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This is a story about pirates, people who fight pirates, the “Cruzada” faithful, powerful men and misleading vegetables. But it is far from fiction. It is a portrait of a complex reality that shows how the arbitrary borders on a river that runs across four countries lets organized crime run rampant and benefit from the Amazon's destruction.
 

The onions
 

On January 6, a Monday, a chef in Santo Antônio do Içá, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, on the border with Colombia, grabbed an onion while preparing lunch. When she picked it up, she noticed it was heavier than usual and called her boss over. He took a knife and tried to slice through the skin, but there was something hard and yellowish inside. It was coca paste.

The narcotics-stuffed onion had been purchased the Saturday before by her father-in-law, the man said when he took the vegetable to the Federal Police's Garateia Base, a house under refurbishment that holds two officers, sometimes three, and is responsible for keeping watch over one of the world's busiest drug trafficking routes. He had bought it at the Içaense supermarket, the largest in Santo Antônio do Içá – one of whose owners is the mayor, Walder "Cecéu" Ribeiro da Costa, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement. Two more onions filled with drugs were found at the home of the man who brought in the first onion. The police then headed to the supermarket. They searched onion by onion, but they did not find any more cocaine.

Until it happened again one week later. Another resident in the municipality brought home more onions stuffed with drugs that had been purchased at the mayor's grocery store.

That Saturday when the first adulterated vegetable was purchased, the Military Police had, after an anonymous tip, seized a bag of onions filled with 16 kilos of coca paste near the city's port. When this substance is refined it becomes cocaine hydrochloride, the white powder that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilo abroad. “When they apprehended this bag, the drug was already there at the mayor's store,” said an officer who spoke to SUMAÚMA anonymously. 
 

Onions filled with drugs were purchased at the Içaense market, which is owned by the mayor.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

The store's manager said the onions were part of a ten-bag order made to a supplier in Tabatinga, the largest city in the region. Tabatinga also sits along the border with Colombia, nine hours away by motorboat – and the supplier was a Brazilian descendent of Peruvians.

The investigation led to two lines of inquiry being opened, one by the Civil Police of Amazonas and another by the Federal Police. Both are still ongoing. According to SUMAÚMA's findings, the mayor is not being investigated. In late March, Ubiratan Farias, the chief of police in Santo Antônio do Içá, had planned to bring the store's manager and the onion supplier face to face, based on his suspicion that one of them had given a false statement. 

The case of the mysterious onions illustrates the complexity of life in the Amazon's border regions, where organized crime blends between different countries and moves freely because of an absence of government. Border in these parts does not mean a barrier with customs officials checking each document. It is just a river, where boats float by free of any controls or impediments. There is sometimes just one Army base responsible for a huge area. 

 

 At the borders between the countries, boats move free of any customs barriers.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

The factions
 

It isn't entirely clear in these waters where one country starts and another ends. And organized crime mixes among nationalities, as shown by investigative reporting led by the Trans-Border Network at Peru's OjoPúblico, in partnership with SUMAÚMA, Colombian newspaper La Silla Vacía, and Código Vidrio, an Ecuadorian newspaper. The investigation found drug trafficking in seven out of ten locations on the Amazonian border of four countries: Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. A variety of factions are operating in many of them. At times from different countries, collaborating with each other.

Santo Antônio do Içá is one of these locations. Motorcycle traffic is already hectic in the morning.The passengers on the backs of the bikes are almost always carrying fish. They wear no helmets under the baking sun. Neighborhoods with potholed streets sink into dust before the immensity of the river. The municipality of nearly 28,000 is the last point on the Içá River, which starts in the Andes of Colombia as the Putumayo River and wends its way across almost 2,000 kilometers through Colombia's borders with Ecuador and Peru until reaching the Brazilian Amazon. 

This is where it joins the Solimões River – as this stretch of the Amazon is called. That is why the Içá has become essential to the logistics of transporting drugs produced in the valleys of neighboring countries. It is the only Amazonian basin that crosses four countries. Its brown waters run through far-flung areas of thick forest with little surveillance, bringing the cocaine and marijuana produced in neighboring countries to Brazil. “It's every day. It [the boat traffic] starts in the early morning hours,” says one Indigenous man who lives near the river. “Yeah, they [the traffickers] move in the nighttime,” one resident agrees.
 

Infograph: Rodolfo Almeida/SUMAÚMA.

The drug-stuffed onions are part of an ecosystem dominated by criminal factions, illegal mining operations, businessmen and wealthy politicians who also profit from the environment's destruction. And there is an aggravating factor: The organized criminal factions in Brazil's southeast began to move northward with greater intensity around ten years ago and have professionalized operations in these border areas. The control of illegal traffic, which also includes weapons, used to be run by local criminals, but in the last decade it has come under the control of factions like the First Capital Command in São Paulo and the Red Command in Rio de Janeiro, says researcher César Mello, a retired Military Police colonel in Pará and a consultant with the Brazilian Public Safety Forum, an organization that maps criminal activities in Brazil.

According to Mello, the Red Command reached Brazil's Amazon with greater intensity in 2017, after Jorge Rafaat Toumani, formerly the king of the border in Paraguay, was killed by the First Capital Command. The Paraguayan border was one of the country's main routes for drugs and with the First Capital Command taking over, the Red Command, its Rio de Janeiro-based rival, decided to focus its efforts on northern Brazil, on the borders with Colombia and Peru. “The FDN, Family of the North, which was once the third largest faction in Brazil, was controlling those routes [on the border with Colombia and Peru], but it was sort of an amateur deal. When Rafaat was killed and the First Capital Command took over that Paraguay route, the Red Command went north to keep the First Capital Command from dominating that route as well, or else they wouldn't have access to drugs. They came to the north with lots of power and have now consolidated this route,” Mello says.

In 2024, 15 metric tons of cocaine were seized in Amazonas by state security forces – twice as much as the year before. At the start of 2025, 11 metric tons of general narcotics were seized, with one metric ton coming from the Triple Border region, where Santo Antônio do Içá is located. Across Brazil in 2024, the Federal Police confiscated 74.5 metric tons of cocaine, moving in the opposite direction of what was happening in the Amazonian state: national cocaine seizures fell and were below average for the last five years, according to data found by the Fiquem Sabendo organization. The Office of the Secretary of Public Safety of Amazonas says it increased enforcement actions.

According to a United Nations study, 355,000 hectares of coca leaf crops, an area twice as big as the city of São Paulo, are nestled on the other side of Brazil's Amazonian borders – in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. The report estimates that in 2022, these crops yielded 2,757 metric tons of pure cocaine. In 2014, production was estimated at 869 metric tons. That is growth of 217% over eight years. According to the UN, there were 23.5 million cocaine users worldwide in 2022.

In Santo Antônio do Içá, in addition to the loads of onions filled with drugs, one ton of skunk-type marijuana was seized by the Army last February on the Içá River. Last August, four tons of cocaine were found in the nearby municipality of Benjamin Constant – the largest ever seizure of drugs in Amazonas.
 

The municipality of Letícia, Colombia, neighbors Tabatinga, Brazil, one of the 50 most violent cities in the Legal Amazon.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

According to police and residents who spoke with SUMAÚMA, most of the clandestine shipments found by authorities in the region come down the Solimões River in the middle of the night, passing by Santo Antônio do Içá. Most, however, continue unfettered along the Solimões as well as the Içá. In addition to trafficking drugs, the factions now control environmental crimes. They are involved in illegal mining and fishing, deforestation and bio-piratry, says the Brazilian Public Safety Forum consultant.

In Santo Antônio do Içá, the drug traffic is still controlled by the Red Command, according to data from the Brazilian Public Safety Forum. Other factions nevertheless coexist on the upper Solimões River. Often the dispute for territory ends in conflicts, increasing homicide figures in these places. The neighboring municipality of Tabatinga, for instance, was among the Legal Amazon region's 50 most violent cities from 2021 to 2023, with an average of 77.4 victims per 100,000 inhabitants. Between 2021 and 2023, the average rate of intentional homicides was 23.4 in Brazil, while it was 33.4 in the Legal Amazon, 42.4% more than the national average. Yet in some cases the factions agree to run different criminal activities, which reduces conflicts.

Santo Antônio do Içá is one example. On a March afternoon in the city center, walls battered by the sun and rain are stamped with the acronyms of the factions. “CV-AM,” reads one, referencing the Red Command. Another, “PCC,” is a nod to the First Capital Command. “The First Capital Command is connected more to illegal mining in the north these days. The Red Command, to drugs,” Mello says. In Santo Antônio do Içá, the average rate of intentional homicide is low, less than nine victims per 100,000 inhabitants from 2021 to 2023. 
 

Rival factions often coexist in the same municipality, making deals to run different criminal activities.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

According to the third edition of the study “Mapping Violence in the Amazon,” published by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum in December 2024, factions have been found in 21 of the 62 municipalities in Amazonas. Thirteen municipalities had just one group. In eight, two or more factions were found to be coexisting. The Red Command, the sole operator in ten cities, is found in all 21 municipalities, “including those with more than one faction.” According to researchers, another three cities are run by the Pirates of the Solimões, a local faction, with the First Capital Command running three others.

The study also shows “indications of the presence” of Colombian factions on the Içá River, “who act as Red Command allies in supplying marijuana and cocaine, transported by river.” “The Colombian factions deliver drugs in the border region to members of the Red Command,” reads another passage from the document. In the Putumayo River region, the Border Command group, which is known as the “Sinaloan mafia” after one of its former leaders, Pedro “Sinaloa” Oberman Goyes, who was murdered by an accomplice in 2019. Made up of around 1,000 former dissident fighters from Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces, or Farc, the faction was started in 2017, according to the InSight Crime organization, after the Farc and the Colombian government signed a peace deal. On the Içá River, they provide the drugs and handle shipping. The Brazilian criminals take care of distribution to major cities, following the route along the Amazon River, which goes to Manaus.

The Brazilian Public Safety Forum shows how the Solimões, into which the Içá flows, is prominent among all of the Amazon's rivers as the main route for drug traffic, because it integrates the territories of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, in what is known as the Northern Triple Border region. After it are other important rivers: the Javari, Içá, Japurá, Juruá, Purus, Negro and Mamoré, all located in the western Amazon region (in the states of Amazonas, Acre, Roraima and Rondônia). The study also says cocaine reaches Manaus along the Amazon River and, during the journey, it is loaded onto cargo ships heading to Africa and Europe. Today, the Amazon has ten municipalities with port structures that “interconnect the region with the world.” Traffickers also use “artisanal submarines,” capable of carrying drugs “from Colombia to other continents, crossing the Amazon through the Solimões and Amazon Rivers,” the study says.

Rows of houses in Benjamin Constant and Ribeirinhos in Santo Antônio do Içá are part of the landscape in ‘narco territory’.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

In the morning, the port in Santo Antônio do Içá – where six out of ten inhabitants receive government assistance from the Bolsa Família program and school attendance as monitored by the government is below average – is packed. The smell of fish and recently-heated snacks overtakes the warehouse. A few meters from the graffitied walls, the city's residents have come to welcome the fishers and haggle over fish caught during the night. 

Tambaquis. Spotted sorubims. Suckermouth catfish. Pirapitingas. A headless alligator. The abundance of the river sits in contrast to the poverty of the city, where most of the homes are made of timber and lack basic sanitation. Mistreated and sick dogs are scattered across street corners. A woman squats over a pan set on burning firewood. Potholed streets, steep hills. Misery. A reality that Vilma (a pseudonym), 35, has experienced since she was a child. A drug user, she opens her purse as she walks by the port and unrolls a plastic bag filled with cooked rice. She pinches the food in her hands and begins eating. “It needs some manioc flour,” she says and throws the food to the fish. “I hate eating without manioc flour.” 

She stands up straight and squints hard, staring at a drunk man in the distance who is walking toward her. “Uncle, sit here,” Vilma says, while trying to help the tottering man. “This here is my uncle,” she says. “He raped me when I was seven.”

Motorcycle taxi drivers are buzzing everywhere. The pink tail of a river dolphin peaks out of the water. Speakers play Colombian reggaeton, a sign of the neighboring country's influence. “In the music, in the food, in everything…,” one resident says. Breakfast at the local hotel also includes patacón. “The drug traffickers sometimes hide a shipment in the river, in the woods. Any fisher that comes near dies,” one resident says at the port. “Two died like this already,” he adds. “They sink the drugs [in the river], it sits there sunken for days, then they make it rise [get it to emerge].” The Içá River is very dark at night, he says.

Illegal mining and the cult

“Now they pay the Colombians, if they need to bounce to the other side [of the border, to flee the police],” says one leader, who preferred to remain anonymous. The leader is referring to the illegal miners who operate around Santo Antônio do Içá. They are increasingly further away, going up the Içá River, into the streams, on the Puretê River, the leader says, especially after Federal Police operations set dynamite to dredge barges last year. Most of the dredges are currently concentrated on the Puretê, closer to the border with Colombia, the leader says.

The headwaters of the Puretê River, which flows into the Içá, also lie in the neighboring country and it has increasing amounts of silt from sand and gravel. The dredges suck up the riverbed and spit it onto the banks, along with mercury. The Puretê is deserted in the area that crosses the border. The Brazilian Army has no Special Border Squad base, as it does along the edge of the Içá River, in Ipiranga, a military town with a landing strip and a community of around 1,000 people that marks the border with Colombia.

The stretch between the border and Santo Antônio do Içá is a journey of at least twelve hours by boat – or it can take weeks to travel an old forest trail that starts in Tarapacá, Colombia, one resident says. In the middle of the trip down the river is Vila Alterosa do Juí, a community founded by José Francisco da Cruz, or Brother José, the leader of a religious cult called the Cruzada Evangelical Catholic Apostolic Order, or the Brotherhood of Santa Cruz (a religion that mixes Catholicism with Evangelical Christianity), which in 1972 began to spread red crosses across the hills of the upper Solimões and Içá, making it so that today there are more “Cruzada” communities, as the religion is known in the region, than Catholics or Evangelicals.

“They [the illegal miners] have a base there, for supplies, the dredges are built there. There's a workshop, there's everything,” one leader shares anonymously. When crossing the river, “drones are watching you,” say another three residents in the region. “When you go down the Puretê, there's already a drone filming you. It belongs to the prospectors,” says a resident who works with Indigenous health and usually visits the communities. “Here everyone knows everything, but nobody says anything,” another resident says.

In Vila Alterosa do Juí, a community of around 5,000 people located in the middle of the Içá River – which is only reachable by water or air and is surrounded by kilometers and kilometers of preserved forest – the Cruzada has its own guards. The community is near the mouth of the Puretê River, which like the Içá, leads to Colombia. “Today this cult has around 3,000 followers,” says the Catholic priest in Santo Antônio do Içá, Gabriel Carlotti. He points to the few Catholic churches on a map that shows the Içá River. Most communities belong to the Cruzada. The women wear knee-length dresses and crosses around their necks. Followers are required to take part in two services a day and are forbidden from playing sports – “because if they get hurt, how will they work?” one follower, Bento Kokama, asks. He lives in the village of São José, where some of the cult's faithful reside. Sociologist Pedrinho Guareschi found that religious fanaticism served as an instrument for colonels who were interested in exploring Indigenous manpower. Brother José, the missionary, was killed in the 1980s and is buried in the community. Currently, his successor, known as Pastor Damásio, raises buffaloes and manages the church's collections. SUMAÚMA was unable to locate the pastor for the story.
 

Cruzada churches spread across communities where illegal mining is happening.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

Illegal mining also plagues the region's Indigenous communities. Sinésio Trovão, a Tikuna leader in the Betânia Indigenous Territory, 20 kilometers from Santo Antônio do Içá, says that a prospector from Vila Alterosa do Juí once offered him US$ 90,000 so that he would make a deal for dredges to remain in the Indigenous Territory for one week. “In one night they had removed two kilos of gold [illegally] from [nearby] there,” he says. Sinésio turned down the proposition.

Built on an enormous hill that had held villages and a prison built by the Portuguese during colonization, Santo Antônio do Içá was founded in 1956. Tikuna and Magüta Indigenous people still live there, as do the Kambeba, Kokama and Kaixana, many of who remember the mistreatment and violence promoted by the whites. “In the old days, from the 1940s forward, the Indigenous people took quite the beating from the ranchers [land-grabbers] who explored cattle and rubber here in this region,” Sinésio says. Then missionaries from the United States came, he continues, and removed the Indigenous people from the area where the city is today, taking them to the banks of the Içá River, where Vila Betânia sits. Around 5,000 Indigenous people live there. At the time, the outsiders taught the Tikunas to pray and dress in the white man's clothes. Yet at 11:00 AM, in the village longhouse, they preserve their language. A teenager with a cell phone connected to a Starlink antenna is listening to a song in Tikuna on YouTube. Sinésio organizes excursions of French and Germans who leave Bogotá to spend a few days in the village.

Bodies used to float down the Içá, the elders say, including deputy cacique Bernardino Tikuna. Today, the problem is the thefts of motorboats and outboard engines during the night. “They've already stolen six canoes and lifeboats. Here, they come in the middle of the night,” Bernardino says. “They steal the Indigenous people's canoes to go pick up drugs. They've already stolen plenty,” Sinésio adds. 

Indigenous people, like the Tikuna, continue to resist with their rituals and culture despite being hounded by organized crime.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

Father Carlotti, a thin blue-eyed Italian who lived in Bahia for 17 years and has now been in Santo Antônio do Içá for five years, navigates down the Içá River every once in a while to visit the Catholic communities. Using a motorboat purchased by the Vatican that is equipped with sonar, he is able to visualize the riverbed. “All you can see are holes,” he says, referencing the trail left by the dredges. At masses held in the city, the priest's speeches advocate for the environment, taking a critical tone toward the illegal miners. It didn't take long for him to receive a death threat. It was a message. “What matters is that the river is protected from any pollution that poisons the water, the fish and the people,” Carlotti says. The Catholic Church has distributed water tanks along the Içá for the traditional Ribeirinho population to be able to store rainwater, avoiding the mercury in the river.

Ubiratan Farias, the chief of police with Santo Antônio do Içá's Civil Police force, does not usually go to the Içá River. “It's a supply point for them [the illegal prospectors], with support from some of the public,” he says. He talks about how he had to abort a mission in Içá out of fear of being ambushed. “I'll only go if it's with a .50 [machine gun] and ten men,” he says, a pistol on his waist and a shotgun hanging on the wall of his office at the municipal police station. Nevertheless, he can only rely on two investigators, two clerks and an intern, along with a pair of federal agents based in the city. 

The chief of police also manages two cells filled with 23 prisoners, in addition to two prisoners who, because of a lack of space, are kept in the kitchen. Out of 1,182 police reports since February 2024 in the municipality, which sits along the drug trafficking route, 270 were for theft. Thieves who steal to use drugs, the chief of police says. While he was talking, he had to let one, a man who had been caught with a stolen cell phone, go free because of a lack of space in the lockup. The precinct does not have its own motorboat and the closest jail is nine hours away, in Tabatinga. According to the chief of police, just five drug trafficking cases were registered with the precinct in the last year. Structural difficulties help to explain this low number.

At the Federal Police's Garateia Base, there is a motorboat and two officers. “The superintendent told us ‘not to risk your life, let it go’ [the motorboat with drugs]. The Arpão Base is further down,” one of them says, referencing the Federal Police's surveillance post downriver in Coari. So the police focus on intelligence activities, he says.
 

The Federal Police’s base focuses on ‘intelligence activities’ and the chief of the Civil Police only visits the Içá River when he has ‘a .50 [machine gun] and ten men’.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

Pirates and politicians
 

On a March morning, around 10:00 AM, the Içaense supermarket in Santo Antônio do Içá was bustling. Outside, stands run by farmers sold bananas, manioc flour and bags of uxi fruit. With over ten aisles of products housed in a gigantic warehouse, the supermarket is just another one of the mayor's businesses. Cecéu was already a businessman and was also the owner of a construction materials store and the city's lottery retailer before he became mayor. Reelected to a second term last October, he got his start in politics in 2020, during the pandemic, with robust assets: US$ 350,000, including four trucks, two pickups, a front-end loader and a bulldozer. As of last October, four years later, his assets had grown by 21%, to US$ 440,000.

Cecéu entered politics at the behest of a supporter: former mayor Abraão Magalhães Lasmar, one of the city's biggest businessmen, who ran the municipality for two terms, from 2013 to 2020. Lasmar controls fuel sales in Santo Antônio do Içá. He owns the largest building in the city center, the Diamante restaurant. But the two had a falling out. Last year, Lasmar lost the municipal election to his former ally.

The former mayor has also been successful in terms of asset growth. In 2016, when he was elected to a second term, Lasmar had US$ 140,000 in declared assets. Last year, that figure shot to US$ 310,000 – a 283% increase.

Both Cecéu and Lasmar have been subjects of a Federal Police investigation that began in 2021, suspected of financing organized crime, money laundering, concealing assets, misappropriating public funds, and money smuggling. In 2007, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office accused one of Abraão Lasmar's relatives, José “Martelo” Magalhães Lasmar, with trafficking 34 kilos of cocaine.  Prosecutors described Martelo as a “businessman and owner of barges in Santo Antônio do Içá, who ships and is one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine in the state of Amazonas.” 
 

 
Abraão Lasma and Cecéu, the former and current mayor of Santo Antônio do Içá, are being investigated by the Federal Police. 

Photo: Instagram.
 

Asked for comment, neither the former mayor, Abraão Lasmar, nor the current mayor of Santo Antônio do Içá and the owner of the city's supermarket agreed to an interview. SUMAÚMA was unable to locate José Magalhães Lasmar.

On February 27, Santo Antônio do Içá provided an example of the complex activities of criminal organizations. A barge was attacked by pirates on the Solimões River, near Tonantins, 32 kilometers from Santo Antônio do Içá. During the attack, a third vessel appeared and began shooting, killing two crew members. They were drug traffickers, a federal agent told SUMAÚMA, “who came out shooting” at the pirates. The traffickers' involvement in this case still is not very clear. Less than one week later, two alleged pirates involved in the crime were killed by the Military Police in Benjamin Constant and three ended up under arrest. A drone was among the items seized. The police suspect the barge was carrying fuel to an illegal mining operation in nearby Jutaí. The Federal Police is analyzing a video of the incident, which is under investigation. “There are lots of tidal channels [narrow rivers]. The pirates serve as an escort [for drug traffickers]. But if their escort services are not hired, they can be dangerous and take cargo from others,” says chief of police Ubiratan Farias.

“The pirates put drones on the river, to see the boats passing by. What they really like taking [stealing] is drugs and gold. They're professionals and highly armed. On this stretch between Tabatinga and Tefé there are a lot of them,” says an engine boss on a motorboat, who has spent four of his 70 years navigating the Solimões River. He remains quiet while docking in Santo Antônio do Içá, before blurting out: “I work in fear.”
 

What the Army says
 

The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that in the West Amazon region, which includes Amazonas, Acre, Rondônia and Roraima, the Brazilian Army, through the Amazon Military Command, “maintains permanent preparatory activities and use of its troops, therefore ensuring a state of readiness to employ military means for the benefit of guaranteeing national sovereignty.” The statement also noted that the Puretê River is within the “area under the responsibility of the 16th Jungle Infantry Brigade,” with one battalion and three special border platoons.

The Brazilian Army, which is responsible for monitoring the borders, said in a statement that it works in the country's North Region “in a prolonged manner through the Amazon Military Command and the North Military Command, protecting national sovereignty and combating crime in coordination with other bodies and agencies.” The statement explained that actions are hindered by the “vast size and porosity of Brazil's land border, particularly in the Amazon, along with the high complexity of access and logistics for permanence.”
 

The Içá River wends around Colombia’s borders with Ecuador and Peru before reaching its end in Santo Antônio do Içá, in the Brazilian Amazon.

Photo: Michael Dantas.
 

The Army emphasized that it uses intelligence and surprise actions to maximize results, as “it is well known that daily action in the same location deviates crime to another unprotected location.” The statement also says that a squadron, a battalion and a brigade operate in the region and permanently carry out a Shield Operation, which “includes patrols of the Içá River and Puretê River.”

According to the Army, actions to combat organized crime on the northern border are coordinated with other federal, state and municipal bodies and agencies. “In 2025, Joint Amazon Operation Ágata, part of the Integrated Border Protection Program, had already begun the planning phase and is expected to start repressive actions in the month of May,” the statement said. “As a result of Operation Ágata in the Amazon in 2024, crime suffered losses estimated at US$85,000, with around 3,842 actions executed, seizing 4.2 metric tons of coca paste and 697 kilos of marijuana, contributing to reducing transnational crime.” The statement also noted that the Marines seized over one metric ton of drugs during a patrol of the Içá River on February 14 of last year. The Army seized one ton of skunk-type marijuana on February 27, 2025 in Santo Antônio do Içá.