Gasoline is one of the biggest black markets
in the world, you know.
And then you got this part of the world
where on one side of the border,
you know, gas is 8 cents a gallon,
and on the other side of the border, it's $2 a gallon.
Like, what did you think was gonna happen?
[ Horn blares ]
The human spirit is just so --
It's so amazing to me.
The will to survive. The will to live.
You know, it's against all odds, man.
And Lilia Luciano, she found that out firsthand
when she went a gas-smuggling run in Colombia.
♪♪
Our goal is just to simply show the world a window
as to why people do the things they do,
where that desperation comes from.
It's like they say -- When the system fails you,
you create your own system.
♪♪
Lilia: I'm riding in the back of a pickup truck
in the dusty northern tip of Colombia
chasing a caravan of gas smugglers.
Gas smuggling is one of the biggest
contraband markets on Earth,
and for years, millions of gallons
of cheap Venezuelan gas
have been trafficked across the border into Colombia.
It's a dangerous around-the-clock operation,
and I'm here to see how it all works.
We heard there's a blockade down the road
by gas smugglers fighting the police,
and they're gonna wait it out
until the authorities clear that road
and they can bring all the gas
that they brought from Venezuela into the rest of Colombia.
We want to see if we can catch them.
We're headed towards Cuestacita, a scrappy Colombian border town
where we've heard the smugglers
are in a standoff with authorities.
The police are demanding a bribe to allow them
to continue on into the Colombian interior.
This is a total mess.
No one can get in. No one can get out.
I just talked to an old lady who says that she's scared
'cause there's gas everywhere.
She's afraid that something might explode.
The cause of all this chaos
is actually pretty easy to understand.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world,
and the socialist government there
keeps gas prices artificially low.
Less than 10 cents a gallon.
But in Colombia, that same gallon
will cost you over $2.
It's one of the most extreme
price differentials in the world.
So you combine that with
a barely patrolled 1,400-mile border,
and you end up with a scene like this.
Now we're seeing a bunch of guys in fatigues,
basically the Colombian army, walking in.
All of this traffic is contraband,
and the army is letting them through.
The soldiers just give up and allow the smugglers
to continue on their way into the Colombian countryside.
This is crazy.
They're hauling ass with all kind of goods,
especially gas,
and, like, the people from the town are cheering them.
[ Horn honks ]
They're like, "Yeah! Get out of here!"
Once these trucks get past Cuestacita,
they unload their gas to teams
of small-time runners called kamikazes.
They will race for hundreds of miles
before reaching local distributors.
I meet up with a kamikaze driver who I'll call Oscar.
He's agreed to allow me to come along on his run
if we keep his identity concealed
and don't slow him down.
What are the main obstacles?
What kinds of dangers are you facing on the road?
It's a very risky business. Why do you do it?
Oscar's supply of gas shows up,
and everyone scrambles to load up the cars
and get on the road.
He's coming in right now?
They're about to start filling up this car and his car
with something like 400 gallons of gasoline.
Kind of scary.
They're handling lots of gasoline.
It's the middle of the day.
It's 1:00 p.m., ridiculously hot,
in the middle of the desert.
[ Coughs ] Oh, shit.
Oscar jams dozens of containers into his tiny car
and leaves just enough room for me and my cameraman.
Just cover the camera.
It's nearly 100 degrees,
and I'm squeezed into a car packed
with 400 gallons of contraband gas.
Anybody got a smoke?
[ Laughs ]
[ Engine starts ]
We're headed 100 miles due south to Oscar's hometown,
La Paz, where he has to meet a buyer by sundown.
We're taking an indirect route meant to evade checkpoints
that can take up to eight hours at the legal speed limit.
But Oscar has only five hours to make his meet.
One, two, three, four, five-car caravan.
♪♪
[ Horn honks ] Oh, my God. What a rush.
Oscar just left me alone on the side of the road
in a car full of illegal gas.
So, right now, the driver just got out of the car.
He went to talk and pay the police
so that we can get across.
He's working as what they call a mosca.
It's the guy who goes ahead of the caravan to pay the cops.
I'm in Northern Colombia riding along on a gas-smuggling run.
We're carrying 400 gallons
of this dirt-cheap Venezuelan gas
that the smugglers need to deliver to a buyer by sundown.
This is the first of a few checkpoints
we have to go through before getting to La Paz.
Oscar pays the equivalent of $12 per car,
and we're through the first checkpoint.
Here's how it works.
He can make up to $250 on the sale,
but he only keeps what he doesn't pay out in bribes,
and between here and his hometown,
there could be up to eight checkpoints
where he could be arrested or even shot at.
And sure enough, just around the bend
there's another checkpoint.
This time, it's the Colombian Army.
Shit.
Soldiers, vigilantes, and cops are all known
to shoot at smugglers at these checkpoints,
and Oscar doesn't know what this guy wants.
They said "pura gas." Pure gasoline.
Like, they know that we had gasoline,
and he still gave him the money.
All it takes is $1.25 to get by the Colombian Army.
But these drivers --
they're just small link on a much larger smuggling chain
that goes all the way to the top of both countries
according to experts like Angel Garcia
of the Central University of Venezuela.
Many experts say this corruption
is part of the reason why Venezuela
is facing a crippling economic crisis
and brewing discontent.
But President Maduro puts much of the blame
for his country's economic woes on Colombian smugglers
who he accuses of draining billions of dollars
worth of Venezuelan goods every year.
On the Colombian side of the border,
the tension is also high. [ Gunfire ]
Police shoot at smugglers on sight.
And new laws mean longer prison sentences
for the ones that they do catch.
Drivers like Oscar have a weapon of their own.
It's why they're called kamikazes.
Shit.
We get to an area known for having a lot of cops.
They're telling us something. They're --
We take a gamble on a detour,
but it's over a really rough dirt road,
and these cars are not built for this kind of terrain.
So, we just got word that there's a police checkpoint,
um, back there, and we just took an off-road
that's unbelievably complicated for this size of car.
From this cramped vantage point,
it's pretty clear that running contraband gas
is not easy money.
High speeds, police everywhere,
and rough roads like this one.
But for Oscar, it's a living.
La Paz is a small town
where almost everyone works in the smuggling business.
We met with Oscar's wife.
Like many women married to kamikazes,
she wishes her husband didn't have to resort
to such a dangerous way to make a living.
Kamikaze drivers can face five years in prison
if they get caught.
But the real danger is an accident.
We met another woman in La Paz.
Her son was a kamikaze.
20 kamikaze drivers from La Paz have died in crashes
in the last five years.
[ Engine revs ]
[ Horn blares ]
As the sun sets,
we're getting close to Oscar's hometown,
so he steps on it.
[ Engine revs ]
Lilia: Avoiding police checkpoints and minimizing the bribes
that he has to pay aren't the one challenges
for this Colombian gas runner.
It's also a race.
If he doesn't make it home by sundown,
he'll lose a day of profit.
Wow.
Another $1.25 bribe, and we're back on the road.
Oscar has already paid off two police officers,
one soldier, and evaded a fourth,
but we're coming up on a town
where locals have gotten in on the action
and they've set up their own checkpoints.
Paying off the locals turns out also to be a bargain.
His partner in a car ahead of us pays $5
for the entire caravan,
and we don't even have to slow down.
After five long hours on the road,
we make it to La Paz just as the sun sets.
Oscar changes out of his gas-soaked
clothes and meets his buyer.
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
Lilia: It was a good day for Oscar.
Because we were able to avoid so many checkpoints,
the ride only cost him $19 in bribes,
which means that he pocketed $240 in profit.
This was one of Oscar's biggest paydays ever,
but it might be his last.
Just weeks after our run, three Venezuelan soldiers
were wounded in a shootout with Colombian paramilitaries
at a nearby border crossing.
It was the last straw for Venezuelan President Maduro
who responded by sending in troops
in an effort to stamp out smuggling
and the lawlessness that comes with it.
[ Applause ]
Three months after Maduro's crackdown,
we traveled back to La Paz
to see how things have changed for Oscar.
♪♪
In the months that followed, the situation at the border
became even more chaotic
as the Venezuelan economy spiraled out of control.
In August 2016, the two governments
finally reached an agreement, and the border was reopened.
But with the agreement
establishing stricter border controls,
the future of the kamikaze smugglers
of La Paz remains uncertain.