🌴 Crime takes root in the rainforest

The infiltration of drug trafficking into the Amazon has long been documented. Since at least the 1980s, the rainforest has served as a corridor for narcotics flowing from Bolivia and Colombia to domestic markets in Europe, the United States and Brazil.

As our Brazil Climate newsletter noted in August, routes through the Amazon region have overtaken other Brazilian passages in their importance for the drug trade. A recent report by Amazon Underworld concluded that, out of 987 Amazonian municipalities studied across six nations, at least 662 were home to active operations from organized crime groups.

In the past decade, however, these groups have taken root within the Amazon’s social fabric. Dynamics of criminal governance once confined to Brazil’s Southeast — such as influence over prisons and control of entire communities — are now entrenched in the North as well. Towns that once functioned merely as logistical stops have become permanent bases for organized crime, making it increasingly difficult for the State to reassert control.

“Young people are recruited into armed structures offering monthly wages never before seen in their communities,” while those who refuse “face threats or assassination, especially in Colombia and Brazil,” notes Amazon Underworld.

The main driving force behind this expansion has been the…

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