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We Must Didn 't Shoot Us Down

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Glad They Didn’t Shoot Us Down
The so-called War on Drugs prompted the drug cartels to disperse processing and distribution over extensive geographic areas. Some things never change, as fast as drug enforcement efforts close smuggling routes and modes of transport the traffickers come up with new paths and methods. In both Central and South America, vast forests in areas that are barely policed provide the perfect cover for processing facilities and small landing strips. General aviation is the mode of transportation that readily lends itself to efficiently transporting varying quantities of drugs. More than half of all drugs exported from Central and South America are transported in airplanes. The planes used range in size from small …show more content…

Nine countries in Central and South America have passed shoot down laws which authorize their respective air forces to shoot down suspicious aircraft which fail to respond to requests to land voluntarily. Two of them were on our route: Columbia and Peru. The others which have approved such legislation areBrazil, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Each country has its own procedural protocol and not all of the countries have put the law to use. Some, such as Paraguay, don’t have the resources to implement enforcement. A similar law was proposed in Argentina but was not enacted due to lack of support. One of the most highly publicized incidents occurred in 2001, a year after Miguel and I made our trip. A plane carrying four missionaries affiliated with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism was shot down by the Peruvian Air Force. Their aircraft was identified on radar as being suspicious, and they did not respond to requests to land voluntarily. A 35 year old woman from the United States and her infant daughter were among the occupants who died. After the incident, Peru rescinded its shoot down policy. However, in 2015, it was re-authorized with the provision there is reasonable suspicion the plane is carrying contraband. Without a doubt, drug trafficking is an enormous problem for Latin American countries and there

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