Pure Narco. Jesse Fink and Luis Navia. 2020.

For twenty-five years Cuban-American Luis Antonio Navia smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.

What made him good at his job was amassing trusted contacts, losing very few shipments of coke, and maintaining a low profile. He refused to carry a weapon. He also maintained a normal family life with a Columbian wife and two young children.

But he was never far removed from the most brutal violence. One friend got his head cut off. Another was hit over the head, stuffed in a 200-litre drum full of cement and dumped in a canal. Navia himself was kidnapped three times and went close to being fed alive to crocodiles.

Somehow through it all he managed to survive and spent two decades fooling law-enforcement agencies until he came under the radar of the 12-nation Operation Journey, one of the biggest antinarcotics takedowns of all time.