? Like, listen, man, I could move this immediately. So he gave me two birds, you know? He gave me two birds. I moved it. You know, I mean, I had a connect and Kendall. And I told him to meet me halfway.

So I met the guy halfway. I sold it and came right back. The Colombian guy freaked out. Right there, he gave me 20. And I did it right away immediately. Whoa. And less than three. And less than three hours, I sold him the 50 birds.

And he freaked out. Ever since then, I was his go-to guy, his number one guy. The real money was made out of town. His life really changed in the early 90s when he met this group of Dominicans based out of Montgomery, Alabama, of all fucking places. With that Dominican guy, I did the same thing with him. I gave him two, same thing they did to me, I did to him. I gave him two keys.

I told him, there is a motto I go by. I told him, listen, don't look at a one-time lick. Look at a long-term goal. I'm going to give you two birds. Okay? Now what you do with that, it's up to you. Okay? Before that, I had already, I took a picture of his driver's license, and I had a PI private investigator, and I did a comprehensive report on him. And I showed him all his papers. How many kids? He had seven kids with six different women. And I thought, listen, I know everything about you. You know, right now, don't think I'm alone. I have a whole, a whole, I have whole Columbia behind me. All I got to do is make a phone call. They'll send me two, three Indians here.

And imagine. who were buying kilos for 18 to 20,000 at a time, and they were moving 200 a week. So I gave him two birds. He moved that immediately. Same like me. Boom, boom, boom. And then he wanted five.

I'll never forget. We went to, he had a spot in Birmingham, Alabama. So I gave him the five. He drove his car. I drove behind him with a girlfriend that I had, and I saw how he worked because I wanted to see how he operated. And he did great.

Gave me the money. I came back. So from there, I promoted him. And he met like two or three different groups based out of these cities. The beauty thing about this is that he introduced me to another Dominican. He had Birmingham, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut. But it was too much work for him. So he introduced me to two other Dominicans.

So I had three Dominicans. So now you got three distributors. Three distributors. So now he's moving 200, 400, sometimes 600 kilos a week at a 2 to 4 grand markup per kilo. I used to get my work firsthand. There was a white van with a thousand kilos and they would tell me get as many as you want. I would take 2.1, 200, 300 for me. So almost overnight, he went from small time to making millions of dollars a month this way.

One time I was in Birmingham, Alabama with my trying. And he broke the kilo down right in front of me. He didn't even cook it or nothing. One African-American guy came and bought him a quarter key, nine ounces, for $10,000. So imagine that he was saying, in one kilo, he was making $40,000. Wow. And I would tell him, I don't care what he was freaking out because he saw that I noticed what he was making. I was like, listen, I don't care what you make.

As long as you pay me, what you got to pay me, we're good. Just like how I started to get rich selling weed when I met my buyers on the East Coast and my markup per pound went way up. This is how Apache and many Cuban immigrants became these junior kingpins. Colombians have it. Cubans bring it. Americans use it. On the one hand, they had the Colombian supply paying wholesale for the work straight off the boat. And then on the other hand, they had the buyers, usually the Dominican or the Jamaican gangs up north, who would pay a substantial markup for each kilo. When I will get 100 Ts, I will give 20, 40, 60, 80.

I will give 80 keys or weight immediately so they could be shipped out. And the other 20, I will give it to friends of mine here locally. Yeah. You know, so they could, you know, so I could show some love. Yeah. Because, um, Colombians, when it comes to a December and Christmas, like, they only work the first two weeks. The last two weeks, they don't work. You know, they go to their feitas and they party.

They, you know, they celebrate all their earnings and so forth. He was a one-man operation and he was thorough. Believe it or not, I was a one-man gang, man. You know what I mean? Yeah, I did everything. I, you know, I started. I saw the dope, I sold the dope, and I stashed the money. The Colombians saw how fast he was moving the product,

and pretty soon he had several different sources within the Medellin cartel vying to give him their work. I used to like to save $100 bills, okay? And I would always have 1.5, you know, I had $3, 5 million. So I play, I would play a game on the Colombians. You know, I would tell him, listen, I got a guy from Chicago. He's got $1.2 million in cash. in cash. All hundreds. He wants 100 birds. Do you want to do the deal? Yes or no. Oh no. Fuck it. Fine.

Two days later. Hey, you still have that guy, you know, for the 1.2. They were going 100 kilos, $15,000. They will go for 1.5. So I will come. Yes, he's still around. He's about to leave. Oh, make it happen. You sure there are hundreds. Because remember, so you could, so you could send the money back to Columbia. You want $100 bills, not $20. $100 bills. And a million dollars and a hundred dollars bills is a small package. $20 bills, you need a unguzano, a duffel bag, huge duffel bag, and that shit weighs like fuck, you know, remember, $1,000 weighs one gram. So imagine that.

Well, anyways, I would do the deal. I would get my own money, give the Colombians 1.2, 1.15, and keep the 100 kilos. And then when Christmas will come December, bro, instead of for $15,000, I'll sell them for $19,000, I will make $600,000, locally. imagine me sending them to up the road. So there was never anybody in Chicago. I was really good.

So you would just wear out of the bricks? I would just kill it, kill it, kill it. And he never fucked up the Colombian's money, not once. And I would sell it, you know, I mean, in five days I had the money. And there was a time I got so upset because I was two, three, two, three weeks taking care of this money. And I told them, listen, you need to pick this money up quickly. Because if you don't pick it up, I'm going to charge you for to stash the money

because that's another, that's another field. That's another job. And he never used cocaine himself. He never even had a drink. Even to this day, he's completely sober. I never touched it because what I saw my father go through, you know, my father did everything. You know, he even did crack and all that. He did everything.

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must be 21. Okay, so a guy like Apache has basically gone as high as he can possibly get on the drug chain in Miami. So what is the next step? How do you make even more money when you're in his position? You're not part of the cartel, but you're linked with them and you've got the accounts. You've got the buyers on your end. You go down to Columbia yourself and you pay the Columbia price, not the Florida price. Back in the days, a kilo of cocaine will go for like $5,700 in Colombia. Deep on the inside of Colombia, it will get shipped out of Barranquilla. He explained to us how moving a load of Coke from Columbia to Miami back that actually worked. From Barranquilla to Miami, you could bring him via airplane or in normal boats.

And then the boats will meet speedboats halfway through and then put them in the speedboats. And they will come to Miami, you know, Kamakasi. Like I said, back then, the radar wasn't as high tech as it is now. So, you know, I mean, out of 10 ships, you will catch. two, three, so we just gambling. Now, if a man like Apache wants to go down and move, say, a thousand kilos from Barranquia to South Florida, he's responsible for coordinating all of the logistics, meaning hiring all of those people that I mentioned to do a function of the drug smuggling.

Would you have to find your own lanceros from, like, to take him from the island to island? It will be like, it's just like a GC general contractor. You will have to subcontract and find everything and do everything. Find the plumber, the electrician, the structure guy, and so forth. Right, right. Yeah, you got to, you know, because you want everything under one umbrella. You know, monopolize it. You know, get your own lanchero, get your own connect, and so forth, then take it from there and bring it here. So back in the 80s, early 90s, before the Caribbean route was shut down, the main way to get Coke from Columbia to Florida was to first fly it to one of those small islands just a few hours away from Miami. The pilot's

We're always American, believe it or not. Yeah. And white guys, right? White guys, yeah. You know, and they were trustworthy because, you know, remember back in the days, all white guys were DEA agents. Now, obviously, this takes a huge amount of trust on the part of the drug trafficker. He has to rely on all of these different networks of people just to get his shipment through.

I'll go to Colombia, speak with the main guy. Okay, we're going to meet. How do we know you're sending the right guy? How do you know this and that? We'll get a dollar bill, $20, $50, $100. break it not in half, break it like with these figures. And then I will tell you, you give it to your captain, and I'm going to give it to my guy that's going to pick up.

And then you will meet in the middle of the ocean, and then you will combine the two, the bill, the one bill, put it together and see that it was the same exact bill. And that's how you knew, you know, he was the guy that was picking up, and this was the guy that was supplying you with work. And I asked Apache, how did the Colombians specifically deal with somebody who might steal a shipment or make a big mistake that cost them millions of dollars. If it would get really ugly, I would have to call the people down there.

Al Pueblo, it's called El Pueblo. You call over there. Oh, you send me two, three Indians. When I say Indians, those three Indians, these guys are, you know, they're from the jungle. They don't give a damn. And that meant calling up a brown person or an indigenous person from the slums of Columbia who would kill for almost nothing at the drop of a hat. Imagine you offer one of those guys.

$1,000 to come to the United States, do a hit. They'll do it, you know, they'll do it for 500. Yeah. You know, I mean, in Colombia, they do it for $100. That's how Barry Seal got whacked. They called up the Indians, as it was said. From Medellin, they were supplied with automatic weapons in the United States and told who to go kill.

And that's exactly what they did. They took orders. They were the cicadios from Colombia. That's how they dealt with mistakes or traders or people. who robbed from their shipments. That's why the most fail-safe way to move Coke back then was to work with governments.

Many governments throughout the years have worked with drug traffickers, probably the most famous being Noriega in Panama and today the Venezuelan military working with the Colombian traffickers. But what most Americans don't know, but it is well documented

within the Cuban community in Miami, is that the Castro government of Cuba has been working with drug traffickers since the beginning. Raul Castro was involved, 1989. I was part of that one time. Raul Castro used to use the Cuban military to unload Coke planes coming in from Colombia, who would then guard the stashes

while that coke was being offloaded onto fastboats and sent along to Florida. There was a guy named with Troy. They got assassinated by Raul Castro, and then there was two twin guys. I forgot the names of the two twin guys, 1989. one of them got assassinated. Not assassinated, they faced a firing squad.

Ochoa and the guy from one of the twins, and the other guy they gave 25 years. You know why? That was called hush to keep quiet from him testifying against Raul Castro. What was also common knowledge, and still is to this day, is that Cuban refugee communities within Miami

will use drug money to purchase weapons to fund their anti-Castro activities in their attempts to overthrow that regime. Big-time drug dealers, Cubans, would give money to people to train in the Everglades. You know, they would give money for weapons and so forth. They would transport the weapons to Cuba via speedboats, you know, ships and so forth.

If you study basic history, you know that America has been trying to topple the Castro regime since they came to power in 1959. All the way back to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the CIA has been working with these anti-Castro refugee groups in Miami to try and overthrow that regime. And they would train them to try to do, you know,

like a coup type of thing. It built small cells over there in Cuba and try to overturn the regime, but it was too hard, you know what I mean? And in the 1980s, after the Mario Boat lift and all of this drug money started to prop up in Miami, these anti-Castro groups started working with drug trafficking, to buy huge supplies of weapons to ship them off to islands close to Cuba in order to fund these guerrillas that still have ambitions of overthrowing Castro.

I have a lot of friends that provided money for those people and I have friends that their fathers were involved in that. Apache even told us that to this day, there are armed guerrilla groups of anti-Castro Cuban refugees who will train in the Everglades of Florida, like their real military in hopes of one day going back to the island and toppling that regime. They train in the Everglades to make it look like a, like a war ambience type of thing, you know, jungle, you know, with their fatigues, the boots and all that, and they would do, you know, like boot camp, basic training and so forth. It's 1997. Apache has moved tons, literal tons of cocaine for the Colombians.

He's made millions of dollars. Now it's his turn, just like, everybody of that generation to catch a Fed charge and go sit down for a little bit. This was in 94. They rated a warehouse with all these ledgers and it said a nickname, the amount of cocaine and the amount of money. Like an example, it said flaco, 20 kilos, $300,000. In typical federal fashion, he never got caught with any money or drugs. 96. The main Colombian gave some work

to one of his right-hand man's. He gave him five kilos. He gave the five kilos to his right-hand man. His right-hand man gave it to another Colombian. The other Colombian gave it to another Colombian. The other Colombian gave it to another Colombian. And the other Colombian gave it to a retired FBI agent. He was retired, but he was doing, he was in the game.

Retire FBI agent never paid the Colombian. So guess what? The main Colombian sent some co-dadores guy to go collect and go collect, go collect, go collect. So the FBI agent turned in on the Colombian, the other Colombian on the other one, the other Colombian on the other one, the other Colombian on the other one. And then finally, the right-hand man of the main guy went down. His name was in a two-year-old drug ledger in the warehouse of a Colombian who got raided by the feds. The right-hand man of the main guy came, turned around, freaked out, said, listen, there was a bus.

in Hialeah, a warehouse, all these ledgers with amount and numbers. Bring me that ledger, I'm going to decipher yourself for you. His name was in there as somebody who had purchased 50 kilos from this particular Colombian source. So he got roped into an indictment, a RICO indictment, and given 11 years in the feds. I got locked up in 97. I lost everything, everything, properties, everything. They took everything away from me. How much did they take you?

Money, a lot. A lot of pride. I lost everything. Apache's story was fascinating. I related to it personally because he was from that generation that helped these mega cartels like the Colombians get rich. Just like me with marijuana in Portland, the Sino-Lowan growers and the redneck growers

who supplied me with my marijuana, they needed middlemen like me to send their product out to distributors all over the country in order to bring those millions of dollars back. That's exactly what Cuban immigrants, like Apache did for the Columbians. All right, you guys, that's been today's episode. Thank you so much for watching.

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