How Organized Crime Became More Serious in Latin America
For decades, drug cartels have wielded profound political influence in Latin America. With the evolution and diversification of new illicit markets that move trillions of dollars, the corrupting capacity of criminal networks challenges the survival of democratic institutions.
By Douglas Farah y Pablo Zeballos* (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – Organized crime networks in Latin America, which converge across regional and extra-regional structures, are currently experiencing a historic economic boom. Everything indicates that 2024 will likely be the most lucrative year for illicit economies, with record numbers recorded in the hemisphere.
With the advance of what we have termed the Fourth Wave of Transnational Crime (FTC), organized crime has ceased to be a peripheral threat to most citizens. It has become a central player, capable of posing an existential threat to the survival of representative democracy and the rule of law. The flood of illicit capital and corrupt practices in politics, both at the national and regional levels, makes it urgent to understand these new phenomena and articulate responses within an institutional and democratic framework.
FTCs are characterized by operating with new markets, new actors, and unprecedented modalities. FTCs, including extra-regional actors, are boldly emerging. They behave as economically rational agents that respond to emerging opportunities and take advantage of the transformations in illicit economies in all their forms.
Evolution of the phenomenon
The first wave was represented by Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel. They were pioneers in moving tons of cocaine to the US market via Caribbean routes.
Led by the Cali Cartel, the second wave perfected a more sophisticated scheme for shipping cocaine to the US. It diversified routes through Central America and Mexico. At this point, it’s one product (cocaine) to one market (the US).
The third wave, via the Bolivarian Revolution, is characterized by the criminalization of state structures that employed armed groups like the FARC, using cocaine production and trafficking as instruments of state policy and functionally modifying certain public policies. At this point, the main product diversifies (cocaine and gold) toward a single primary market (the United States) with expansion into Europe.
The current fourth wave is marked by the emergence of extra-regional groups, such as the Italian Ndrangheta, the Albanian mafias, and Turkish criminal networks. They drive the expansion of synthetic drugs and the exploitation of illicit gold. These organizations often operate under the protection of authoritarian governments, self-proclaimed leftist or rightist, exchanging capital from illicit markets for political protection.
Territorial control
This fourth wave is not defined exclusively by violence, although it tends to experience particularly bloody periods during disputes over strategic territorial control between local groups. However, its true threat lies in the ability of criminal organizations to establish parallel governance systems, exert territorial control, penetrate institutions, and replace state functions.
This strategy, often facilitated by the complicity of political networks within the state itself, has a double effect: it delegitimizes the state, by revealing its inability to combat transnational crime, and it grants legitimacy to criminal groups, which assume state functions—such as providing security, generating jobs, or administering rudimentary forms of justice—more efficiently than formal institutions. It is a form of power that operates from the margins but directly influences the very core of the political, economic, and social life of our countries.
These criminal actors redefine the rules of the game in their territories. They seize state functions and corrupt the foundations of democracy until very little of the institutional infrastructure remains. It’s a phenomenon that, following the virus analogy described by Pablo Zeballos, spreads initially unnoticed until it kills its host
Transnational convergence
Evidence of the new convergence characteristic of the Fourth Wave abounds today. A clear example occurred in June 2025, when a Chilean court convicted two Chinese citizens, an Albanian, and a Peruvian for trafficking cocaine from Valparaíso to Rotterdam, the Netherlands. A few days later, in a joint operation with Italian and British police, Colombian authorities arrested Giuseppe Palermo, one of the bosses of the powerful Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, in Bogotá.
These events are clear examples of the new and dangerous convergences of transnational organized crime in Latin America. Extra-regional actors have forged unprecedented alliances, building global superstructures in coordination with regional and national criminal groups that control strategic territories and infrastructure.
Another paradigmatic example occurred in March 2025. A team of prosecutors in Arica, Chile, successfully obtained a court conviction against 34 members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang for multiple acts of violence and homicide. This group, born in Venezuela and now operating regionally, represents a particularly dangerous variant: Exo-Risk Criminality.
Less democracy, more authoritarianism
The other side of the coin of the weakening of democratic states is the rise of an ideologically agnostic authoritarianism. It maintains power by using transnational organized crime groups as instruments of state policy. The most notable example was the alliance of the Bolivarian countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba) with the FARC when the guerrilla group was the world’s largest cocaine producer.
Among the authoritarian states defined by these alliances today are Venezuela, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Each follows the same model of authoritarian consolidation, despite some defining themselves as “left” and others as “right.” The biggest gap now is not, as in the past, between right-wing and left-wing ideologies, but rather between participatory and institutional democracy or authoritarianism in alliance with transnational crime.
Is there a way out?
Latin America cannot remain trapped between criminal violence and the authoritarian illusion that is spreading across various parts of the region today. This model is sustained by mega-prisons, mass arrests without evidence, class-action trials without the right to an adequate defense, and censorship of independent media. The solution lies not in surrendering basic rights in exchange for apparent security —as proposed by authoritarianism based on the logic of the “internal enemy”, but instead in building security to protect rights.
The future of the region hinges on this difference: moving toward solid and lasting institutions or falling into increasingly personalized authoritarianism. Overcoming the authoritarian trap requires democratizing security, making information transparent, empowering communities, reclaiming territories through inclusion, and re-enchanting citizens with a functioning, protective, and accountable state.
As Giovanni Falcone, a judge murdered by the Italian mafia, warned, “the insolence of organized crime is as great as the absence of the State.” This observation is more relevant than ever in Latin America. Where the State is absent, crime occupies its space with power, violence, and empty promises of order. The real solution is not to resign ourselves to this substitution, but to rebuild state legitimacy through efficiency, transparency, and the protection of citizens’ rights.
*This article was originally published in Dialogo Politico.org.