Cuba's role in the war on drugs

8 September 2012 Last updated at 02:41 ET By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Camaguey Province, Cuba

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Officers patrol Cuba's coastline to deter and detect smugglers

The golden beaches of Cayo Cruz lie at the end of a long path through a nature reserve. It is an idyllic stretch of Cuba's northern coast but this is key territory in the fight against international drug-trafficking.

Cuba sits right between the world's major narcotics producers in South America and the biggest market for those drugs, the United States.

The island has served as a bridge for traffickers in the past but in recent years it has been a barrier to the illegal trade.

"We used to see a lot of suspicious boats here," Ardoldo Cisneros Pena recalls of the 1990s. He is chief border guard in Cayo Cruz, where we were recently given rare access.

"There were almost daily drops into the sea," he says. Small planes would bombard Cuban waters with packets of drugs, for speedboats to whisk to the US.

Today, the scene is tranquil. A young border guard scans the horizon from a mint-green watchtower. A stone slab below reads "They shall not pass!" and "Viva Fidel!".

It was Fidel Castro, then president, who acknowledged a surge in the use of Cuban waters by drug-traffickers in 1999. There was a nascent narcotics market too, as smugglers' packages began washing up on the coast.

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Cuba's role in the war on drugs