Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, Fenanyl and Nitazeni are conquering the world through the “new drug highways” of Latin America. After years of cocaine trafficking, transnational criminal groups that make business in these parts, thanks also to China’s rapid expansion in the port sector of the area, are opening new markets everywhere, even in Oceania. Panorama has identified at least six. The first part on the Peruvian port of Chancay, 70 kilometers from the capital Lima, inaugurated on 29 October by President Xi Jinping together with his Peruvian approval, Dina Boluarte, and managed entirely by the Chinese giant Cosco. So far China has used Mexican ports to send synthetic opioids and their precursors but now Chancay is an excellent alternative. According to a recent report by the International Coalition Against Illicite Economies, the ICAIE, the new stopover is destined to become an organized crime center, not only Latin American, but international. “In our report we consulted the local police, who agreed that both Peruvian groups and international organizations, such as Mexican signs and Chinese triads, will try to establish themselves in the new port due to its potential as a new commercial fulcrum in the region” he explains to the American press Pablo Zaballos, researcher at ICIE. But Chancay is only the tip of the iceberg.
Another report, published last December by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, The CSIS based in Washington, warns risks for the safety of Beijing expansion in the port sector of Latin America due to the lack of transparency that “facilitates creation and a tour of bribes and corruption which, with coercion, are fundamental for any criminal organization that intends to manage transport or logistics structures”. Starting with many stopovers from South America, controlled or managed by Chinese companies, now used by organized crime and the center of unpublished global routes for drug trafficking.
As demonstrated by a recent and important European operation, Much of cocaine intended for the foreign market passes through the Panama canal and the free area of Colón, one of the major logistical centers in the world. This frank zone is immediately adjacent to the International Terminal of Manzanillo and the port of Panama, both managed by a Chinese company. This is the second new Latin American drug motorway. The CSIS is the third is instead “the Terminal Container of Buenos Aires, always managed by a Chinese company, which is located on the hydro-water-Paraná, the increasingly important southern route for the transport of Andean cocaine all over the world”. Brazil, 90 percent checked by yet another Dragon company based in Hong Kong. Located in the southern state of Paraná, Paranaguá is the largest port for the export of Latin America cereals but also a crucial center for drug trafficking, especially by the Italian and Balkan mafias, due to the type of goods that are embarked, mainly soy, of which China is the main recipient. A Bulletin of the Brazilian Society of Consulting and Maritime Insurance Proinde reported that in Brazil “there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of portinfuses that sail with cocaine hidden in the bulk load, in empty spaces or attached to the hull of the ship”.
Portrinfuses are ships used for the transport of non-liquid loads, Like cereals, but also coal, raw minerals and cement, all materials not stored in the containers but in the holds. According to Proinde, the use of portinfuse is the most advantageous system for criminals because the controls are more difficult, unlike the drug smuggled in containers. The illegal substances are not packed or sealed by the transporter and, if they are discovered by the authorities, usually try to make the criminal liability fall on the crew. Last September, the Viking Operation of the Brazilian Federal Police discovered a network for cocaine trafficking in the port of Paranaguá towards the Balkans, which employed divers to hide the load of drugs in the submerged spaces of loading ships. In March 2024, China Merchants Port Holdings Co. Ltd also inaugurated with Cosco Shipping Brasil in the port in the port in the port in the port in the port of Paranaguá the route that connects the eastern coast of Latin America to China, the so -called ESA. In the same period about twenty kilos of marijuana from China were discovered which, according to the Brazilian police, were part of a load intended for the Asian country that was not withdrawn by buyers. It is a further element that confirms the use of the airport for drug trafficking towards the dragon. The fifth new drug highway is the oceanic one that starts above all from the port of Pecém, in the Brazilian state of Ceará, owned at 70 percent of the port of Rotterdam, and arrives in Australia through Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan or Hong Kong. In Oceania the island of Vanuatu in particular has become a sorting hub, also because this handkerchief of the land in the middle of the Pacific recognized – behind congruous payment – citizenship to more than two thousand foreigners, including numerous Italians linked to the ‘Ndrangheta. According to the prosecutor of San Paolo Lincoln Gakiya, who has lived escorted for years, and called a green-gold intelligence report made known in mid-February, the two main Brazilian criminal organizations, the first command of the capital, the PCC, and the Vermelho command, have reached a truce by signing an unprecedented alliance. “This union could cause an increase in the international trafficking of cocaine and, even more risky, a further strengthening of these criminal organizations,” said Gakiya.
According to experts, the goal of the truce between PCC and Vermelho command It is greater collaboration in the two main historical trafficking routes of cocaine traffic in Brazil. The first is the so -called “Caipira” route: controlled by the PCC, it starts in Bolivia, crosses several municipalities in the State of San Paolo, reaches the port of Santos and continues above all towards Africa and Europe. The other route is instead controlled by the Vermelho command: it passes along the Solimsh river, in the Amazon, where Colombian and Peruvian cocaine is loaded which then also arrives in Oceania. For Lieutenant Colonel Rodrigo Duton, who published a report for the Australian Institute of Strategic Policy on 6 February entitled The Pacific cocaine corridor. The route of a Brazilian sign towards Australia, the expansion of the PCC, which already operates in at least 23 countries, “is due to the highly profitable market of cocaine, to the commercial routes established in the Pacific, to the direct involvement in traffic logistics and to the diversification towards synthetic drugs such as methamphetamines and opioids”. For Duton “the high demand in Australia makes the country a strategic market and the PCC could adopt the production and export model of Mexican signs there”. The sixth new route is that managed by the Turkish mafias which starts above all from Puerto Bolívar, Ecuador, and from the port of Paita, in Peru, both managed by an Ankara company and from which the drugs are especially destined for the European market. In addition to these new routes, in recent months those that start from the ports of Guayaquil in Ecuador, Manzanillo in Mexico, Callao in Peru, Coronel in Chile, Santos in Brazil, many of which co-managed by the ‘Ndrangheta and which have as their destination above all the nations of the old continent have then enhanced.
