Over the past 10 years, Central America has become a major transshipment corridor for cocaine smuggled out of Colombia and into the United States. An estimated 80 percent of the illegal cargo is transported by drug conveyances to Mexico; U.S. officials estimate that up to three-quarters of all cocaine entering through America’s southern border passes through Central America. The corridor has become a smuggler’s paradise because of the under-funded and chronically corrupt local security forces already bedeviled by limited U.S. counter-drug assets and operations, vast stretches of lawless jungle and shoreline, and a compliant population.