DIÁLOGO AMERICAS ILLUSTRATION
DIÁLOGO AMERICAS
In its recent report, “The Fifth Wave,” think tank Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime warns of the transformation of organized crime. In addition to reaching new levels of sophistication thanks to drones and artificial intelligence, criminal networks are increasingly infiltrating legal markets.
According to the report, in the future “markets will be murky and traditional distinctions between the licit and the illicit will be less discernible. Legal businesses and criminal enterprises could become indistinguishable from one another.”
A significant example in Latin America is that of Brazil. According to the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, a civil society organization that monitors organized crime, the First Capital Command (PCC) currently has a yearly revenue in the legal economy of more than $25 billion. According to Brazil’s Legal Fuel Institute, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting the legal sector, the criminal group has infiltrated the country’s fuel production chain, controlling everything from wells to refineries and gas stations.
“In the region, the growing diversification of organized criminal groups’ activities is increasingly evident,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, director of the Peter Bell Center for the Rule of Law at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. In the report, “Public (In)security Experiences in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro,” Broner explains that in the Amazon region of northern Brazil, “a complex ecosystem of illicit activities has developed, characterized by illegal logging, deforestation, land grabbing, wildlife trafficking, and illegal mining.”
These emerging threats are also spreading to other pan-Amazonian countries and to tri-border areas: Brazil-Bolivia-Peru, Brazil-Colombia-Peru, Brazil-Colombia-Venezuela, and Brazil-Venezuela-Guyana. “Border control is a major challenge, not only because of the territorial extension, but also because they [borders] are key points for trafficking, smuggling, money laundering, and other activities carried out through land, water, and air routes,” the report indicates.
There is a geographical expansion of criminal networks and the creation of alliances between different groups. This is the case of the PCC, which emerged in São Paulo and today has an international presence. “It’s a good example of this phenomenon,” Emiliano Rojido, a researcher at the Laboratory for the Analysis of Violence at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and an advisor on public security policies at Uruguay’s Interior Ministry, told Diálogo Americas, a publication of U.S. Southern Command.
According to Rojido, “there is also a greater dispersion of criminal networks that results in the substitution of organized crime bosses by a system of brokers or intermediaries, so that the networks become more diffuse or less evident.”
In Latin America, the ‘Ndrangheta have used this strategy for years, as demonstrated by the cases of its most famous brokers, Rocco Morabito and Nicola Assisi, both arrested in Brazil after years on the run. In Ecuador, this Italian mafia had cocaine shipments to Europe managed by Albanian criminals with whom it has historically collaborated for years in the old continent.
“From the Pablo Escobar-style bosses of the past, there has been a shift to criminal networks. The main consequence of this change is that institutions need more sophisticated strategies. Arresting the leaders of an organization does not always yield great results, as power vacuums are often created, leading to increased violence, instability and the evolution of other criminal groups,” Broner said.
Expansion and social cost of drug trafficking
The geographical expansion of organized crime has also changed in Latin America. The globalization of criminal cartels capable of operating on several continents has made it so that countries of the region that were previously considered safe now are being affected by the violence of criminal groups. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Global Study on Homicide 2023, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay had some of the lowest homicide rates in the region until just over a decade ago: 2.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. By 2022, the figure had risen to 6.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
UNODC data revealed that homicides also increased by 25.8% in Uruguay between 2021 and 2022. During this period, the country had the second-highest percentage of homicides related to organized crime and gangs, out of 45 countries worldwide, surpassed only by Jamaica.
“Uruguay is a country with a very small domestic market, which has traditionally been, in relation to drugs, a transit and consumption market,” Rojido said. However, according to the expert, “in recent years it has also become a stockpiling country, because large volumes of drugs have been seized in rural areas of the country, for example, and large volumes of drugs have also been seized in Europe from boats that have passed through Uruguay or that have left Uruguay.”
The social and economic cost of this transformation is heavy not only for Uruguay but also for the entire region. According to a recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), crime and violence costs an average of 3.4% of Latin America’s gross domestic product (GDP). This is equivalent to almost 80% of public education budgets, double that of social assistance, and 12 times more than research and development spending.
“This violence affects people, the direct victims, but also their families and, as a whole, it affects the economy, destroys resources, increases costs, affects the justice system, the health system, the criminal justice system,” Rojido said.
The role of cooperation
In such a complex scenario, interregional and international cooperation are key to counteract the evolution of organized crime in Latin America. “International cooperation is very important for working on these networks that indicate the existence of a global or transnational chain,” Rojido said. In July 2024, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen announced the Amazon Region Initiative against Illicit Finance to combat nature crimes, a partnership with the countries of the Amazon basin: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname. In December 2024, the IDB launched a regional security alliance against crime, bringing together 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We are trying to organize ourselves into a regional initiative because organized crime has no national borders,” Ilan Goldfajn, IDB president, told reporters. Since 2023, Europe and Latin American and Caribbean partners also have been teaming up in the fight against transnational organized crime through the El PAcCTO 2.0 program that provides technical assistance.
Thanks to these programs, operations against money laundering and drug trafficking have been intensified. “International cooperation is necessary because these organizations have no geographical boundaries. They are individuals and organizations that operate beyond national borders,” Broner said.