Women Drug Traffickers

by Elaine Carey

  With the advent of greater airport controls on the American east coast in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Corsican traffickers encountered difficulties smuggling into international airports and other familiar ports of entry. And with additional controls and enhanced surveillance along the U.S-Mexico border, smuggling into the United States became more difficult all around. Responding to the tighter security, traffickers sought alliances in the Americas to assist in the movement of European heroin into the United States.52 Sarmiento was one of a few women who emerged as a direct link in the heroin trade between Europe, South America, and the United States. Her initial organization of a couple of people later expanded to more than twelve members from across the globe.

  At first, Sarmiento shipped cocaine and heroin in Chilean and Argentine wine bottles because South America’s wine industry had expanded its exportation and entered global markets beginning in the early 1970s.53 Sarmiento placed sealed packets of heroin in the wine. Thus, wine offered a perfect disguise for inspectors; however, a wine bottle could only hold limited amounts of heroin or cocaine because it also had to contain the liquid it was meant to carry. In 1970, Sarmiento, Alfred Mazza, Juan Carlos Franco (also known as Miguel Aspilche), and Wladimir Bandera devised a plan to ship heroin to Rodolfo Ruíz, a painter based in New York City. They used false backs and frames around paintings, hollowing them out and packing them with cocaine and heroin. The art was sent to Ruíz, and Mazza and Franco would then pick up the contraband for distribution. Mazza and Sarmiento’s scheme enabled the group to smuggle an estimated 170 kilos of heroin and cocaine worth some $250–$500 million (2012: $1.47–$2.95 billion).54

  Mazza and Sarmiento traveled back and forth from Argentina to the United States to receive the drugs from Ruíz and also to sell them. On April 15, 1970, police raided Sarmiento’s west side New York City apartment and seized heroin and cocaine worth an estimated $3.5 million (2012: $20.9 million). She had gotten word before the raid and fled Manhattan. A few days later, police arrested Sarmiento, her lover and accomplice Emilio Díaz González, and two other men in New Jersey en route to Miami. With her arrest, Sarmiento posted $100,000 bail and immediately fled the United States to Argentina, thus becoming a fugitive.55 Díaz González would later escape from the Metropolitan Corrections Center (MCC), a fortress-like building in Manhattan, in an operation allegedly financed by Sarmiento. Once free, he joined her in Buenos Aires.56

  When Buenos Aires police attempted to arrest the pair after being pressured by U.S. officials, a gun battle broke out between Sarmiento, Díaz, their neighbors, and the police. Díaz escaped, but the police arrested Sarmiento.57 The United States requested her extradition. Initially, Argentina balked because Sarmiento had children who were Argentine citizens by birth. Moreover, existing treaties between the United States and Argentina did not contain any specific extradition clauses.

  Although Sarmiento resided in Argentina, her name continued to come up in legal proceedings that took place in the United States. In 1974, grand juries in Brooklyn and Manhattan handed down indictments against twelve current and former New York City police officers, including detectives and two lieutenants whose responsibilities included gathering evidence against narcotics dealers and traffickers.58 The officers stole narcotics from police property clerks in 1972, and they had stolen money during various raids, including those of Sarmiento and her partners. They divided among themselves $235,000 in cash (2012: $1.3 million) that they took from Sarmiento’s partners Luis Torres and Wladimir Bandera. During the raid on Sarmiento’s west side apartment, officers took cash and five kilos of heroin to resell. Besides stealing from Sarmiento’s organization, police stole narcotics and money on other raids. Allegedly, police also stole $80,000 (2012: $442,000) from Nicodemus Olete and Justo Quintanilla in Queens, Chilean traffickers who used frogmen to move cocaine from freighters anchored in the harbor into Brooklyn.59

  With the rise of the military junta in Argentina in 1975, the Nixon administration saw an opportunity. The United States and Argentina entered an era of greater cooperation over drugs and Cold War policies. The DEA trusted that Argentina now would expel Sarmiento. In his 1993 book The Big White Lie, DEA Agent Michael Levine wrote about his arrest of Miguel Russo, Sarmiento, and François Chiappe.60 Chiappe and the others were not legally extradited; instead, they were expelled. Chiappe was an infamous Corsican trafficker who had fled to Buenos Aires in 1965 on a false passport after being accused of two murders in France. As a leading member of Corsican organized crime, he and others had been responsible for the creation of the French Connection. DEA press releases hailed the expulsions of Chiappe, Russo, and Sarmiento as “among the most sought after among criminal narcotics organizers in the world.”61 The assistant U.S. district attorney of the Eastern District, David DePetris, celebrated the expulsions as proof that the “last haven for narcotics smugglers” in South America had now been breached.62 Sarmiento’s relationship to Chiappe in Buenos Aires is difficult to ascertain from her available U.S. documents, but it does appear that they had some connection.

  The DEA agents sent to Argentina remained on the plane as the Argentine secret police delivered the hooded and manacled prisoners. Levine recounted that he guarded Chiappe, who smelled of perspiration, blood, and excrement. When Levine removed his prisoners’ hoods during the flight, he noticed that Chiappe and the others had been badly beaten. On Chiappe’s arrival in New York, journalists described that his body was covered with bruises and his teeth were broken at the gum line.63

  Halfway back to the United States, Levine shifted duties and sat with Sarmiento. He wrote:

  Yolanda Sarmiento [was] a middle-aged Chilean drug dealer and the only one of the three who had ever been in the United States. She told me that the Argentine police had killed her son. “I don’t care what happens to me now,” she sobbed, laying her head on my shoulder. “I have nothing to live for.”

  I felt her sorrow enter me for a moment and put my arm around her. She looked so sweet and helpless; she reminded me of my grandmother. She had been indicted for murdering a drug dealing competitor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and was alleged to have hacked the body to pieces in a bathtub by herself because her husband didn’t have the stomach for it. I tried to picture her doing it, but couldn’t.64

  Upon arrival at Kennedy Airport, the prisoners were formally arrested, and Sarmiento, accompanied by Chiappe and Russo, returned to the MCC in New York City, the same jail from which she had helped Díaz escape earlier.65 In New York, Sarmiento’s case turned even more dramatic, and she remained in the media because of her own attempted escape. To plan her escape, she needed help. While in the MCC, she befriended another inmate, Joseph Martinez-Carcano, who was a trustee. Meeting Sarmiento, however, created more problems for Martinez-Carcano than his Puerto Rico and Bronx drug convictions ever did.

  When he met Sarmiento, Martinez-Carcano was close to his release date. Of Puerto Rican descent, Martinez-Carcano was a professional engineer who had worked for major defense contractors such as Grumman Aircraft and Pratt & Whitney.66 His brother had served in Vietnam, returned as a heroin addict, and then died. The grieving family decided to return to Puerto Rico. Martinez-Carcano thought that with his high-level security clearance, his education, and his savings, he would easily find a job or start a business. In spite of his skills, he could not find work in Puerto Rico. Eventually, an acquaintance asked him to deliver a package. He was subsequently arrested with four ounces of cocaine. Fleeing the conviction, he returned to the Bronx as a fugitive and worked off the books in a Bronx bar. During a police raid at the bar, Martinez-Carcano was arrested again for possession of cocaine. At his trial, Martinez-Carcano stated that some of the patrons at bar were involved in narcotics distribution. He argued that he had been holding misplaced cocaine, hoping for a tip, when the bar was raided. He pled guilty and was given a three-year term at the MCC for both the Bronx and the Puerto Rican cases.67

  Martinez-Carcano made good use of his time at the MCC. He
gained the trust and respect of social workers, prison guards, and prisoners by teaching English to Spanish speakers, creating a law library, chartering buses for families of inmates, and getting book donations from local publishers.68 Because of his trustee status, he was allowed to visit many of the MCC’s different areas. One day, he was asked to deliver a card to Yolanda Sarmiento shortly after her arrival.69

  As they became friends over the next few months, she told him that she had been beaten, tortured, and raped for eight days while awaiting her secret extradition from Argentina. She also told him that the U.S. government would not stop punishing her for helping her husband escape. In his later testimony, Martinez-Carcano reported that she cried for her murdered son and that she was afraid for her life. Not knowing that she was lying about her son’s murder, Martinez-Carcano felt sympathy for the grieving mother, just as DEA agent Levine had. She also told him that she had over $300,000 (2012: $1.22 million) in banks in New York City.70 After months of her pleading for his assistance, he told her that he could not help her escape but he might know some people who could. In her testimony, Sarmiento argued that Martinez-Carcano approached her and said: “I was talking to one of the officers and he told me that for $50,000 he will take you out of prison.”71 She contacted her attorney, who contacted the DEA and the district attorney’s office.

  Regardless of who approached whom, Martinez-Carcano contacted two corrections officers he knew who needed money: George Philip and Yasin Wahib. The latter took the leadership role in the planned breakout; he and his wife were to receive $15,000 (2012: $61,000), while Philip would receive $8,000 (2012: $32,500). Martinez-Carcano’s wife received a “finder’s fee” of $1,000 (2012: $4,050). Sarmiento had asked other inmates to help, even Armando Cardona, who had been convicted of first-degree murder. He turned her down. She told all who asked that her brother would help with the payment and assist with the escape. What Martinez-Carcano did not realize was that Sarmiento had been working as a government informant for months, even prior to his arrest.72 In her defense, Sarmiento argued that Martinez-Carcano approached her after he delivered a message to her from Roberto Rivera, who was at the MCC and who used to buy heroin from her in 1969 and 1970.73

  Simply by delivering the Rivera letter, Martinez-Carcano became involved with three of the most prominent drug traffickers in the hemisphere, who made up what became known as the Latin American Triangle: Sarmiento, Dominique Orsini, and Chiappe.74 In fact, the message he delivered to Sarmiento from Rivera was written on the back of Gino Gallina’s business card, the attorney for Orsini and Chiappe. Gallina would later represent Martinez-Carcano (who translated for Gallina while he worked with Orsini and Chiappe). Like Chiappe, Orsini was part of the Corsican mafia, and he, too, was extradited to the United States following an arrest in Senegal while on a layover from Buenos Aires to Nice, France.75

  Sarmiento’s testimony against Martinez-Carcano offers insight into her criminal record. Beginning in the early 1960s, she traveled back and forth from Argentina to the United States, using false passports and names. She had been arrested in the United States for an array of charges, from shoplifting to possession of dangerous drugs and weapons.76 In 1976, she was charged with trafficking over nine hundred of pounds of heroin into the United Sates.77

  When Philip, Wahib, and Zulma Amy, Martinez-Carcano’s wife, met Sarmiento’s brother, Ricardo Lopez, and Rafael Rodriguez at a Ramada Inn in Manhattan on September 21, 1976, they had no idea that the latter pair were NYPD undercover detectives. They hatched a plan to smuggle Sarmiento from the prison disguised as a bilingual teacher. Wahib had created a false identification card at the MCC, and he showed it to the two undercover agents. The escape occurred on October 4, 1976. Sarmiento testified that she went to the medical unit, where Martinez-Carcano had hidden the fake ID card, a wig, and clothing in the bathroom. She changed, put on the wig, and walked out of the MCC. A car was waiting for her. Once she got in, they drove about a block until they were surrounded by police.

  Martinez-Carcano had fewer than three months to serve when the escape occurred. Once Sarmiento was apprehended after her escape, the NYPD arrested Wahib, Philip, and their accomplices, including Martinez-Carcano. Philip and Wahib received two-year prison sentences, fines of two thousand dollars, and three years’ probation. Sarmiento’s cooperation ensured relative leniency. She entered a plea of conspiracy to import narcotics, and she received a five-year sentence. She was also indicted for income tax evasion.78 Prior to pleading guilty, she faced a maximum of eighty years on four indictments. Representing Martinez-Carcano, Gino Gallina asserted that Sarmiento had made a deal for her testimony. In Gallina’s cross-examination, she claimed that she had assisted the government because she wanted to straighten out her life, although her actions continued to provide evidence to the contrary.

  Sarmiento was directly associated with violence in both the United States and Argentina. She attempted to escape from prison and turned against a confidant in prison to obtain greater leniency on her other charges. As a nexus between European, South American, and New York–based organized smuggling rings, she traveled extensively to move heroin. She had ties to the Corsican mafia: her secret “extradition” and incarceration with Chiappe, Orsini, and Russo alludes to her ties to their organization. They may have been her suppliers. Like Lola la Chata and la Nacha, she acted as an innovator in smuggling, using the opportunities that emerged with the expanding South American wine industry. She also maintained a legitimate and successful business front—her hat business—that possibly served to launder money and provide a site for meetings, processing, and packing.

  THE MEDELLÍN COWGIRL: GRISELDA BLANCO

  The career of Yolanda Sarmiento overlapped with that of the infamous cocaine trafficker Griselda Blanco. Both were indicted at approximately the same time and both supplied the New York City drug market. Blanco, an innovator in cocaine trafficking, captured the attention of narcotics agents in the early 1970s and then led them on a chase for over a decade. Perhaps she consciously took advantage of the greater policing of heroin, which allowed cocaine to reemerge. In 1974, Dr. Peter Bourne wrote: “Cocaine . . . is probably the most benign of illicit drugs currently in widespread use. At least as strong a case could be made for legalizing it as for legalizing marijuana. Short acting—about 15 minutes—not physically addicting, and acutely pleasurable, cocaine has found increasing favor at all socio-economic levels in the last year.”79 Bourne’s analysis of cocaine continues to be debated, because the presumption that cocaine was harmless only fueled its use.80 With the growth of cocaine use in the 1970s and 1980s, Americans’ appetite for it triggered a new drug war.

  For women like Blanco, the fact that cocaine was highly pleasurable and illegal ensured an accumulation of capital. Similar to Sarmiento, Blanco created alliances with wealthy and highly connected men, and she relied on violence. Sarmiento had used violence to defend her lover and ensure their escape from custody and prison. Broadening such tactics, Blanco employed violence as an offensive tool against male competitors and men who were employed by her. Her use of violence served to display her power and to strike fear in her competitors. Her ruthlessness contributed to a growing transnational “gangsta” popular-culture hagiography that continues to surround her and the men connected to her even after her murder by a motorcycle assassin (sicario) on September 3, 2012, in Medellín. The documentary evidence detailing Blanco and her New York years exhibits a complex and sophisticated organization in which many women played active roles in all areas of the drug trade. Blanco was a boss, but she employed other women who worked as mules, couriers, and distributors.81 Significantly, women in Blanco’s organization testified against her during her 1985 trial, and one woman within her organization was a star witness.

  Twenty-seven years before her murder, DEA agent Bob Palombo arrested a Venezuelan housewife for conspiring to distribute large amounts of cocaine and marijuana in the United States. Arrested on Sunday morning, February 15, 1985, while in bed rea
ding the Bible, Blanco identified herself as Lucrecia Adarmez. She had used a Venezuelan identity off and on for close to twenty years.82 Since the formation of the DEA, Palombo had been involved in tracking the cocaine flows from Colombia to New York, and in the early 1970s he was able to arrest some Colombians involved in this trafficking. He and his DEA colleagues eventually uncovered a sophisticated organization that far exceeded their initial encounters with male drug mules smuggling cocaine in their shoes or baggage.83 Palombo’s search for Blanco and the DEA’s investigation to unravel her organization are recounted in Richard Smitten’s 1990 The Godmother.84

  Sixteen years later, Blanco surfaced in popular culture with the October 27, 2006, release of Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman’s sensational film documentary, Cocaine Cowboys. Corben, who directed the film, retells the cocaine wars of South Florida in the late 1970s and early 1980s, depicting the rise and fall of key Colombian smugglers and their American compadres who together flooded the United States with cocaine. It juxtaposes interviews with U.S.-based traffickers Jon Roberts, a distributor, Mickey Munday, a pilot, and Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, one of Blanco’s lieutenants, with those of Miami-Dade police officers such as Al Singleton and DEA agent Palombo, many of whom Smitten had earlier interviewed. The protagonists relive the days when cocaine transformed Miami from a mid-size southern city with Latin flair into one of the economic engines of Florida and much of Latin America. The film release of Cocaine Cowboys came two years after Blanco was released from jail and deported to Colombia.85 In his review of the film in Entertainment Weekly, critic Owen Gleiberman described Blanco as “a homicidal Colombian ‘Godmother’ who, no lie, makes Tony Montana (Al Pacino’s Scarface) look like Mother Teresa.”86