Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It by Magnus Linton, John Eason

metre of it separates him from the fish. He fumbles for the paddle.
    The long sword has lost all its firmness and droops to the left, like a large machete bouncing in and out of the water, while the marlin’s mouth hangs open dejectedly. The fish is half the length of the canoe.
    One of the other men pulls up. ‘ Mátalo ,’ he yells. ‘Kill it!’
    Leo lifts up the paddle and stops for a moment like a matador just about to drive his sword through the head of an exhausted bull. He concentrates on getting his aim just right, and then strikes with full force, banging the skull right between the eyes. The fish gives a final jolt and lies there, like a log floating in the water. Leo kneels, shoving his entire arm down the throat and ripping out the heart. He throws the red lump at his friend as a joke. ‘ Listo . Done,’ he says.
    The canoe is floating in a pool of blood, but the fish still is not onboard. It starts to thunder. Nearby, all around the circle of canoes, other fish are being hauled in. The water turns red.
    Leo pulls his ‘dog’ up into the canoe little by little. First he pulls the sword over the edge, and along with it a third of the fish’s body, and balances it on the rim before moving back a few metres in the canoe. He grabs hold of the fin with both arms and then rolls the whole fish onboard.
    There are no sharp parts on the fish. The skin is smooth, and the sail-like fin is large and black but soft, like the bellows of an accordion. The body, although lifeless, is still warm. It takes up the entire floor of the canoe, but before Leo can even get it properly situated, another of his buoys starts to spin. Some water squirts up, a new missile is launched from the bottom, and the whole procedure is repeated.
    Half an hour later, it is 9.00 p.m. The sky is dark. It is going to rain again. By now the canoe is so heavy and low in the water that only a mere decimetre keeps it from filling up and sinking. Leo says that he has to hurry, as there is a place in the village where people will buy the catch, but the later he gets there, the less he will be offered. ‘ Vamos .’
    He paddles away from his friends, but halfway back to shore a cargo ship full of felled rainforest crosses his path. No other boats are in sight. The high-grade timber is being dragged behind the boat like a bundle of gold ingots, making a long, yellow trail of woodchips in the water. Leo signals to the captain to slow down. The boat is headed for Buenaventura, and if he can sell his fish directly to the crew he will get an even better price than if he is the first one back to the village. Plus he will not have to carry it.
    They agree to buy it. From the boat’s gunwale, a seaman lowers a large meat hook three metres down to Leo’s little dugout and picks up the marlin like they are a couple of slaughtered pigs. Once he has pulled them up, he lowers 40,000 pesos, 22 USD, in a plastic bag.
    The boat chugs along on its way. Leo drops a gob of spit into the water and points with his thumb towards the boat and the glimmering timber. ‘Illegal,’ he says. ‘Everything’s illegal around here.’
    In a way it sounds as though he’s trying to comfort himself for not having received his ‘miracle catch’ again today. It is as if he wants to say that at least his livelihood is honest, compared with all the other boats going up and down this coast. He goes on to tell other stories about cocaine and people in the village as if to prove that sudden wealth does not guarantee eternal happiness. Today Iván is a laughing-stock, Leopoldo is increasingly ostracised by people in town the more money he rakes in, and it is the same with the others. Except for Lucho. He is doing well.
    The canoe is still half full of bloody sludge, and Leo sits and starts bailing again. His grumbling comes across a bit like sour grapes, but there is a very serious background to everything he says: Chocó has changed completely. Many people would go so far as to say it