Organized crime has become a dominant force in the Amazon region, especially in border towns, the Amazon Underworld platform, which specializes in cross-border crime, indicated in a recent report. The report highlights the alarming expansion of transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) into the Amazon’s fragile ecosystem, confirming the region is increasingly becoming a strategic refuge and operational hub for these groups.
According to the study, at least 67 percent of a total of 987 Amazonian municipalities across six major countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) face the presence of criminal networks and armed groups. These TCOs are diverse and highly influential. They include major regional groups such as Brazil’s First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (CV); Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); Ecuador’s Los Lobos; and Venezuelan groups like the Cartel of the Suns (CdS) and the Tren de Aragua (TdA).
This expansion has devastating consequences for local communities and the environment. “The arrival or expansion of armed groups represents a turning point for many local communities that are seeing their natural environment destroyed,” notes the Amazon Underworld report. “Violence is reaching unprecedented levels, and young people are being drawn into activities such as gold mining and drug trafficking.”
The convergence of crime and environmental destruction
TCOs have dramatically escalated their activity by diversifying their illicit economies, creating a dangerous nexus between drug trafficking and environmental crime often referred to as “narco-mining” or “narco-deforestation.” Reports indicate that as much as 91 percent of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon was linked to illegal activity orchestrated by well-structured criminal enterprises.
Illegal gold mining, in particular, has become one of the fastest-growing illicit economies in the Western Hemisphere, in some countries generating more revenue for organized crime than the drug trade itself. TCOs use the profits from cocaine smuggling to invest in mining operations, which in turn provides a method for laundering billions of dollars. This criminal convergence is acutely felt across Brazil’s Legal Amazon, where groups like the PCC and CV have rapidly expanded into environmental crimes, establishing a national scope of interconnected illicit economies that now challenge the Brazilian state across multiple regions. Over 4,000 illegal mining sites were identified across the Amazon region in 2023, underscoring the exponential growth of this market.
Tri-Border hotspots and the urban threat
The TCO crisis is particularly volatile in the Amazonian triple frontiers. In the Tri-Border Area of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, Brazilian criminal groups have struck partnerships with Colombian guerrilla factions and Peruvian drug trafficking outfits to control the drug supply chain from coca cultivation in the Peruvian Amazon all the way to Atlantic ports. The expansion of the CV and the PCC has been rapid, with criminal gangs now operating in 344 out of 772 municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon (roughly 45 percent), according to a November 2025 report from the Brazilian Forum on Public Security.
The hundreds of rivers and clandestine airstrips scattered across the Amazon, originally used for the drug trade, are now also leveraged for the transport of illicit gold, facilitating the movement of contraband across borders to evade crackdowns. This competition for control has led to an explosion of violence. Large Amazonian cities such as Manaus and Belém, and even smaller towns like Tabatinga (Brazil) and Leticia (Colombia), have seen homicide rates surge as TCOs fight for criminal governance, establishing their own rules and exacting violent punishment for transgressions.
Targeting protected lands and Indigenous communities
The TCOs’ expansion poses a direct threat to the Amazon’s most protected areas. A significant portion of environmental crime hotspots, including illegal timber harvesting and mining, falls within designated Indigenous lands and Conservation Units. Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected, facing forcible displacement, mercury poisoning from mining, and violent recruitment of their youth into criminal ranks.
Reports indicate that these indigenous territories, which historically have been the most effective barriers against deforestation, are now on the verge of being breached by encroaching loggers, land grabbers, and racketeers.
The transnational challenge
While the TCO crisis spans the entire basin, certain regions have historically served as critical nerve centers — refuges and logistical support bases that facilitate TCOs’ regional expansion. For years, geographic complexities that lead to gaps in institutional oversight, as well as the presence of permissive environments have allowed criminal networks to use strategic ports for trafficking.
In these sectors, a sophisticated network of illicit actors managed to integrate illegal gold mining and drug transit into a singular financial engine. This system allows for the large-scale extraction of minerals, where criminal organizations often operate by exerting control over local populations and exacting “taxes” through these corridors. This created a self-sustaining cycle where the profits from one illicit market — such as cocaine — provided the liquid capital to expand into others, like gold and timber.
Basin-wide
The increasing sophistication of these illicit systems marks a critical phase in the Amazon’s history. Groups like the PCC and CV, whose power lies in their control over the “logistical veins” of the rainforest, have spent decades building their operations. By utilizing clandestine airstrips and an intricate network of rivers, these organizations move contraband across international boundaries, effectively treating the entire basin as a single, borderless theater of operations.
The convergence of TCOs and environmental destruction demands a unified, transnational strategy that treats the rainforest’s preservation as inseparable from regional security. By leveraging the comprehensive support of international partners with the firsthand operational knowledge of Amazonian nations, the region can move from being a sanctuary for crime to a stronghold for the rule of law. This integrated approach must do more than just disrupt crime; it must dismantle the systemic illicit economies that threaten the sovereign rights of the communities who call the forest home.
