how would you use the pistol how can you show me how you would use it I'm Jason Fox I spent 10 years in the Special Forces where I hunted down drug lords in Afghanistan yeah these are good this is what we used now I'm going to Latin America the dark heart of the global drugs trade going into the Barrio now one of them's got a shooter this time I'll be traveling unarmed to try to understand them from the inside [Music] starting in Mexico I'll make contact with the feared cartels more powerful than the state in
Peru I'll meet the producers at the bottom of the supply chain and in Colombia I see how the legacy of Pablo Escobar still runs deep this is a world where violence is a way of life and the criminals are the ones in charge if we were here without your permission what would you do with [Music] us [Music] I'm in Colombia continuing my journey across Latin America this is where the global narcotics industry began more dollars have been spent defeating the drug Barons here than anywhere else in this region yet Columbia remains one of the biggest
traffickers of cocaine on the planet I want to find out how the cartels managed to ship such vast quantities of the drug to more countries on Earth than any other producer pleasure to meet you I'm Oliver you fixer yeah nice to meet you how's it going so foxy I hope you will have a an exciting trip down here in Colombia I'm sure we will yeah Oliver is a local journalist who moved here from Germany 20 years ago we're leaving Cali and driving 70 M West to the Pacific coast our destination is the biggest port in
Colombia bav Ventura almost half the cocaine that comes out of Colombia is smuggled through here and then shipped across the [Music] world so how uh just how dangerous is B of Ventura well the has been for most uh for more than 10 years one of the most dangerous places in in in Colombia um I would think uh I would say there are almost people being killed uh every couple of days at at least um so there is still an ongoing war between different drug cartels trying to to gain control over over the city over the
neighborhoods on barriers um from where they get access to to the ocean after 4 hours we reach the outskirts of the city so those are the barriers on the left side yeah bav Ventura has many slums people live in these rickety wooden still houses perched above the water but right next door is the international multi-billion pound PK complex somehow the cartels managed to get their drugs from the Barrios onto these huge container [Music] ships we turn to the left the next one please where this way there this one yeah just follow those Oliver has arranged
for us to stay inside the port area it is surrounded by armed [Music] guards looks quite fancy doesn't it boom oh it's all right considering the place outside is very deceiving wasn't expecting this considering what we've just driven through [Music] next morning I want to see how the smuggling operation works but this means heading into the Barrios these are noo areas for Outsiders let's go come one Aventura has been described as a national shame the cartels regularly use torture dismemberment and murder to control those living here exposed to such extreme violence every day I want
to get a sense of how Ordinary People manag to survive we're meeting someone who's lived here all of his life okay I can see him it's the guy over there on the right side oh right in the brown T-shirt yeah yeah in the brown t-shirt foxy yeah what's this bario we have to take down the camera please he says we can't be filming here it's too dangerous please thank you jav is taking us to the street where he lives in Kennedy Baro it's safer to film here he spends much of his time trying to stop
kids from joining the gangs and and that and then that's why they get involved with the cartels and the gangs what's up this is pooie a friend of Ja [Music] Foxy come on come on all right he's a former gang member turned singer and musician all right can we listen to some of the their music can we listen to some of Poo's music man boom pooie are you able to talk to me about what sort of work you did for the gangs and the cartels in the drugs industry how how difficult is it for young
people living in the Barrios to not get drawn into the violence of the gangs and the cartels and and the drug industry as a [Music] whole the gangster culture is cool if you hadn't have got involved in the music project with ja where would you have been now in the sort of cartels gangs and the drugs trade [Music] as night falls Oliver gets word that a cocaine Smuggler has agreed to meet me under the cover of Darkness he's going to traffic 100 kilos out of the Mario and onto a container ship if this load reaches
the UK it will be worth a staggering 10 million the next phase in this little bit is uh ditching the cars and then we're going to be going on foot for approximately 2 to 5 minutes down the walkway where uh we're going to meet the guy Smuggler watch your camera man so we get off here okay cars will stay here at the end of the cemetery and then it's down that road is it yeah on left side cheers bro okay good luck man you yeah a couple of the Smugglers men are taking us in he
says we need to to buy something so people wouldn't be thinking something about us just go to a shop buy [Music] something the barrier has become too dangerous for the police to enter and the drug gangs have Lookouts everywhere nothing happens here without them knowing this is the house being used by The Smuggler we're just waiting for the dark hous to come in we could have done with the timing being a little bit better so we just got here and it was good to go cuz we don't want our El too much suspicion it is
really sketchy here just there like the GU over there yeah the longer we're standing around I know we've only just arrived and we've already been spotted by a group of young men everyone's on edge and the only way out is back past them or to swim for it I wouldn't stay here too long we we've already because basically unless you want to get wet that's the only [ __ ] way out and they're all [ __ ] stood there the drug Smuggler wants us to call him [Music] Pedro he's waiting for a call from his
boss the cartel have to line up everyone else involved before they can move the drugs Pedro um can you just let us know what's going on at the moment are you able to tell us which Cel that you're you're working for but how how do they contact you and let you know that tonight is the night that you're going to set off with the 100 kilos I think that's the call could be the C hello see see yeah see uhhuh okay P Pedro what about what what are you going to be doing in five minutes
can I come with you mate no with Pedro heading off we need to leave here as quickly as possible right mate where's there's someone coming over there right there's someone coming over get rid that now right should we go yeah should we let's go mate let's go our rout back is through the barrier [ __ ] we were getting a [ __ ] shitload of uh ATT attention from young guys guys that were just hanging on the street corners hanging outside some of the casses which was uh unnerving then Pedro got the corn and he
had to go to another cassa he's probably now on Route if not there picking up the the the cocaine and and heading on his merry way to drop it off the Colombian cartels are experts in the industrial exportation of drugs nearly half of all the cocaine that comes out of the country is smuggled out of this port area we've heard that last night Pedro successfully offloaded the 100 kilos of cocaine onto a container ship all under the noses of the authorities and the shipping companies we've arranged to meet him in the mangroves surrounding the port
to find out how he did it if you look over there in the mangroves quite close to the port you've just got see see how the water it goes in it's like little tributaries and little Bays that just indent into the The Mangrove though it's perfect if you're getting chased or you need somewhere to hide that's it you're in there and you're gone and no one's ever going to find you a police coast line here is just is n impossible oh Pedro there he is one of stairs who whoa who who who can T-Bone the
PO BL so um Pedro can you explain where it was you went and what sort of procedures you had to carry out to get pick it up and then move it let's go I'm Pedro is going to show me the route he took in his canoe to smuggle the cocaine onto a container ship Okay so we've just come up through the mangroves and uh it looks like we're now approaching where the docks are you can see all the containers in the cranes with all the hustle and bustle and how busy it is it would be
so easy just to just canoe up with your load get it lifted up on the opposite side onto any one of these ships and that's it offloaded and good to go so the ship the shipping was here yeah yeah and do they ah it's pulling it [Music] up you'd never think that a small canoe would rondu with a huge Oceano tanker you'd think there'd be something in between it makes perfect sense the small canoe with without an engine is almost impossible to detect at night and the this is the perfect place to do it it's
a busy Port all that anyone's interested in is happening on the other side of the ship because of health and safety the lights and the noise everything's focused on people not dying on the other side when actually what everyone's interested it should be interested in is the fact that 100 kg of cocaine's just been hul up the side of a massive Oceano vessel [Music] this port is the most valuable smuggling route out of Colombia but it's the Barrios where all the planning and Logistics take place the cartels run them with an iron grip using Hitmen
known as sarios who have grown up on the streets here oh we should sorry we should go left here sorry sorry sorry so now please turn to the right Oliver has arranged for us to meet one at a petrol station not far from the port what time did he say it'd be here 5:30 supposed to be here at 5:30 he's Hitman fing I think that's all okay hey Min is Foxy the Hitman wants us to call him Pepe he's going to show me how he carried out one of his many hits off on the uh
route of the h hit crazy B ofir okay so we're going into the bario now and into where it gets a little bit sketchier less movement going on less people cutting around keep our wits about us now as we're getting further in don't think we've got far to go now before we get to the place where um old Peppe conducted the hit so is this it how many bullets make sure to make sure that's where it was right there on the corner underneath the sign yeah yeah see let's get the [ __ ] out of
here Pepe grew up in the baros he lives alongside the people the cartel order him to kill can you tell me about the last time that you were actually contracted to go and do a hit when I've had to do my job and I've ended up killing people some sometimes it's been in front of um maybe family members children and that is the the thing that has bothered me and it's some something that I've lost sleep over in the past uh I was wondering if you've ever had the same situation where you've had to kill
someone in front of family members and how you feel about that for but that's obviously that's just what happens when it's the job that you either you chose or you had to do and that's what you got got to deal with I suppose do you go from a hit straight back home straight into normal life or do you go somewhere to maybe take a bit of time and chill out do you think that because of the job you've got do you feel that you can lead a normal life or do you think it doesn't quite
work you're doing this job and it makes you feel like this and you you miss lots of things why why do you do it Pepe must kill when ordered or be killed he's trapped in a relent spiral of violence like the many victims he prays on apparently the going rate for a Pepe hit is $800 I mean if you look at this area that's probably quite a lot of money but then in the grand scheme of things is that how much a life's worth but then it also shows you how much power the gangs and
the cartels around here have due to the fact that they they are able to dictate the price of a life the authorities seem powerless in their fight to control the drugs trade of the total amount of cocaine smuggled across the world last year a quarter of it came through this port area I want to see how the Colombian Navy are trying to stop the [Music] traffickers it looks like we're going to be um stop stopping this boat here to give give it a random check and make sure it's not carrying any drugs she got the
two guys at the front with weapons so they're going to offer protection as they go on and they're going to obviously board it's only a small boat so it only needs two of them so you can probably just have two guys jump on the boat and then he'll have a bit of protection from the back they might have a few more blos get on board empty beer bottles they're [ __ ] pissed the amount of empty beer bottles in the [ __ ] so you got one bloke's checking the um documents making sure that the
boat is legit and that it's it's owned by these guys and then you've got a guy there that's starting to rumage through the cargo looks like it's just weekly visit to the bottle Bank by the look at it there isn't a set boat that they're looking for it can be any boat we've I mean we've seen lots of different boats cutting around the the bay you've got a canoe over there you got sort of slightly bigger boats than the canoe there you can have goast you can have boats that are not dissimilar to this there's
a mixed array the traffic coming in and out of bonov Ventura in this Bay is is there's a lot of it and there's just one of them at the moment out here bobbing about just down the coast from the port is the Malaga navy base I'm meeting the commander Captain lre hey how nice to meet yeah I'm good thank you how's it going nice to meet you too yeah he's going to show me an extraordinary method the cartels now used to traffic their [Music] drugs they build their own [Music] submarines I'm intrigued to know what
it's like inside some of them we CAU it out sea and some of them we have CAU them at land just ready to be load ready to be [Music] load the Navy have caught over 100 of them this sub was capable of traveling 8,000 Miles more than enough to make it to the coastline of California when this sub was stopped in 2016 it was carrying $73 million worth of cocaine they don't look very comfortable they're obviously Ma they're massive aren't they they obviously pack these full of cocaine it's it's mainly um storage space yes yes
it has an engine room as you see it has to have a cockpit it's not comfortable as it's very hard to be on it there are always four people in inside of it there's a couple of engines guy there's the one that drives it and the one that owns the the the cocaine always over there is is watching of of what are you going to do with the cocaine it can't be nice inside them I've been I've been in a proper submarines and they're not comfortable at the best of times these must be horrendous yes
yes in terms of of heat in terms of humidity uh what they breathe is very hard how long are the journeys that they're doing normally 3 days four days inside of these kind of ships this kind of artifact can't be too safe either it yes it is it is a big risk it worth a lot of of of guts to go and come inside of these things you know you're going to go out you don't know if you're going to come back it is very hard I I wonder where they make them you know they
made it inside the Jungle everything everyone even though that one is the big the biggest one that we have you've got to admit it's quite clever yes yes I mean can we have a look in any of them's let's see if we can we can can go inside the last one over there it's a slippery over here I tried it you tried this one yes let's have a go that's a hot H it's all right tell me if there's a there's a chain it's hot yeah it's chained up it's locked is it locked yeah it
looks stinking in there they've even got like the toughened glass you know I mean it's it's amazing because if you think about how we make submarines back home there's like big docks dry docks it's it's you know there's hundreds of Engineers and scientists and they're all building it and yet they managed to build this in the middle of the Jungle I mean are you impressed with their Ingenuity yes yes yeah it's hard not to be impressed yeah it's it's it's something that we we wonder uh how come they can they can do these things for
bad matters otherwise we could had some very uh Innovations for for for the for the good [Music] yeah this Coastline around bonaventura has become a breeding ground of Narco Innovation over the years but it was one drug lord in particular who first pioneered ingenious ways to traffic vast quantities of drugs Colombia's number one enemy at this moment is the terrorists Pablo escavar whose criminal organization cocaine Kingpin Pablo Escobar is still at larged he escaped from a prison near medin yesterday Pablo Escobar single-handedly transformed the drugs business into a global [Music] industry with Pablo Escobar came
the birth of the modern day D drug traff Africa um gangster and Hitman all rolled into one really he turned Colombia into a globally known cocaine State I suppose and it's it's kept that reputation it hasn't got rid of it I doubt it will get rid of it for a long [Music] time I'm heading north to the town of medine from here escar built an Empire that controlled most of the world's cocaine Supply I want to meet one of the men that helped him do it in the80s meding was reported to be the most dangerous
city on earth Escobar's cartel gave rise to the modern Global drugs industry they controlled 80% of the cocaine supply to the [Music] [Applause] [Music] US I want to see how Pablo Escobar is regarded [Music] today I've come to a Barrio that he turned into a fortress against the police it provided a safe haven for his cartel members to hide out and operate in the man showing me around was a close friend of Pablo Escobar popey here on the right with Escobar helped build the medine cartel into the most powerful drugs organization in the world he
was recently released from prison after serving 23 years why is it that you're such a celebrity around this this barrier so papy what is it that you did do for these people in the barrier [Music] for today this Barrio is still a dangerous place with drugs and violence a regular part of daily life it's clear Escobar has left a lasting impact here but of all the narcos I've met on my travels so far no one has perpetrated more violence and horror than popey and on Escobar's most wanted poster you don't have to look very far
to find [Music] him popey carried out this assassination of a presidential [Music] candidate he killed judges police innocent bystanders all on the command of Pablo Escobar papy the families of the victims they must be sickened to see you treated like a celebrity despite this popey never likes to be out in the open for too long so he's taking me back to his apartment o po gracias how many people did you kill to receive 23 years in prison you still have to believe you have to believe what you're doing is right and you obviously have to
somehow sell to yourself what you're doing is the right thing did your family know what you did how did you become a hitman what why how how would you use the pistol how can you show me how you would use it for so uh I never really counted how many people I killed for me um for me it was just part of a job to get something done where I was employed by the military like you said you know working for the Constitution uh for me it was actually just me protecting myself and the people
around me doing a job that I did love doing is Foy [Music] popey wasn't the only one who gave his undying loyalty to Pablo Escobar Escobar saw how to use poor communities who felt abandoned by their government and put them to work for his own good I've seen how in the Barrios of Ventura the Naros still pre on those who have no one else to turn to when Escobar was finally shot dead by the police in 1993 25,000 people attended his funeral for many it felt like a national day of [Music] mourning when night time
falls in medine popey comes out to visit the grave of Pablo Escobar 25 years after his death he still cast a spell over those who knew him [Music] Pablo Escobar's Legacy is a global drugs industry the world is powerless to stop cocaine is now consumed in every country on Earth it's become a business worth around $90 billion a [Music] [Music] year [Music]
