With information: Julio Caicedo, María Belén Arroyo, Alejandro Pérez, Bruno Abbud y Plinio Lopes.
 

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It has been 25 years since Roberto* left his native Colombia and decided to cross the border to settle in Nueva Galilea, a town in the Peruvian Amazon, located an hour by plane from Iquitos, capital of the Loreto region. This town is located in the most important corridor for cocaine production and trafficking in the triple border shared by Peru, Colombia and Brazil: the Peruvian province of Mariscal Ramón Castilla, whose main city is Caballo Cocha, on the banks of the Amazon River.

If you don't mess [with them], they have no reason to do anything to you," says Roberto, without losing his Colombian accent, when asked about the violence in this territory, where the "bosses" -- those who direct cocaine production in the laboratories set up in the Amazon -- engage in confrontations and murders that are not usually reported. Currently, the Colombian criminal group Comando de la Frontera controls the drug trafficking operation in this region.

Political borders do not exist for criminal groups. An investigation led by OjoPúblico's Cross-Border Network together with media partners Sumauma, La Silla Vacía and Código Vidrio identified that drug trafficking dominates 72% of the localities along the borders shared by Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.

Based on the joint construction of a database with official information, own sources and field reports, the research exposes the broad impact of illegal economies and criminal actors in border territories of the Amazon. The analysis covers 75 localities - called districts, cantons or municipalities, depending on the country - in the four Amazonian countries.

Due to the high levels of crime in these areas, three Brazilian municipalities (Barcelos, Alto Alegre and Amajari) that share a border with Venezuela were also included. And in the case of Ecuador, in order to delimit the large number of small towns, thirteen cantons were selected from its Amazonian border.

In the 54 localities identified, the cocaine business is run by criminal groups with a multinational vocation. The Border Command -- which was formed by FARC dissidents -- and Brazil's Red Command -- the oldest criminal structure in Brazil -- have control over this region. Their territorial control allows them to combine cocaine trafficking with illegal logging and mining.

Amazon under siege

Roberto, like other inhabitants of this district of Ramon Castilla, began a few years ago to dedicate himself to an activity that is the first - and weakest - link in the drug trafficking chain: coca leaf cultivation. Every three months, he harvests the plant and then sells it to a group of Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian stockpilers.

His large hands allow him to 'raspado' (remove the leaves from the plant) with great dexterity. "Coca doesn't need shade, it grows freely," he explains, while pointing to some stalks in his plot in Nueva Galilea, where he has planted this plant on half a hectare of wooded land, next to the cocoa.

"Coca also made me sick, it made me sick with diseases like rheumatism or bone pain, strong illnesses from being wet for a long time. It causes more harm than good," says Roberto. Today, he continues to harvest coca, but says that now he generates more income selling churros and 'curichis', a frozen soft drink that in Lima they call 'marcianos' and that is sold in long transparent plastic bags.

In 54 out of 75 border towns in the Amazon region of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, there is a presence of criminal groups involved in drug trafficking.

In the area, not only coca leaves are grown, but also maceration ponds have been identified. From his plot of land, he can hear the engine of a motorcycle in motion, which, according to Roberto, transports inputs to produce drugs, which are processed in a laboratory near the port of Nueva Galilea. The people who live in this border region arrive here in small boats that, despite their size, can carry more than a dozen crew members.

When it rains, the flow of the rivers rises, allowing a constant transit of boats, not only of passengers, but also of the well-known 'bestias': boats that move at high speed and can contain up to a ton of drugs, which they collect from the different border towns.

Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian nationals are frequently encountered in this area. Several of them even have identity documents from two countries.

CULTIVATION. In Nueva Galilea, several families are involved in the coca leaf trade, the main input for coca paste and cocaine hydrochloride. 

Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo.
 

PLOTS. The families dedicated to coca leaf cultivation have, for the most part, one to half a hectare of land. The harvest takes place every three months. 

Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo.

The borders are exploited by organized crime due to the scarce presence of authorities: during OjoPúblico's visit to the Peruvian border, no police or military control or patrols were observed. Testimonies collected in the communities indicate that the criminal organizations responsible for the increase in murders and other types of violence act with impunity.

On March 27, at the Tierra Amarilla guard post - between Peru and Colombia - local media reported that ten criminals ambushed Peruvian police officers who were on duty. According to these versions, the assailants stole eight weapons, ammunition and cell phones. The incident occurred on the banks of the Loretoyacu River, in the Ramón Castilla district of the Loreto region.

The assaulted post is one of 15 located on the border between Peru and Colombia. The attack highlights the vulnerability of having little budget to control public order, a situation that was exposed by OjoPúblico when it visited other of these surveillance centers in El Estrecho, a locality in the province of Putumayo.

In January of this year, another violent incident occurred in the Brazilian town of Tabatinga. Manuel Sánchez Aurich, a Peruvian livestock health and safety analyst from the Peruvian district of Santa Rosa, was shot and killed as he was crossing the river into Peru. Local versions indicate that the worker participated in the seizure of sausages entering illegally from Brazil and, in retaliation, was killed.

In another recent incident, sources on the Amazonian border told OjoPublico that last July a citizen was murdered in the port of Sheretero, located one block from the main square of Caballo Cocha. And almost three years ago, in 2022, a Peruvian minor  and two other Brazilians involved in cases of hired killings were murdered.

In 2021, OjoPúblico detailed the case of former Peruvian Army soldier Antonio Rengifo Vargas (20), who was tortured and murdered in Tabatinga, a Brazilian town located in front of the Peruvian municipality of Santa Rosa, where his body - with bullet holes - was abandoned in a garbage dump.

"Here I am the only one and I have to see cases from four districts. Sometimes there is no budget for gasoline for the boats that take us to our work center," laments a Peruvian prosecutor from the Amazonian border and recalls that several colleagues do not accept the post for fear of threats from criminal groups that operate and whose activities grow every year in the area.

Andrés Caijao, a specialist with Colombia's Ideas for Peace Foundation, said that organized crime uses borders as "transit points from one side to the other" because "there is no control" by the authorities. In light of this, he suggested the need to reach "binational agreements to share information" and "understand much better the dynamics and what happens on the border.

Caijao assured that from Colombia there has been an important "transfer of crystallized cocaine and the transformation of cocaine in border areas of Peru and Ecuador".

Drug trafficking has taken root in the Amazon

Twenty minutes by road from Caballo Cocha -capital of Ramón Castilla in Peru- where most of the houses are built with local wood, the community of the Ticuna people of Cushillo Cocha is welcomed by a thin cement arch that is also crossed by several motorcycle cabs. A few meters from its main square there is a small port from where, according to local sources, people leave for other communities dedicated to coca leaf production.

The National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (Devida) indicates that coca leaf production in the Ramon Castilla district - where Cushillo Cocha is located - has decreased between 2022 and 2023. However, it still exceeds 3,766 hectares of cultivation, a figure that triples the records of 2019.

As in Cushillo Cocha, drug trafficking has also established itself as an illegal economy in several locations along the Amazon shared by Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

The Border Commandos and the Red Command have control over the Amazon. In addition to drug trafficking, they carry out other illegal activities.

The investigation identified that the production and transport of drugs such as cocaine base paste (PBC) or cocaine hydrochloride occurs in at least 54 of the 75 locations reviewed. That is, in 72% of the cases.

If we look at the incidence by country, it is evident that Colombia has 100% coverage of localities with the presence of criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking in eight of the municipalities reviewed. Among them are Leticia, Puerto Leguízamo and Valle del Guamuez, the latter with records of coca cultivation and with the highest homicide rate among the localities of the four countries: 106.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that exceeds four times the Colombian rate homicide .

Likewise, as reported by Ojo Público's Cross-Border Network, in Colombian territory there has been a variation in the value of coca leaf in recent years that responds to a price conflict between buyers. This has resulted in less access to the market for producers - mostly farmers - who are reducing their clients as a result of price changes.

ARRIVAL. In border towns such as Caballo Cocha, between Peru and Colombia, criminal groups dominate the territory to operate in different illegal economies.

Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo.
 

In the list of localities with the highest penetration of organized crime dedicated to drug trafficking is followed by Brazil with 84% of its 25 municipalities, then Ecuador with 76.9% of its 13 cantons and Peru in third place with 51.7% of its 29 districts.

In Peru, in addition to the presence of criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking, there are coca leaf crops in these same 15 border districts. Different sources indicate that the Colombian Border Command operates in the four districts that make up the Putumayo province.

In a recent visit to the Caballo Cocha and Cushillo Cocha area -- on the triple border between Peru, Colombia and Brazil -- sources from the Peruvian Attorney General's Office and Police told OjoPublico that in recent years, drug transport and protection have involved the participation of members of the criminal group Los Crías , a local gang from the Brazilian district of Tabatinga that also works in alliance with the First Capital Command (PCC).

According to sources in the tri-border area, another characteristic of the area is the large number of weapons in the area. The interviewees pointed out that they know of people registered with the Peruvian authorities as animal hunters, but whose permit to carry arms is a front for their real use: supplying criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking. And in some anti-narcotics operations, the police have discovered that the weapons belong to people who had obtained animal hunting permits.

When asked about the appearance of the weaponry along with the drugs, those involved told the police that their weapons had been lost and that they do not know how they ended up in cocaine laboratories.
 

The map of criminal actors

This journalistic investigation has identified the participation of 11 drug trafficking groups in the four countries analyzed.

Prominent on the list is the Border Command, with a presence in 21 locations in Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. This organization, with around 1,000 members according to the Colombian Attorney General's Office, is made up of dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who did not join the peace accords signed in 2016. Another Colombian criminal group that is also present and disputing control of the area is the Carolina Ramirez Front, especially in Putumayo.

In some cases, there are at least two groups that share their area of operations. This is recurrent in Ecuador, where Los Lobos and Los Choneros, despite their dispute, have formed alliances with the Colombian Border Command. Los Lobos already control 75% of Ecuador's provinces and have become the fastest growing transnational Ecuadorian criminal group in Latin America.

On the Brazilian side, the Red Command stands out, with operations in 19 Brazilian, Colombian and Peruvian localities. This criminal group, with some 30,000 members, is the oldest in the country -- it began in the 1970s -- and one of the most powerful in the region. It has gradually expanded the presence of its affiliates in the Peruvian Amazon, as reported OjoPúblico in various reports.

The Red Command arrived in the Brazilian Amazon with greater intensity in 2017, following the death of Jorge Rafaat Toumani, alias "King of Trafficking," on the border with Paraguay, then run by the other major Brazilian criminal group, the First Capital Command (PCC). This territory used to be one of Brazil's main drug routes and, as it was dominated by the PCC, the Red Command decided to concentrate its efforts in northern Brazil, on the borders with Colombia and Peru.

The First Capital Command (PCC) holds sway in the state of Roraima, according to a study by the Brazilian Public Security Forum. In this border region with Venezuela, the PCC controls six municipalities, while another seven are disputed with the Red Command (CV) and the Venezuelan criminal organization, the Tren de Aragua, present in the capital, Boa Vista, and Pacaraima.

"The PCC is the Brazilian group that starts this relationship with the Aragua Train, mainly on the border with Roraima, both for diamond and gold smuggling, as well as for arms and drug trafficking," says Aiala Colares, a researcher at the Brazilian Public Security Forum. 

The specialist also considers Pacaraima to be a strategic zone for cross-border criminal groups. "On the other hand, Peru is now one of the main suppliers of cocaine to Brazil, with major areas along the triple border and the Solimões River.

Although in theory they are rivals for territorial control, which increases the number of homicides in these localities, in some cases, they agree to dominate a different criminal activity each.

For example, in Santo Antônio do Içá, a municipality in Amazonas state that borders Colombia, graffiti with the acronyms of the various criminal groups can be seen on the city walls. The PCC is still there, despite the dispute with the Red Command, its rivals in Rio de Janeiro.

Homicide rates rise
 

In addition to the activities of criminal groups in the districts analyzed, there are also records of increased levels of violence in border territories. Homicide figures were recorded - at least once - in 35 of the 75 localities reviewed. That is, in 46.6 percent of the cases.

In addition, it is relevant to note that in nine of the ten locations with the highest homicide rates there was an increase in the figures between 2019 and 2023. These correspond to territories in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador with the presence of criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking, where the national rates of each country were also exceeded.

For example, in the Ecuadorian canton of Paquisha - a territory in conflict between Los Choneros and Los Lobos - the homicide rate grew five times between 2019 and 2023. It went from 21.1 to 105.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. That same year, the rate also doubled the national figure of 47.25 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
 

On the Peruvian side, the figures do not show high rates of violence, but a field visit revealed that the apparent tranquility of the official figures does not correspond to the reality of the border zone. Several sources indicated to this journalistic team that the health centers attend to cases of homicides that are not reported, so there is an underreporting of the data.

Public officials in the Amazon tri-border region who prefer to remain anonymous said that the murders in the area are related to confrontations between drug buyers, known as "patrones," or people in their entourage. These events occur when transport fails, payments are not made, or there are suspicions that inside information about criminal organizations is leaking out.
 

TERRITORY. In Brazilian border towns, members of the First Capital Command (PCC) paint graffiti on walls to make their presence known. 

Photo: Sumaúma/ Michael Dantas.
 

FEAR. Although indigenous representatives and leaders from border areas report an apparent calm, they prefer anonymity when referring to criminal groups. 

Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo.

In the center of Caballo Cocha is the so-called 'Boulevard of Integration and Border Development' and a small square adorned with a statue of a white horse. There, most young people gather to hang out, before going to the bars that never close, a few meters from the square, where the music booms and the Brazilian beer is cheaper than Peruvian. On one of the walls of these bars hangs the portrait of drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The locals look with suspicion at any foreigner entering this border territory and, although one of the local authorities affirms that the security of the place is guaranteed and that "nothing is going to happen," he immediately changes his face and remains silent so as not to answer about the presence of criminal groups in his jurisdiction.

Drug trafficking: the gateway to other illegal businesses
 

The second illegal economy in the border localities analyzed by this journalistic team is the illegal timber trade, linked to the loss of Amazonian forests. A review of the data showed that it is present in 40 of the 75 localities (53% of the total). In Ecuador it is present in 100% of the cantons, followed by Colombia with 75%, Peru with 69% and Brazil with 4%.

"The lack of state presence generates neglect on the border. On the one hand that, and on the other, being far away gives them [criminal groups] an advantage, they have control of those territories. So much so that when we move, we don't find anything. Information leaks out," confessed a prosecutorial source who works on the border.
 

LIMIT. In Colombian territory, the Border Commandos dominate the illegal economies installed in border towns with Ecuador and Peru. 

Photo: La Silla Vacía / Julio Caicedo.
 

INGRESO. En la triple frontera amazónica —que divide a Perú, Colombia y Brasil—, el crimen organizado se camufla ante la falta de resguardo en el lugar. 

Foto: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo. 
 

Last July, OjoPúblico reported on how timber trafficking operates between Peru and Ecuador through the export of balsa wood, also known as topa. Both Peruvian and Ecuadorian businessmen participate in this activity, and some reports from indigenous leaders indicate that this illicit trade has developed in the Peruvian region of Amazonas, where illegal mining  increased.

The data also show that 72% of the localities in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru register the presence of illegal mining. Brazil was not considered due to that there are no official records or sources that accredit this illegal activity in border territory of that country.
 

ROUTES. Organised crime has found in the Amazon a strategic place for the development of its activities such as drug trafficking, illegal timber trade or illegal gold mining.

Photo: Sumaúma/ Michael Dantas.

FORGOTTEN. In border districts of Peru, the absence of the state allows the entry of organised crime, which - for the most part - is dedicated to drug trafficking. 

Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo.

In Ecuadorian territory, this illegal activity - which is increasing every year - involves the participation of criminal groups such as Los Lobos.

In Colombia, the illegal extraction of the mineral is carried out by members of the Border Commandos, who also control this activity along with the passage of drugs from the rivers that cross the Amazon to other border points.

In Peru there are not many details about the organizations present in the area, but illegal activity is expanding in areas such as Putumayo and the Amazon region, the latter bordering Ecuadorian territory. Illegal activity is present in 16 of the 29 municipalities.

"In most of the sectors affected by illegal mining there is no system for monitoring the activity (impacts, magnitude, dynamics, among others). This fact prevents the effective implementation of mechanisms to combat and prevent illegal activity, especially in those areas where it is just beginning," concludes a study by the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS-Peru) on illegal mining in Peruvian territory.

In these border districts, interest in formal mining activity is also relevant. In 56 of the 75 local governments there was at least one mining lot, or 74.6%. In total, the four countries accumulated more than 2,600 lots, headed by Brazil with 1,380 mining concessions in 24 municipalities. The list is completed by Ecuador with 805 lots, Peru with 420, and Colombia with 14.

In addition to drug trafficking, timber trafficking and illegal mining, the criminal organizations that control the area also engage in illegal fishing, wildlife trafficking trafficking and human on a smaller scale. For this report, however, we did not delve into the updated figures for each of these activities.

Field research and the systematization of data expose an increasingly critical panorama in the border towns of the Amazon. These have become a strategic center for the advance of organized crime whose expansion, for now, has no limit.

 

*His name has been changed for this report.

Research methodology

For this research -which began in October 2024- a database of the 75 localities was elaborated that considered around 30 columns with categories that allowed profiling the presence of illegal activities in the place such as drug trafficking, illegal timber trade, illegal mining, criminal groups that had operations, among others.

The sources consulted, up to two years old in their reports, include information from the governments themselves, through their ministries and other branches of government. We also worked with findings from publications by civil society organizations that address the growth of illegal economies in the Amazon.

In some cases, due to the complexity of the details of the information, we worked from local journalistic publications and interviews with sources who have worked in border areas as well as with people who live in these territories and know the current situation regarding the advance of drug trafficking and other sectors dominated by organized crime.

Those interviewed by this journalistic team included members of the police appointed to posts in the Amazon as well as open files in the Public Prosecutor's Office of each country analyzed and off-the-record conversations with prosecutors who have dealt with different investigations in border territories.

The progress of violence was also observed with the number of homicides reported by the authorities of each country, between the years 2019 and 2023. To standardize the results, the rate per 100,000 inhabitants was calculated and the locality levels were compared with the national rate.

In total, this spreadsheet gathered more than 2,200 cells with information provided by official and in-house sources. With this data, each team made field trips to complement, obtain testimonies and contrast the findings obtained from the database.