Cocaine Cowboys

The real story behind all those drug dealer Hollywood gangster flicks, the cocaine trade of the 70s and 80s had a brutal impact on the city of Miami. The drug traffic forever changed a once sleepy retirement community into one of the world’s most glamorous hot spots, the epicenter of a $20 billion annual business fed by Colombia’s Medellin cartel. In one decade, Miami’s tripled homicide rate had made it the murder capital of the country, for which a Time cover story dubbed the city “Paradise Lost.”