Transnational criminal organizations are changing their routes, methods, and structures to exploit international maritime supply chains and evade controls. In Chile, this dynamic has brought strategic ports such as Arica, Valparaíso, and San Antonio under greater scrutiny, as trade volumes, shipping routes, and connections to other markets create new challenges for port and maritime security.
In an exclusive interview with Diálogo, Chilean Navy Vice Admiral Arturo Oxley Lizana, director general of the Maritime Territory and Merchant Marine (DIRECTEMAR), explains how Chile is confronting criminal organizations’ use of its ports and maritime routes, from inspections and information analysis to cooperation with national institutions, regional partners, and Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S), as well as the challenges posed by new logistics connections and bi-oceanic corridors.
Diálogo: In recent years, Chilean authorities have warned of the growing use of the country’s ports and maritime routes by transnational criminal organizations. What does this evolution reveal about the transformation of maritime drug trafficking in Chile and the adaptation of criminal networks in the region?
Chilean Navy Vice Admiral Arturo Oxley Lizana, director general of the Maritime Territory and Merchant Marine (DIRECTEMAR): This evolution demonstrates, first and foremost, that organized crime is inherently dynamic. Criminal organizations study control systems, identify vulnerabilities, and continually modify their routes, methods, and structures to reduce the risk of detection. From a maritime perspective, this requires us to understand drug trafficking not simply as the movement of drugs by sea, but as a transnational phenomenon that can exploit the entire supply chain: ports, vessels, commercial routes, companies, and seemingly legitimate cargo.
One example of this adaptation has emerged from our analysis of foreign companies that use Chilean ports for cargo in transit. Risk profiling has led to the detection of drugs concealed by impregnating materials such as wood and rubber. Likewise, analysis of flows involving chemical precursors and other substances moving into the continent demonstrates that criminal networks transport not only finished products but also the chemical precursors required for their production, creating a two-way flow.
The contamination of legitimate cargo during international transit is another factor that must be considered. Investigations have determined that a significant portion of this contamination occurs outside Chile, as demonstrated by seizures in other countries involving cargo that originated in Chile.
For DIRECTEMAR, the challenge therefore involves strengthening our territorial presence, inspections, and maritime surveillance, while also improving information analysis, risk assessment, and interagency and international cooperation. This allows us to optimize the planning, direction, and execution of maritime operations in order to anticipate changes in criminal patterns and better focus the state’s efforts.
Diálogo: This evolution also reflects a greater presence of these organizations at different points in the port system. Recent investigations have identified San Antonio, Arica, and Valparaíso as points of interest. What makes these ports and their logistics networks attractive to criminal organizations? Are these isolated cases, or are we seeing different criminal activities converge?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Each port has particular characteristics that can make it attractive to these networks, whether because of the high volume of cargo it handles or its proximity to neighboring countries and its role as a transit point for their exports. In this regard, the port of Arica is our northern gateway into Chilean territory and is located adjacent to areas of the continent where cocaine is produced. Meanwhile, the ports of Valparaíso and San Antonio are the closest to our capital region, which is home to nearly 50 percent of the country’s population.
From DIRECTEMAR’s perspective, the challenge is to transform the Maritime Authority’s extensive territorial presence and the information obtained through inspections and operations into actionable knowledge that can anticipate risks, guide controls, generate alerts, and enable timely maritime operations that disrupt the maritime drug trafficking value chain.
To achieve this, it is essential to complement the Maritime Authority’s policing and inspection presence with information analysis, ongoing coordination with other police forces and state oversight agencies, and international cooperation with other maritime forces.
Diálogo: This dynamic highlights criminal organizations’ ability to shift their operations and use new routes as risk levels change. How is DIRECTEMAR responding to this displacement, and what new challenges does it pose for maritime security?
Vice Adm. Oxley: DIRECTEMAR is continually improving processes that enable investigations to produce intelligence and information for maritime operations against criminal networks operating at sea. This allows us to better direct the assets and efforts of our Maritime Police capabilities, taking into account historical information, territorial characteristics, new criminal methods, and information from other national and foreign institutions.
The main challenge for DIRECTEMAR in providing maritime security is therefore to maintain an ability to adapt as quickly as, or faster than, these organizations. This requires integrating operational presence, technology, criminal analysis, timely information sharing, and interagency and international cooperation in order to identify changes in routes, methods, and criminal behavior patterns at an early stage, enabling maritime operations that disrupt their criminal activities and produce concrete results that degrade their ability to operate.
Diálogo: Beyond the ports themselves as logistics platforms, these networks exploit the enormous volume of Chile’s legitimate trade and use increasingly sophisticated concealment methods. How is DIRECTEMAR’s model evolving to strengthen the use of intelligence, risk analysis, and anticipation against these networks without undermining the efficiency of port commerce?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Chile needs both port security and efficiency; these are not competing objectives. Given the enormous volume of operations handled by our maritime-port system, it would be inefficient to attempt to inspect every shipment and operation with the same intensity. The model must therefore move toward increasingly selective, risk-based inspections, prioritizing efforts to achieve better and greater results.
The challenge going forward is to optimize the planning and execution of our operations. We seek to accomplish this by increasingly integrating information, technology, criminal analysis, and operational capabilities. The greater our ability to identify risks in advance, the more decisive our operations can be and the less impact they will have on the efficiency and competitiveness of Chilean foreign trade.
Diálogo: Given a threat that extends across the entire supply chain, how is DIRECTEMAR strengthening coordination with Customs, the police, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to anticipate and respond to these threats? What concrete results has this integration produced?
Vice Adm. Oxley: DIRECTEMAR contributes its territorial presence, specialized maritime-port expertise, inspection and surveillance capabilities, and Maritime Police capabilities. The National Customs Service has fundamental responsibilities for controlling goods and foreign trade; Carabineros and the Investigative Police contribute their policing and investigative capabilities; and the Public Prosecutor’s Office directs criminal investigations when there is evidence of a crime.
As the Maritime Authority, we are therefore strengthening a model based on permanent coordination, timely information sharing, and joint risk analysis. The objective is to move from cooperation that is activated in response to a specific incident toward a capability that allows us to share information, identify patterns, and generate alerts before a threat materializes.
Diálogo: Because these networks operate across borders, the response also requires international cooperation. How is DIRECTEMAR deepening its cooperation with regional and international partners, what new capabilities has this cooperation helped develop, and what concrete results have been achieved?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Transnational organized crime does not recognize borders, and for that reason the response cannot be confined exclusively to national territory. From a maritime security perspective, our ability to anticipate threats must begin long before they reach Chilean shores.
DIRECTEMAR is deepening this cooperation through the exchange of information and experiences with maritime authorities and specialized agencies in other countries, as well as through regional and international mechanisms. These include the Operational Network for Regional Cooperation among Maritime Authorities of the Americas (ROCRAM) and cooperation with Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S), where Chile maintains a liaison officer.
These mechanisms broaden our understanding of the criminal threat beyond what occurs in our own ports. They allow us to identify new routes, concealment methods, vessels, and cargo of interest; share alerts; and strengthen capabilities through training, exchanges of experience, and operational coordination.
Diálogo: As you noted, Chile has worked with JIATF-S for years, steadily strengthening cooperation on maritime security, information sharing, and coordination against transnational threats. In that context, could you elaborate on what this cooperation currently entails? What information or capabilities does Chile contribute, and what information or support does it receive from JIATF-S, particularly in response to the growing use of Chilean ports and maritime routes by transnational criminal organizations? And what have been the most recent results?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Cooperation with JIATF-S should be understood as part of an international architecture designed to address transnational threats that no state can fully confront on its own. Chile, through its Navy, has been part of JIATF-S since 2010 through a permanent liaison officer. That presence is particularly important because it provides a direct channel for information sharing, maritime domain awareness, and coordination against threats that can move between countries and exploit international maritime routes.
It is also important to highlight our cooperation with JIATF-S through our frigates, aircraft, and submarines during deployments outside our national jurisdictional waters, supporting the detection and monitoring of contacts while underway in support of JIATF-S’s mission.
Cooperation works both ways. Chile contributes knowledge and information. In turn, JIATF-S broadens our awareness beyond national waters by integrating information from different countries, agencies, and surveillance capabilities that can help identify routes, patterns, and threats before they reach our jurisdiction.
This cooperation has continued to strengthen. In June 2026, in my capacity as director general of DIRECTEMAR, I visited JIATF-S and its Partner Nation Coordination Center in Key West, where we specifically discussed operational capabilities, information sharing, interoperability, and cooperation mechanisms to counter transnational organized crime.
Rather than viewing this relationship solely in terms of individual operations, its principal result is an increase in our awareness and ability to anticipate threats. An alert generated outside Chile can help us focus our controls early, and, in the same way, information detected in our country can be shared so that other authorities can act on a shipment, vessel, or route as it continues toward another jurisdiction.
Diálogo: The Americas Counter Cartel Coalition seeks to strengthen regional cooperation against criminal organizations that operate across borders and domains. From a maritime perspective, what capabilities can Chile contribute to this effort, and what cooperation mechanisms — such as intelligence sharing, maritime surveillance, or operational coordination — do you consider priorities for detecting and dismantling these networks before they consolidate new routes?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Chile can make a significant contribution to this regional effort through its maritime experience and the capabilities developed by its Maritime Authority. Our extensive coastline, vast maritime spaces, port system, and participation in major Pacific trade routes provide us with capabilities, but also with a responsibility for regional security.
From DIRECTEMAR’s perspective, we can contribute maritime domain awareness, territorial presence and surveillance, maritime and port inspections, operational capabilities, criminal analysis, and experience protecting ships and port facilities in accordance with international standards such as the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code.
An effective regional architecture should therefore enable a detection made by one country to generate an early alert for others. If an authority identifies a new concealment method, an emerging route, a vessel, or an organization of interest, that information should be analyzed and shared promptly with countries that could be affected.
Diálogo: This ability to anticipate threats will become even more important with the development of bi-oceanic corridors and growing connections between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. These new routes can boost trade, but they can also create opportunities for criminal organizations. How is DIRECTEMAR preparing to prevent these logistics connections from being exploited for drug trafficking and other illicit activities?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Bi-oceanic corridors represent an enormous opportunity for Chile and for regional integration, but any significant increase in connectivity also creates new security and protection challenges. For that reason, DIRECTEMAR believes security must be incorporated from the corridor’s planning stage rather than added later as a reaction to a problem that has already taken hold along the land corridors leading to the maritime-port interface.
From the maritime perspective, we must complement analysis with a Maritime Police presence, surveillance, specialized detection capabilities, and appropriate protection of ships and port facilities in accordance with the ISPS Code. We seek to help ensure that the system is efficient, resilient, and secure from the outset. The best way to protect this commercial opportunity is to anticipate vulnerabilities before criminal organizations are able to incorporate them into their own logistics networks.
Diálogo: This is also happening as Chile faces increasingly complex criminal organizations, including local organizations linked to transnational networks such as Tren de Aragua. Chile’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has identified Los 4 Fantásticos as one such group. Are we seeing a fundamental shift in the criminal threat, and what are the implications for the security of Chile’s ports and strategic interests?
Vice Adm. Oxley: What we are observing requires us to recognize that we are facing a qualitatively more complex threat. When local organizations develop ties with transnational structures, they can gain access to greater resources, international contacts, logistics capabilities, knowledge, and new methods for carrying out their criminal activities.
From a maritime perspective, what matters is understanding the risk posed by this evolution. Ports concentrate critical infrastructure, foreign trade, companies, workers, transportation, and enormous volumes of legitimate activity. We must therefore prevent increasingly complex criminal organizations from finding favorable conditions within that chain to develop or consolidate their activities.
For DIRECTEMAR, this means strengthening prevention, risk-based inspections, criminal analysis, and the ability to detect early indicators that may reveal anomalous activity within the maritime-port environment.
Diálogo: Faced with criminal organizations capable of adapting rapidly, diversifying routes, and infiltrating supply chains, what is the Maritime Authority’s main challenge today, and what capabilities does Chile most urgently need to develop?
Vice Adm. Oxley: I believe the Maritime Authority’s main challenge today is to develop an ability to anticipate that outpaces criminal organizations’ ability to adapt. These structures rapidly change their routes, concealment methods, actors, and ways of operating when they encounter higher levels of risk. Our response therefore cannot remain static.
All of this must also be accomplished without unnecessarily disrupting the flow of legitimate trade. The stronger our analytical and anticipatory capabilities, the more targeted our controls can be.
Diálogo: Finally, what role should Chile assume alongside its regional partners in building a hemispheric security architecture capable of anticipating, adapting to, and dismantling these networks before they consolidate their presence in the region’s logistics and port systems?
Vice Adm. Oxley: Within a framework of voluntary coordination among governments of the Americas, Chile should continue to be an active and reliable partner in building a regional maritime security architecture capable of confronting transnational organized crime, in which each state can act in accordance with its respective international and national legal obligations.
These organizations do not recognize administrative borders and, in fact, exploit differences among jurisdictions, institutional capabilities, and levels of control to shift their operations. Our regional response must reduce those spaces.
Through DIRECTEMAR, Chile can contribute its experience as a Maritime Authority, its territorial presence, maritime domain awareness, Maritime Police capabilities, criminal analysis, and a long tradition of international cooperation. It is also important to emphasize that DIRECTEMAR is an integral part of the Chilean Navy. As such, we have highly trained personnel and multipurpose assets that operate in an integrated and complementary manner, allowing us to optimize both our naval and maritime institutional capabilities cost-effectively in response to different challenges and to contribute effectively to hemispheric security.
In my view, an effective regional architecture should advance in four areas: timely information sharing, early-warning mechanisms, joint threat analysis, and operational coordination mechanisms that allow each state to act within its respective authorities and laws.
