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How the alliance between the "cocaine king" and the former Gestapo chief created the world's first narco-state

2026-09-15 23:09:28Histori SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
How the alliance between the "cocaine king" and the former Gestapo
Roberto Suarez

A new investigation sheds light on the unusual alliance between Roberto Suárez, known as the "cocaine king", and Klaus Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, linking this relationship to the creation of what historians call the world's first modern narco-state.

The Bolivian city of Cochabamba became one of the centers of the cocaine industry in the 1980s.

Even the film "Scarface" captured this reality through the character Alejandro Sosa, a Bolivian drug trafficker who is believed to have been inspired by Roberto Suárez.

By the time the film was released, Bolivia had become one of the main suppliers of cocaine to the American market.

In the book "Narco and the Nazi", journalists Christian Bergmann and David López, using declassified CIA and Mossad documents and testimonies from nearly 100 people, reconstruct the links between Suárez and Barbie.

According to them, the former Nazi officer not only protected the trafficker, but also accompanied him and helped him build a system where drug trafficking intertwined with state structures.

Barbie had been one of the most brutal figures of the Nazi regime. In 1942 he was appointed head of the Gestapo in Lyon and is linked to torture, murder and deportations.

One of his most famous crimes was the deportation of 44 Jewish children and seven teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After World War II, he escaped to South America and settled in Bolivia, where he eventually became a colonel in the Bolivian army.

The alliance with Suárez took shape in 1979, during a dinner with army officers. According to the authors, Barbie asked the "cocaine king" for $5 million to finance the coup that would bring General Luis García Meza to power in 1980.

The reward for Suárez was the support and protection of military structures, while Barbie also provided a paramilitary group made up of foreign far-right extremists.

Cocaine trafficking extended throughout García Meza's dictatorship, into the military and the political apparatus. According to a US intelligence document, in 1980 the cocaine trade in Bolivia had exceeded 1.5 billion dollars.

Coca leaf production increased from just over 17 thousand tons in 1979 to over 141 thousand tons in 1985.

Suárez, who came from the world of livestock and trade, brought to drug trafficking the same business logic that he had used in cattle exports.

He organized large-scale supply and changed the way the Bolivian market functioned. Through him, according to the authors, local producers gained more control and prices rose.

This brought him even closer to Pablo Escobar. The leader of the Medellín cartel found in Suárez a disciplined and reliable partner, capable of guaranteeing a stable supply of cocaine paste.

How the alliance between the "cocaine king" and the former Gestapo
Klaus Barbie

While Suárez organized the business, Barbie provided connections, protection, and access to military structures. Here lies the main thesis of the book. It was no longer simply about drug traffickers bribing officials, but about a system where state structures themselves were used to protect and expand the drug economy.

For López, this was the origin of the modern narco-state. The story raises another question, still without a definitive answer: what did the United States know about this system and how far did it tolerate or complicit?

Suárez's family alleges that he had ties to Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. The authors do not say they have evidence of American complicity in the Bolivian trafficking, but consider it possible that Bolivia served as a kind of "dress rehearsal" for mechanisms that would later appear in other scandals.


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