Bolivia: international cartels gain ground and produce drugs

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – International drug cartels are advancing in their incursion into Bolivia. They are gaining ground and now buy inputs in the country and produce and refine their own cocaine ‘for export’.

Every time the former Minister of Government, Carlos Romero, referred to the issue during the administration of Evo Morales, he pointed out that Bolivia was a transit country and that there were only emissaries of the international cartels that came to open the way for the merchandise. Now, the former authority considers that there are emissaries of these mafia groups that manufacture drugs in Bolivia.

In addition, other facts show that the situation is changing. First, Brazilian media report that Bolivia has become the “sanctuary” of the First Capital Command (PCC), one of the Brazilian criminal organizations with tentacles in different continents. This week, it emerged that two of its leaders live and operate in Bolivia. In addition, the European Union Agency for Police Cooperation (Europol) managed to dismantle an international organization that purified Bolivian drugs and took them to Europe.

Romero said that the border areas of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija have become vulnerable due to a new phenomenon that has been unleashed in recent times.

Drug traffickers, he said, no longer use these border lines for drug smuggling but for processing and refining. “We are talking about areas such as Guayaramerín, Beni; some towns in the Chiquitanía, in Santa Cruz and the Amazonian north such as Bolpebra, in Pando as part of the Chaco, Yacuiba and Monteagudo. The cartels already produce and purify their own drugs in Bolivian territory. “They threaten to advance territorially, especially in Beni, in towns like San Joaquín, Reyes, Santa Ana, the Yacuma province, the Iténez province, Moxos, and Santa Cruz, fundamentally in the Chiquitania,” said the former authority.

Samuel Montaño, a specialist in security issues, assured that it is true that drug traffickers no longer use Bolivia only as a transit point but that they are gaining territory. Unfortunately, since the government of Evo Morales, control measures on coca production have been relaxed, and the Chapare has become a no man’s land.

For the cartels, according to Montaño, this has fit like a glove. “International organizations buy coca and have found Bolivia to be a country that provides them with logistical resources”.

For example, he mentioned that, in the country, “and nobody noticed, except for some U.S. media, a decree was recently signed authorizing the installation of two diesel pumps, an essential raw material for the production of coca paste, in the Cochabamba tropics. The smuggling of diesel to the drug-producing zones has ended; now it is on hand at these pumps, which are not otherwise justified.

The expert pointed out that the cartels have in Bolivia the conditions to buy all the elements to produce “in our territory the base paste, also to refine it and turn it into cocaine hydrochloride, a drug of maximum purity, and export it. Coca crops in Chapare and Los Yungas have increased because they have a huge market with the cartels”.

For his part, Carlos Romero insisted that this does not mean that the international cartels have established themselves in Bolivia. “There are no structures set up. They are transnational companies linked to transnational crime; they have factories, commercialization centers, local consumption markets, export markets, that is gigantic”.

He insisted that as in any industry, “the emissaries move around to obtain raw materials, control routes, contract services, and process base paste”.

For Montaño, “the cartel bosses and their presence in Bolivia is because there are no emissaries. I would call them ambassadors of the big criminal organizations of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia,” he added.

For Romero, “this is happening in Bolivia, the cartels have located places where there is state weakness at the local, intermediate and national levels. He explained that transnational drug trafficking also tries to involve the population, around which it generates its economic dynamics with which it achieves a certain level of legitimacy.

“There is a territorial, systematic advance, which is consubstantial to an institutional weakening in the fight against drug trafficking mechanisms, especially in these areas of Beni and Santa Cruz”.

In October last year, a report by journalist Marcelo Godoy, published by the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de San Paulo, pointed out that Bolivia had become a kind of sanctuary for the PCC. In agreement with former minister Romero, he indicated that the difficulty of action of the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) in coordination with the Bolivian authorities accelerated this process.

The Brazilian drug traffickers of the PCC, said the report, invest in jewelry, medical clinics, restaurants, ranches, and stroll, together with their families, peacefully in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Unpublished photographs and messages obtained, for example, from the cell phones of drug trafficker Anderson Lacerda Pereira, alias “El Gordo”, and intelligence information from the Federal Police and the São Paulo Civil Police showed the ostentation and daily life of the cartel’s leaders. Owner of a network of medical clinics in São Paulo, Gordo is reportedly investing in the same business in Bolivia.

Last week, it became known that after Marco Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola, and part of the PCC leadership was arrested and imprisoned in the Brazilian federal penitentiary system, all strategic command of the criminal gang was transferred and is currently in the hands of two fugitive men: Marcos Roberto de Almeida, 51, known as Tuta, and Valdeci Alves dos Santos, 50, known as Colorido. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, they are fugitives from justice and live in Bolivia.

Despite this, Carlos Romero insisted that they remain emissaries. “The reasoning of a cartel is that of any company. The political economy of drug trafficking operates here. It is very versatile in its operation and moves where the pressure weakens. If you apply pressure to a balloon, the air moves to another place without such pressure.” It does not imply that the cartels have settled in national territory, but he warns that their influence has grown.

Drug trafficking is not “nationalistic; it will settle where there are favorable conditions, where there is an institutional weakening and territorial growth, as a consequence.”

On February 18, Europol carried out a simultaneous operation in Brazil, Spain, and Paraguay, after two years of monitoring by the DEA, the Brazilian Federal Police, and the Anti-Drug Secretariat of the Paraguayan Presidency participated. Some 45 people were arrested.

The authorities discovered a cocaine production infrastructure in Bolivia “with logistics and supply lines in Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay”. This business was controlled by Brazilian drug traffickers where the PCC and the Red Command operate. The investigation also discovered that the command and control centers of the criminal organization were in Dubai. The criminal organization set up a network of companies in the Emirates to launder the proceeds.

The former minister said this fact confirms there are places where cartels produce drugs, “this operation shows us the vulnerability of national parks, such as Noel Kempff.” In short, he considered that “drug trafficking is dangerous in the country; there are territorial advances and a combination of activities, they are no longer only transit, but production and purification. Everything, due to a weakening of the pressure, I return to the effect of the balloon,” he said.

For Montaño, Europol has had to take the place of the DEA, given its failure “because it is not an organism that represses production, but a regulator. And Bolivia is a dormitory for cartel bosses from Mexico and Brazil because of what is happening in Chapare, where there is no law.