Temptation Colombia

By Angus Scott

True story of an American familys odyssey to Colombia, South America. Their intentions were to relocate their Mom and Pop commercial fishing business. Inadvertently they became involved with Colombias corrupt world of drug smuggling, manipulation and strong-arm tactics. Finally, after the secret escape back to the safety of the USA they sought revenge to recuperate the money that was stolen from them by the dangerous Colombian drug cartel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 7, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467085939

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© 2006 August Scott. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/1/2006

ISBN: 1-4259-5141-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-8593-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, IndianaDedication

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Glossary of Terms

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my Father who was also my very best friend and mentor during my life. You wanted this story told to the world. It is my pleasure to do it for you. May you rest in peace Dad.Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank D.D. for his help with statistical information concerning the commercial fishing industry during the mid 1980’s.

I would also like to thank Mae West for helping and encouraging me during the editing process.Introduction

Introduction

Few Americans would voluntarily relocate to a third-world country for any amount of money. Of those who would, few would choose Colombia, a third-world country known for drug-trafficking and ingenious ways to die a painful death before you turn thirty.

Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. According to US State Department statistics, Colombia had a per capita murder rate of 77.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, which is nearly thirteen times higher than that of the United States. Murders in Colombia increased from 24,358 in 1999 to 26,250 in 2000.

Insurgent groups have routinely conducted bombings in and around major Colombian cities for decades. Terrorism is the norm in Colombia, and people have become disturbingly accustomed to it. Such things are so commonplace they almost never make the world news.

Although drug-and-insurgent related violence accounts for a significant portion of the reported murders in Colombia, common street criminals are responsible for an estimated seventy-five percent of them. In addition, Colombia is the kidnapping capital of the world, with an estimated two to three thousand people kidnapped each year. The US State Department claims that from 1980 to 2000, nearly 120 US citizens were kidnapped, primarily by leftist insurgent groups and held for ransom.

These same insurgent groups frequently establish roadblocks at any given roadway in order to rob and kidnap travelers. There have been numerous instances in Colombia of criminals drugging and robbing individuals. Another amazing statistic from the State Department warns that some criminals in Colombia use various knock-out drugs to incapacitate tourists, who are then beaten and robbed. The drug is administered by various methods, including drinks, cigarettes and gum. Some of the different drugs used would disorient the victims, and cause prolonged unconsciousness and sometimes serious medical problems.

Colombia law mandates that individuals must coordinate their efforts to resolve kidnapping cases with the Ministry of Defense (Office of the Anti-Kidnapping Director). Yet, in spite of facts and statistics like these, there are a few people who voluntarily relocate to this country each year. Some are snowbirds, spending part or most of the year in Colombia and returning to their homes in America for the remainder.

In the early 1980s, more than a few people from the Pacific Northwest moved their entire lives, including their families to Colombia. The following account tells of one such family; why they went and how they came back with not only their lives, but their livelihood intact.

Prologue

Prologue

This is a true story. Though most of the names have been changed to protect those involved, the places and events have in no way been embellished or altered.

In order to bring clearer perspective to the circumstances chronicled in the following pages, it is important to illustrate the social, economic and political aspects of both Colombia and the United States at the time these events transpired.

In the US, the 1980s were a time of severe economic hardship for many people. Most industries suffered, but the Pacific Northwest commercial fishing industry was one of the hardest hit. By mid-summer of 1984, the economy had taken a serious downturn, with interest rates nearing twenty percent for the average fisherman’s ship mortgage. Diesel prices had steadily increased over a period of five years from $0.50 per gallon to $1.12, which forced the fishermen to stay out longer and sell at lower prices in order to make enough to pay for the fuel for the next trip out.

With overhead costs on the rise, many fishermen cut down to a minimum skeleton crew, or simply defaulted on their loans and filed for bankruptcy. Many had their entire lives tied into their boats, and they did everything in their power to stay solvent. Most mortgaged their homes two and three times in order to meet the average boat payment of $10,000 a month. Others sold everything they could and lived on their boats year round; a difficult thing to do in the wintertime.

To further complicate matters, foreign fishermen were taking tremendous advantage of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Passed in 1976, the Magnuson Act created an economic buffer zone of a mere 200 miles off the coast of the US which Americans were given first rights to fish. However, if American fishermen were unable to fish them for any reason, foreign fishermen could fish in the buffer zone. Often foreign fisherman would be fishing within three miles of the US coastline.

Financial lenders took advantage of the commercial fishermen’s plight by offering high-limit loans at higher interest rates, but soon found themselves in the same situation as their borrowers. One lender that served many Pacific Northwest fishermen was called Production Credit Association, or PCA. Though traditionally serving farmers, it was determined that fisherman qualified as farmers under their lending terms. When the economy turned for the worse, PCA called in their many loans in order to stave off their own impending bankruptcy. Unable to pay, many fishermen had their boats repossessed, along with their homes and other items of value. Many lost everything. One friend lost his father to a heart attack brought on by the stress of the desperate times. There were many who took their own lives, as they felt they had nothing to live for. Still others had to file bankruptcy and start life over again.

Though many lost everything, there were a few families that managed to keep themselves solvent through various means. Corrupt Colombian exporters saw the poor US economy as an opportunity to lure desperate American fishermen to their countries to fish their waters, offering large sums of money in addition to taking care of travel and living expenses. A few took advantage of these offers, and lost more than just their boats.

This story is about one family who fought back.

My family.

Chapter 1

The Desperate Decision

Why don’t you guys come to Colombia with us? You’ll love it there, I promise! It’s a jungle paradise where the shrimp are plentiful, just waiting to be caught by those with the right equipment and know-how, Don encouraged.

Don Fiser was a good friend. More than that, Don was a fellow fisherman, and knew first-hand just how hard the June 1984 fishing season was on my family and me. We had sold him one of our boats in prior years. A seventy-three-foot fishing vessel, which he had taken to Costa Rica. It accidentally caught fire and burnt to the waterline. It’s a really relaxed atmosphere down there, Don continued. The people are laid back, the women are gorgeous, the food is great. And the exporter you’d be working for is legitimate; a very reputable company that pays top dollar! The exporter will handle all the paperwork on their end. All you have to do is sail on down!

We’ll give it some serious thought, I replied. Anything would beat this crappy, boring season. We need to make some serious money soon, or we’re going to lose it all.

It was the truth. With the price of diesel on the rise yet again, and the interest on my boat mortgage at nineteen percent, it was all my family and I could do to hold it together month to month. We were earning better than most; about seventy percent of the large fishing vessel fleet was looking at either bankruptcy or selling out with no profit at all. There were some, like my family, that were sticking it out with the eventual possibility of bankruptcy. But they were few and far between.

The economy was bad enough, but the fishing was worse. El Niño, the warm water current that raises the temperature of the Pacific Ocean well above normal during certain years and conditions, forced numerous species of fish out of their customary waters. The whole eastern Pacific Ocean was so mixed up that the biomass of sea creatures didn’t know up from down.

Groundfish and pink shrimp were the primary species we fished for, and finding them was more than difficult; it was next to impossible. Foreign fishermen, heedless of the economic buffer zone granted to Pacific Northwest fishermen through international fishing agreements, were fishing our waters as fast and as close to the coastline as they could legally get away with, leaving us the remnants of already small schools of fish.

The main body of shrimp was usually found at Camp Blanco, off the Southwestern Oregon coast. I was shrimping near the Canadian border for almost six months that season, two-hundred-and-fifty to three hundred miles north of the normal shrimp waters due to El Niño.

During that season, I was nearly thirty years old, and in my prime in terms of vitality and enthusiasm. I was a frisky, ambitious go-getter, so the additional effort of fishing unorthodox waters in an effort to stay solvent wasn’t as hard on me and my family as it was on a lot of people.

My father started the family business in 1960, building it from nothing into a small fleet of four boats by 1984. The boats ranged from sixty to ninety feet, and we participated in virtually all the different types of fisheries in the Pacific Northwest; crab, shrimp, salmon…you name it, we had a hand in it. Occasionally we made trips up to Alaska, where the big bucks were made with bigger hauls of fish and better prices for them.

The sale of two of our boats had been necessary to keep us on the water that season. Until the 1980’s started chiseling away at what we had worked so hard to accumulate, we’d always been able to stay afloat while making a half-assed decent living. We, along with other commercial fisherman, were getting desperate, and were starting to take some desperate measures.

All through the winter following that rough season, Don Fiser continued to encourage my parents and me to join him in his move to Colombia.

I swear you guys, he said over and over, It’s the solution to all our financial problems!

It was risky, financially and otherwise. However, Dad, Mom and I discussed it at length several times over the following lean winter months, weighing our options, listing the pros and cons, trying to determine if there was any other option open to us. Toward Christmas, we had come to the conclusion that it was worth the risk. Desperate times, desperate measures. We had to do something, and no other opportunities were presenting themselves.

We weren’t alone in deciding that moving our business to Colombia was worth the risk. About twenty other boat owners were seriously considering it as well. They had heard that a group of entrepreneurs from South America were actively seeking American shrimpers to issue fishing permits to, in an effort to modernize their ancient methods of catching and processing shrimp. A few American businesspeople who would be importing the shrimp to the United States were handling all the details. They would streamline the necessary paperwork, and the issuance of the permits. All we had to do was sit back, relax, and let them handle it for us.

Once the decision was made, I was eager to get on with the move. I was freshly divorced and footloose, ready for my next adventure. Little did I know that my