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Executive Summary
This paper outlines a number of critical strategic challenges in Latin America for U.S.
policymakers, which were directly identified in the December 2017 National Security Strategy.1
However, despite this recognition, these issues are seldom featured in policy discussions about
the region.
Through the framework of the convergence paradigm, which contends that multiple criminal/
terrorist groups work collaboratively when such cooperation is mutually convenient, we
consider a number of territories, key commodities, and new money-laundering methodologies
that have allowed transnational organized crime (TOC) networks to flourish in seemingly marginal
regions of the hemisphere. Long considered to be a critical challenge in Latin America,
regional TOC groups, often under the direct protection of state actors, are able to adapt and
thrive when policymakers do not understand the evolution of their operations, recognize the
roles criminalized states often play, or develop innovative tools to combat TOC adaptations.2
Through examination of these evolving challenges, this analysis seeks to raise awareness among
policymakers and to demonstrate how relatively few strategically targeted, well-placed resources
can curb the financial and territorial reach of TOC groups. Furthermore, the analysis shows
that continuing neglect of these challenges can enable the growth of criminalized, anti-U.S.
regional powers, and hamper the ability of key U.S. allies to promote the rule of law and democratic
growth throughout the region.
This analysis begins with a study of convergence in the illicit gold trade, drawing on fieldwork
in Puerto Maldonado, Peru. It then considers three countries—Paraguay, Bolivia, and
Nicaragua—that receive little attention from policymakers but are key players in the emerging
drug trafficking, gold trade, money-laundering, and extra-regional illicit networks in Latin
America. The discussion of both Bolivia and Paraguay features a brief study of the activities of
the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital), based in Brazil but rapidly
expanding its operations across South and Central America. Despite being one of the largest
and fastest-growing criminal gangs in the hemisphere, it is seldom viewed as an important
consideration for regional trends. Finally, an overview of the Ramiro Network, a massive regional
state-sponsored money-laundering structure based on fictitious oil sales, highlights a
key convergence point for TOC activity in El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Colombia—
including the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia or, FARC), FARC “dissidents,” and Russia.
Many trend lines in Latin America are worrisome, and the actors discussed here are directly
tied to the more visible crisis in Venezuela and the growing threat in Colombia. Ties between
the FARC secretariat in Colombia—recently demobilized after a historic December 2016
peace agreement—and FARC dissident structures that remain engaged in cocaine trafficking
and other illicit activities are now clearly documented and demand serious responses in order to
ensure the continued security of Colombia, a close U.S. regional ally.3 Leaving the actors in these
new regions of convergence to grow unchecked presents a serious security risk to the United
States and the region.
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Notes
1 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White
House, December 2017), available at <www.whitehouse.gov>.
2 For a closer look at how criminalized states use transnational organized crime as instruments
of state policy in Latin America, see Douglas Farah, Transnational Organized Crime, Terrorism, and
Criminalized States: An Emerging Tier-One National Security Priority (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies
Institute, August 2012).
3 On April 9, 2018, Colombian police arrested a former senior Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
de Colombia (FARC) commander named Seuxis Paucis Hernández Solarte, better known by his
alias Jesús Santrich, on charges of conspiring to export 10 tons of cocaine. The Colombian government
agreed that, because the conspiracy began after the peace pact was signed, the commander could be extradited
to the United States. Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials had long believed
the FARC general secretariat, of which Santrich was a member, remained in contact with several of the
groups that had declared themselves in dissent after the peace pact was signed and continued to engage
in the production and trafficking of cocaine, as well as illicit gold trafficking. For more information
on the investigation and arrest, see Mimi Yagoub, “Four Troubling Takeaways from FARC Leader’s
Arrest,” InSight Crime, April 12, 2018, available at <www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/4-troublingtakeaways-from-farc-leaders-arrest/>.