Longform

Kilo: Cocaine Made Miami, Part 2

Last week, in Part One of "Kilo," we took readers on a journey through the cocaine world underlying all that Miami has become in the past 25 years: the thriving banks, the overblown real estate, the drug culture, and an international identity created by a television show. They all must...

By Rebecca Wakefield

October 13, 2005

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Last week, in Part One of "Kilo," we took readers on a journey through the cocaine world underlying all that Miami has become in the past 25 years: the thriving banks, the overblown real estate, the drug culture, and an international identity created by a television show. They all must pay homage to the coca leaf.

This week we offer more tales linking Miami's past to its future, from memories of former big-time drug trafficker Jon Roberts to a young contemporary dealer who moves more modest amounts of cocaine through local streets. Explore the topography of the Eighties with our handy map of notorious shootouts and drug-dealer homes. Follow the price of a kilo over the years as well as the evolution of coke fashion.

Also presented in these pages are some casualty reports: prominent locals busted for drugs, a 25-year body count, and Miami's rehab industry. Plus don't miss reflections by former law enforcers and that ever-popular Miami pastime: trying to nail Fidel Castro as a major smuggler.

Want to know what it was really like to live through the Eighties in Miami? Carlos Suarez De Jesus synthesizes it through a memoir of his stint as a houseman at the legendary Mutiny Hotel, his coke-fueled wedding, and not least, delivering cocaine all over town — in an ambulance.

Cocaine and Me: A Memoir

Portrait of a Dealer

Confessions of a Trafficker

Miami: See It Like a Drug Dealer

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