If LSD best represents the mind-expanding mantra of the 1960s, and marijuana the mellow stony vibe of the 1970s, then surely cocaine is the mascot narcotic for the go-go-go Me Decade of the 1980s.
From a sociological perspective, whether you called it coke, snow, blow, gak, sugar, Charlie, or nose candy, the energy rush that the white powder provided was regularly used by people across the economic spectrum. From blue collar construction workers to middle class suburban parents to Masters of the Universe stockbrokers, lawyers, and the rich.
Any number of groups imported and sold cocaine in America during those years, but perhaps none more successfully than the Miami-based family-and-friends conglomerate led by Eddie Falcon and Sal Magluta known as “Los Muchachos.”
They made millions bringing the stuff in mostly from Central and South America for distribution across the country (with Houston as a hub of business).
And when they weren’t busy planning the routes of smuggling planes and trucks or forming partnerships, Los Muchachos and their wives, girlfriends, and mistresses were partying hard at discos and restaurants, throwing multi-million-dollar weddings and birthdays and—surprisingly—competing in power boat races.
But the fun couldn’t last forever. And when The War on Drugs caught up with Los Muchachos, many of their members spent years behind bars. Now, T.J. English—America’s premier chronicler of organized crime in books like Havana Nocturne, Where the Bodies are Buried and The Corporation—tells the story of the group and an era in The Last Kilo: Willy Falcon and the Cocaine Empire That Seduced America (512 pp., $23.50, William Morrow).
Surprisingly, the genesis of the book came from Willy Falcon’s family themselves, as English was approached by Falcon’s daughter about telling the story of the now-free former Cocaine King.
“I was thinking about writing about the cocaine era since that was a gap in my [books] that needed to be filled. It was probably the most significant crime era in the United State since Prohibition,” English offers. “But I didn’t want to do it unless I had inside sources. I was intrigued when she reached out since Willy Falcon was an enigma to me. I’d never seen him, heard him talk, or had a sense of what he was like.”
To feel him out, English spoke to Falcon several times on the phone, then flew to an undisclosed location several times for more formal interviews. A picture of the pair during one such talk shows them only on a balcony with tall trees in the background. And once Willy began talking, other sources quickly opened up.
Still, English had to put on his research journalist hat: Just because Willy told him something doesn’t mean the author took it as 100 percent true. So, in addition to more research, he checked and double checked everything, acknowledging that some of his critics have accused him of being too sympathetic or empathetic in print to his criminal sources.
Of course, the vast majority of people probably know what they (think they) know about Miami, cocaine, and the 1980s from the movie Scarface, TV show Miami Vice, or more recently, TV’s Narcos series or the documentary Cocaine Cowboys (the last of which centered on Los Muchachos).
Early in the book—which includes much information never before disclosed from new and participatory sources—English addresses this perception head on.
“I wanted to dispense with that right up front. And to be honest, before I wrote this book, I would have fallen prey to the misconceptions seen in movies and TV shows and news coverage as well,” he says. And he was surprised at just how false at least one supposed archetype of the story fell.
“There was not a lot of violence in this story. Los Muchachos were not using it as part of their business strategy, and this was alarming to me. I thought ‘How do you tell a cocaine story without buckets of blood?’” he says.
“I had to deal with those myths with the ultimate goal that this was not about Uzi machine guns and chainsaws and mass slaughters at the disco. These were not hardened gangsters. I’ve dealt with violent and crazy characters over the years, but this was something completely different.”
In fact, the book is almost a Horatio Alger story—if the literary urchin of yesteryear was selling cocaine. The Cuban-born exiles Falcon and Magluta were both high school dropouts who initially got into the business to fund an anti-Castro movement.
But by the time they were in their mid and late 20s, they had created a huge empire and were running it without a playbook, later rubbing up against boldface names like Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar.
In The Last Kilo, English proffers the theory that the real root of the cocaine story was…corruption. As in how many government and law enforcement entities from presidents of countries down to local small-town sheriffs participated in and knew about the cocaine trade, exchanging their insight, information and attention (or lack thereof) for a payout.
“I think maybe that was one of if not the most surprising thing I found out doing this book. And that goes back to the images we have in our head given it was during the [high-profile] ‘War on Drugs,’” English says. “A War that cost trillions of dollars and was a propaganda strategy to demonize cocaine to the American people.”
He notes that Edwin Meese, the U.S. Attorney General during the latter half of the Reagan administration, once called together the heads of powerful media companies to ask for aid in their efforts combatting a “national crisis,” which many fell in line with and did. And when Born-again Christian Bill Bennett was named Drug Czar, even God got involved.
“If you were using cocaine, you weren’t going just against the law and your country, but against God. Because cocaine was actually the work of the Devil,” English says. “And I still encounter this as I’m out promoting this book. People have a hard time letting that go, so it’s hard to have a rational, intelligent conversation about it. Even though it was the party drug that was part of the culture.”
As English was working on this book during COVID, he notes that he missed several flights to or from meeting Falcon and other sources because of the airlines’ requirement of a negative COVID test 24 hours or less before takeoff. Which outweighed any concern about potential danger.
“You can’t be fearful; you have to let go of that. You take precautions, and then you have to forget about it” he says.
One interesting aspect about Los Muchachos is how, while you think they’d want to keep a low profile given the business they were in, the men were out there in a very public way. Both socially and by many of the group taking part in (and often winning at) competitive power boat races with their mugs splashed all over TV and newspaper sports coverage. Though it also served as a convenient front for them to launder money.
“I asked Willy’s brother-in-law why they were so flashy with the boats and the parties where they’d have Miami Sound Machine come play and the cars and the clothes. And he said that was intentional. That was the lifestyle they wanted,” English says.
“Some of it has to do with them being Cuban exiles. They were driven by a desire to succeed. But to them, there was no point in making millions of dollars and being cocaine dealers if they didn’t get to show it.”
Finally, we ask English to sort of time travel. Could a group like Los Muchachos and how the conducted business—at or near peak form in 1984—possibly succeed in the America of 40 years later?
“It was of its time definitely. But there are organizations like that functioning today. The Illegal narcotics business is thriving,” he sums up. “Maybe it’s more fractionalized and people are just smarter about how they go about things. But somebody’s doing it!”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
