Houses in the remote mountains in Santa Catarina, an impoverished farming county an hour's drive through jagged mountains from Praia. Once, the region's main income was from beans, corn and livestock. Today, its nickname is 'Santa Cocaina' because of the number of local families involved in the drug trade.

The Cape Verde islands lie on what's known as 'Highway 10', the DEA's nickname for the smuggling route at 10 degrees north which provides the shortest distance from Latin America to Europe. In February 2019, police on the island made the world's biggest-ever seizure of Europe-bound cocaine, when they found nearly ten tonnes of cocaine on board a vessel.