This week, we hold the line on more military strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific, mull the conviction of a Bolivian drug czar in the US, and look at the deadliest police raid yet in a Rio favela in Brazil.
Transcript
Welcome back to On the Radar, where we track the biggest developments in organized crime across the Americas every week. And this week we’re looking at government corruption in Bolivia, the bombing of more boats in the Pacific, and a deadly favela raid in Rio.
The Trump administration bombed another four vessels in the eastern Pacific on Monday, killing 14 people, the highest daily death toll since the US government’s military campaign against alleged drug traffickers began early in September there. The attacks came days after the Trump government sent an aircraft carrier to the region, a major escalation in the military might already there.
The aggressive military action off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia has been justified by the Trump administration as an anti-narcotics campaign and an effort to attack the Cartel of the Suns and the Tren de Aragua criminal groups. The US government’s perception of both entities belies a more complex reality. As Insight Crime has repeatedly stated, there is little evidence to suggest that Venezuela’s President Maduro is controlling Tren de Aragua. Trump has also connected the fentanyl trade to the current US campaign there, but our research shows no evidence of any fentanyl production south of Mexico. The Cartel of the Suns, on the other hand, is an umbrella term for dispersed corruption networks embedded in the state profiting from the cocaine business, but not a homogenous cartel controlled by President Maduro.
Still on government corruption, and the former Bolivian anti-narcotics chief Maximiliano Davila was convicted by a US jury for conspiring to traffic cocaine and possessing firearms for drug trafficking this week. The conviction underscores the deep-rooted corruption in Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts, especially during the administration of President Evo Morales, and raises questions about how the new government will address growing concerns over drug trafficking and its links to state institutions. Find out more about that in Insight Crime’s Bolivia archive.
And finally, a major security operation against the Red Command gang in Rio this week reportedly left more than a hundred people dead. More than 2500 civil and military police officials raided two working-class neighborhoods with the objective of cracking down on the gang, which had allegedly expanded its control in the area. But although the raid made headlines, there’s little new here other than yet another record body count. The idea of shooting first and asking questions later is a longtime Brazilian military police tradition, and the country has consistently led the region in police killings over the last three decades. Not only that, but such measures are only short-term solutions to the criminal activities and governance of Brazil’s powerful gangs.
That’s it for us this week. Don’t forget, you can find deep dives on all of the criminal groups, countries, and trends at InsightCrime.org.
