Traffic increases on 'Cocaine Coast'

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2009 | by Chris Hawley

SALINA CRUZ, Mexico -- If you know what's good for you, fisherman Teodoro Contreras says, stay away from certain places after sunset on the beaches of Mexico's southern coast.

From the resort city of Acapulco to the Guatemala border, this region has become Mexico's "Cocaine Coast," the main destination for drug-carrying speedboats, planes and even submarines that are switching to the Pacific Ocean to avoid increasing patrols in the Caribbean Sea.

"There are boats out there, trucks, people doing things they shouldn't be doing," Contreras says, waving at the curving shoreline. "People coming right up on the beach and catching rides to who knows where. You mind your own business at night."

The rise of this Pacific route shows how smugglers continue to evade...