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'I was a drug trafficker in the true sense of the word: a pure narco.'
Careers in the cocaine-trafficking business are usually short. It's not only a dangerous profession, fraught with the possibility of capture and long jail sentences, but it can be deadly if the cartels get to you first.
Not for Luis Antonio Navia.
For 25 years the Cuban-American smuggled hundreds of tons of white powder for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel. In a profession populated by thugs, Navia's dress sense and good manners earned him the nickname 'El Senador' (The Senator). But he was never far removed from the most brutal violence imaginable. One friend got his head cut off. Another was hit over the head, put in a 55-gallon drum full of cement and dumped in a canal. Navia himself was kidnapped three times and went close to being fed alive to crocodiles. Somehow through it all he managed to survive and spent two decades fooling the DEA and other law-enforcement agencies.
That was until he came under the radar of Robert Harley, a tenacious US Customs special agent in Key West, Florida, who was determined to bring him to justice. What followed was an international game of cat-and-mouse that culminated in Navia's 2000 arrest in Venezuela in one of the biggest antinarcotics takedowns of all time, the 12-nation Operation Journey.
Spanning decades, continents and featuring a who's who of the drug trade, Pure Narco is a fast-paced adventure ride into the dark underworld of cocaine trafficking, written with the cooperation of a dozen law-enforcement agents from the world's top antinarcotics forces in the United States and Great Britain.
This book is a redemption story. Luis Navia, the pure narco, has gone full circle.
About the author
Jesse Fink
Jesse Fink was born in London in 1973. He is the author of five books, including the international bestsellers Bon: The Last Highway and The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC. His new book is Pure Narco, the life story of former cocaine trafficker Luis Navia.
Luis Navia
Luis Navia, born in Havana in 1955, worked for nearly 25 years as a cocaine trafficker for the deadliest Colombian and Mexican cartels until he was arrested in the multinational sting Operation Journey in 2000. He was released in 2005 and today runs his own consulting business for private clients and liaises with the US Government in matters related to antinarcotics law enforcement.
