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Tech

This Guy Bootstrapped an Insane Doc on Cartel Panga Boats

What'd you ever do?
Photo: Derren Ohanian.

A few years back, Motherboard went inside Colombia's coke-smuggling submarines to try and wrap our heads around the cutting-edge of drug running. In the unending quest for money and power, these surprisingly high-tech vessels, pieced together under thick jungle canopies and sometimes running $1 million a pop, are kitted out with all sorts of failsafes and above-rudimentary navigation and communication technologies.

That sort of approach stands in stark contrast to the decidedly low-tech, whatever-it-takes design of what are known colloquially as panga boats. These open-air, above-water swift boats, which are slamming the West Coast in increasing numbers, lay at the heart of Baja Smugglers, a new documentary from Jesse Aizenstat. Cut with some of the most bitingly honest voiceover work I've heard in a minute, Aizenstat's entirely self-financed search for the why, where, and how of the panga phenomenon is some seriously intrepid immersion reportage. It's a story about money, politics, the border-industrial complex, surfing, and lots of weed, among other things, and is well worth the watch.

Here's Part 1 of 4:

@thebanderson