(Francisco Alvarado) Today, Mitt Romney is foregoing a Miami political campaign tradition by skipping over Versailles restaurant in Little Havana. Instead, Mittens will be hobnobbing with a convicted cocaine smuggler. The Republican presidential candidate is holding an afternoon rally at Palacios de los Jugos at 7085 Coral Way, which is owned by Reinaldo Bermudez, who served three years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 1999 to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Bermudez, AKA “El Guajiro,” was a member of 12-person ring that was busted in 1997 for attempting to smuggle more than a ton of yeyo disguised as fish and soap into three South Florida ports. According to Bermudez’s indictment, some of his co-conspirators had nicknames straight out of a Hollywood movie like “Ali Baba,” “Skeletor,” “Buckwheat” and “Stump.”
Reached by telephone, Bermudez tells Banana Republican that the Secret Service vetted everything about him when the Romney campaign asked to use his fresh fruit and vegetable stand, one of several he owns throughout Miami-Dade.
“They absolutely knew about my record,” Bermudez says. “The Secret Service checked everything. [The conviction] was not a problem. Everybody deserves a second chance.”
Bermudez, who was 38 when he was arrested on the coke charge, was part of a conspiracy to smuggle 248 kilos in two containers filled with fish imported from Trinidad to the Port of Palm Beach and the Port of Miami, as well as another 1,045 kilos in a container of soap that was shipped from Venezuela to Port Everglades. Law enforcement authorities learned about the shipments via court-authorized wiretaps of the defendants’ home, office, and cellular telephones, according to the indictment.
“Here in Miami there are a lot people with money who have had problems with the law,” Bermudez says. “Thankfully, we all have the opportunity in this country to reenter society when we’ve done something wrong.”