When the scandal broke out last year over Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s complicity with drug-running paramilitary death squads, I was surprised by the shock the story caused. I was in my parents’ native Colombia for the second time that year, and it dominated conversations. Uribe’s loyalties became more suspicious when, several weeks later, the drug lord Pablo Escobar’s former mistress, Virginia Vallejo, wrote in her book Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar about deep connections between her ex-lover and the president – allegations Uribe has forcefully denied.

Back home at The University of Texas, where I teach Latin American literature and civilization, some students asked my opinions on the matter. They had studied the varying details – throughout the region, throughout recorded history – of repeated connections between a people’s proximity to vast natural resources on one hand, and murder, war, massacres, and corruption on the other. After all, this is the Latin American story, in terms of economic and political history.

So, I felt compelled to write in a public forum – not about the scandal of Uribe’s paramilitary ties, which came as no surprise to me – but instead about why so many people were astonished by such dealings in the first place. For me the ties between drugs and power – regardless of nationality – have always been apparent. Whether in Colombia or the U.S., the drug trade and its vast profits are perceived by the majority to be relegated to the underworld.

This despite suggestions to the contrary, such as Uribe’s case or that of the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Grasso, who in 1999 flew to a remote jungle to meet with the commanders of FARC, Colombia’s most powerful guerilla group and one of the key controllers of the drug trade. His made-for-prime-time explanation: “I invite members of the FARC to visit the New York Stock Exchange so that they can get to know the market personally.” Today as yesterday, we close our eyes to obvious connections between national economies and drug profits and place such tiny frames around individual occurrences within the encompassing global industries of drugs and arms.

Then, yet again, the thinkable happened: a few strands of the wider web of narco-corruption appeared, glistening under the Mexican sun. On September 24, 2007, a Florida-based Gulfstream II jet (#N987SA) crashed in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Departing from Rio Negro, Colombia, the plane loaded with approximately four tons of cocaine was denied permission to land in Cancún, as those who were paid off to allow the landing had already left for the night. It then ran out of fuel and crashed in the village of Tixkokob, 11 miles from Mérida.

Just another coke run? It turns out the plane’s tail number identifies it as one of the CIA “Prison Planes” used to transport captives to the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. El Nuevo Herald (The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language daily) reported on November 29, 2007 that the aircraft was a well-known jet that has been used to extradite hundreds of narco-criminals from Colombia to the United States. In January of 2008, a journalist by the name of Bill Conroy who writes for the Narco News Bulletin reported that, according to DEA officers and a CIA asset by the name of Baruch Vega, the plane was part of an undercover government operation called the “Mayan Express,” led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – a law enforcement agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). However, information regarding the operation is scant. Bill Conroy writes in another article that “The bottom line, though, according to the DEA sources who leaked the information to Narco News, is that the real purpose of the Mayan Express operation remains unclear, as does the volume of drugs involved in the operation to date.”

The only printed news media to investigate the story thoroughly and continuously at the time was Mexico’s ¡Por Esto! The newspaper’s editor and publisher, Mario Menéndez Rodríguez, is among the few who dare deal with high-level corruption in Mexico, for which he has withstood grenades hurled into his offices, kidnapping and murder attempts. It failed to make a ripple in major U.S. dailies. There was no mention in The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. USA Today ran a pitiful story on September 27, 2007, entitled “Plane Crash in Mexico Involved Colombian Cocaine,” and laid the story to rest with a “confession” from one of the accused pilots, arrested over 24 hours later, who said he was tied to the Sinaloa, Mexico cartel.

As surprised as I was at the indignation over the Uribe scandal, I was more surprised that this seemingly major news event was getting negligible coverage. Why is the media comfortable reporting on a Latin American leader who may be tied to drugs and extortion, but it demurs when called on to investigate a suspicious crash which might point to the U.S. government’s participation in the drug trade? I can only come to this conclusion: that a Latin American leader would be involved in the drug trade fits into a narrative that has become almost expected and safe to report on. However, that our own U.S. government would be playing a key role in the drug trade remains confined to fringe publications marketed to the far left or far right. Even investigating such claims would, apparently, be a systemic indictment the mainstream media is not prepared to venture.

That would be fine if no past evidence existed to merit further investigation. But, in fact, from the Corsican-Marseillaise connection in France from 1947-1951, Air America and the Nationalist Chinese Army in the early 1950’s, Air America and heroin laboratories in Laos from the 1950’s to the 1970’s, Noriega in Panama from the 1970’s to the 1980’s, Contra support in Central America in the 1980’s, cooperation with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, and with the Haitian Service d’Intelligence National in the 1980’s to 1990’s, the media eventually revealed collusion between the CIA, defense contractors, or the U.S. military in heroin and cocaine production and distribution in these regions. However, as with the investigation of this plane crash now, in each case information regarding this business was absent, marginal, or tardy when the events occurred. Instead of spot news, the truth came to light in the form of reporting on years-too-late congressional hearings and from journalists or scholars looking for historical perspective. The great problem, of course, with the media reporting on events only in the past tense is we lose the opportunity to effect change in the present.

The history listed above is merely a continuation of the fact that fortune-making commodities, reputable or not – slaves, spices or precious gems yesterday, or oil and drugs today – have defined economic history around the globe. Given this, it is high time to no longer be shocked at the possibility that the leader of Colombia, which sustains itself with a narco-economy, is complicit in the drug trade. And by that same token, it would be shortsighted and self-righteous for Americans to categorically rule out that our own government is above dealing in such a lucrative trade when expedient.

So, what does all of this matter? “We have terrorism to deal with!” someone may say. At the heart of this question is the value of news for understanding the systems of which we are a part, and the value this understanding has for the population’s social, psychological, and economic well-being. By cherry-picking which news is reported (i.e., person(s) X benefiting from the drug trade and not a crashed jet with four tons of cocaine that could be linked to the U.S. government), the media are failing twice: both by not reporting the important events of the world and by precluding citizens from connecting the dots.

The epistemology of news is such that “news” happens outside of the subject’s immediate frame of reference. It is a form of knowledge apprehended not through direct experience. If I am injured in an earthquake, neither my injury nor the earthquake is news to me. However, not all phenomena produce such immediate cause and effect relations. If the injury is systemic – violent crime, corruption, and the disappearance of the middle class – then the causes may seem unknowable to the majority. For such injuries with obscure causes, the media – who are given special legal privileges and abilities in order to avert the abuse of power – must dig extra deep. That may well start with looking into the crash of jet #N987SA. Otherwise, if we were to drop the pretense of living in a democracy (which systemically, logically, requires an informed citizenry), what would be left for us to export?