How Caribbean ports, banana plantations, wealthy trafficking families and established trade routes helped transform Colombian marijuana into a major export business before the cocaine cartel era.
The Trade Started Earlier Than the Boom
Colombia's marijuana export history did not begin with the famous Bonanza Marimbera of the 1970s.
A confidential 1952 report already described Santa Marta as a point of departure for cannabis shipments traveling to Florida aboard banana vessels.
In 1957, Colombian sailors were reportedly carrying marijuana to New Orleans.
These accounts show that cannabis was moving through maritime routes before the Caribbean marijuana boom reached its peak.
Marijuana Was Already a National Business
By 1960, Colombian authorities were telling Interpol that marijuana trafficking had become widespread.
A 1961 report identified cannabis cultivation across several departments, including Valle del Cauca, Caldas, Antioquia, Huila, Magdalena, Cauca, Tolima and Cundinamarca.
The distribution suggests that cannabis cultivation and trading networks were already active across the country.
The later export boom did not emerge from an empty landscape.
It developed out of an existing domestic market and earlier trafficking routes.
1972: The Money Becomes Visible
By 1972, the transformation was becoming impossible to ignore.
Newspaper coverage described men from Colombia's Caribbean coast displaying fortunes they openly attributed to marijuana.
The industry was no longer defined only by small cultivation operations or occasional shipments.
Marijuana had become a capital-intensive export business, capable of generating substantial wealth for people who controlled purchasing and transportation.
That change helped establish what became known as the Bonanza Marimbera.
The Families Financing the Trade
Some of the early trafficking operations in Magdalena were connected to families with substantial financial resources.
One of the most prominent was the Dávila Armenta family, including Raúl, Eduardo Enrique and Pedro, alongside Raúl Dávila Jimeno.
These individuals were associated with the financial side of marijuana trafficking.
Purchasing entire loads and renting boats required capital far beyond what many agricultural workers could access.
The business depended not only on growers, but also on people with the money and connections to move large quantities of product.
The Geography Behind the Bonanza
Northern Colombia offered a combination of cultivation areas, transportation corridors and maritime access.
The routes connected Sierra Nevada, Santa Marta, Zona Bananera, Ciénaga, Barranquilla, Riohacha and Valledupar.
The mountains provided cultivation terrain.
Coastal cities offered access to ports and ships.
Wetlands, plantations and narrow highways shaped how products moved between the interior and the Caribbean.
Geography became one of the most important assets in the emerging trafficking economy.
How Banana Infrastructure Helped Marijuana Move
The region's banana industry had already established much of the infrastructure required for international agricultural exports.
Railways, roads, storage facilities, docks and shipping routines connected inland production with coastal markets.
Marijuana traffickers later exploited parts of that same landscape.
What had been developed to transport legitimate agricultural products could also support the movement of illegal cannabis.
The transition did not require creating an entirely new transportation system.
It involved using existing routes for another commodity.
Santa Marta and the Marimba Belt
Santa Marta occupied a central position within a wider Caribbean marijuana network.
Nearby Ciénaga offered wetlands and causeways that could provide concealment while also creating transportation bottlenecks.
Regional oral histories describe improvised airstrips and rapid exchanges of cannabis shipments.
Those accounts are important to the cultural memory of the Bonanza Marimbera, although specific incidents require additional documentation before they can be treated as established facts.
Together, the accounts show how local geography and transportation knowledge shaped the trade.
Legacy
The Bonanza Marimbera helped establish Colombia's first major modern drug-export economy before the better-known cocaine cartel era.
It connected growers, financiers, brokers, transporters and maritime exporters through existing agricultural infrastructure.
The earliest networks were strongly associated with family capital and regional trading relationships rather than the later organizational structures of the major cartels.
By the 1970s, marijuana had helped establish routes, business practices and smuggling connections that later drug economies could exploit.
Before Colombia became internationally associated with cocaine cartels, cannabis had already helped build a powerful export economy along its Caribbean coast.
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Sources:
Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo. "La 'prehistoria' de la marihuana en Colombia: consumo y cultivos entre los años 30 y 60." Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 26, no. 47, 2007, pp. 205–222. Documents the 1952 Santa Marta-to-Florida banana shipments, 1957 New Orleans route, 1960 Interpol statements and 1961 nationwide cultivation reports.
Britto, Lina. Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise. University of California Press, 2020. Major historical investigation covering the Bonanza Marimbera, Sierra Nevada cultivation, banana infrastructure, Caribbean shipping networks, American buyers and the emergence of Colombia's first major drug-export economy.
Castillo, Fabio. Los jinetes de la cocaína. Editorial Documentos Periodísticos, 1987. Original investigative reporting documenting the 1972 emergence of conspicuous marijuana wealth, the Dávila Armenta and Dávila Jimeno families, trafficking capital, rented vessels and early smuggling organizations.
Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo. "Entre Carlos Lehder y los vaqueros de la cocaína: la consolidación de las redes de narcotraficantes colombianos en Miami en los años 70." Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 30, no. 54, 2011, pp. 105–126. Documents 1970s maritime marijuana smuggling, the Magdalena-Guajira export corridor, Dávila family involvement and connections with American and Cuban trafficking networks.
Ardila Beltrán, Esperanza, et al. Memorias de violencia: Bonanza marimbera en Santa Marta entre las décadas del setenta y el ochenta. Editorial Unimagdalena, 2024. Combines historical research and oral histories covering Santa Marta, Ciénaga, regional trafficking families, local wealth, social changes and memories of the marijuana boom.
Castillo Rojas, Luis David, and Benjamin Lévy. "Landowners Meet Drug Traffickers: Coercive Networks and Violence in Rural Colombia." Antipode, vol. 57, no. 4, 2025, pp. 1402–1425. doi:10.1111/anti.70018. Examines the Dávila Armenta family, agricultural elites, banana plantations, political influence and the overlap between legitimate businesses and marijuana trafficking in Magdalena.
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