How half a ton of cocaine transformed the life of an island

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The High Life –

May 10, 2019 – He secured the contraband with fishing nets and chains, submerging it beneath the water with an anchor. As he set sail for the nearest harbor, , waves pounded the island’s rocky inlets and the netting holding the cocaine unraveled. Then the packages started to wash ashore. Now, two types of cocaine were circulating on São Miguel: one was the sort of fine white powder familiar from film and TV shows. The other was in yellowish crystals. “It was euphoria,” Costa said. “You were floating.” A product so valuable in the rest of the world was rendered almost worthless through abundance. “They had gold, but they didn’t know how to work with it,” Ruben Frias, the head of the local fishermen’s association in Rabo de Peixe, told me. There were rumours that housewives were frying mackerel in cocaine, thinking it was flour, and that old fishermen were pouring it into their coffees like sugar.