Fourth Transnational Criminal Wave: New Extra Regional Actors and Shifting Markets Transform Latin America’s Illicit Economies and Transnational Organized Crime Alliances

Find our NEW ICAIE Research Report by our Senior Advisor, Douglas Farah, published by Florida International University, Summer, 19 June 2024.

Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) in Latin America are undergoing significant transformations, driven by new alliances with extra-regional actors and supported by ideologically flexible authoritarian governments. These changes pose serious threats to democratic governance, the rule of law, and U.S. strategic interests in the hemisphere.

The emergence of new actors, markets, and products is causing fragmentation among traditional groups while consolidating criminal economies through alliances with entities such as the Italian ‘Ndrangheta, Albanian trafficking clans, and Turkish crime syndicates.

This ICAIE report examines the evolving transnational criminal ecosystem in Latin America, highlighting the creation of new markets and convergence centers for extra-regional actors. The diversification of criminal activities is leading to a volatile reordering of criminal economies and relationships among TCOs, with long-term strategic implications for the United States and its allies.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) in Latin America, aided and abetted by new extra-regional alliances and protected by ideologically neutral authoritarian governments, are undergoing historic transformations that pose existential threats to democratic governance, the rule of law, and U.S. strategic interests in the hemisphere.

New actors, markets, and products drive both fragmentation among traditional groups and the consolidation of criminalized economies through new alliances with Latin American TCOs and the Italian ‘Ndrangheta, Albanian trafficking clans, Turkish crime syndicates, and other extra-regional groups.

This ICAIE research focuses on the multiple transformations that are creating a new dynamic and opportunistic transnational criminal ecosystem in the region that is opening new markets for new products and providing new convergence centers for extra-regional actors. This diversification is forcing a volatile, profound reordering and restructuring of criminal economies and the relationships among TCOs.

This reordering of the transnational organized crime landscape in the region will have longterm strategic repercussions for the United States and its key hemispheric allies.

 Both the new cocaine networks and synthetic drug production often run through the Mexican Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación or CJNG), which emerged dominant among the Mexican cartels in recent years. The CJNG and its rival, the Sinaloa Cartel, are now moving aggressively to form strategic alliances for cocaine trafficking in Europe while working to dominate synthetic drug production and distribution.

There are two main economic drivers of today’s new illicit economies: the changing dynamics as the global cocaine market shifts to Europe and beyond and a massive rise in the production and consumption of synthetic drugs in the U.S. market. Both drivers render many traditional counternarcotics strategies obsolete and ineffective.

To develop a sustainable and successful strategy going forward, the United States must:

• Develop a whole-of-government strategy, focusing not only on interdiction but also on building alliances with European allies across sectors who see the threat of newly empowered TCOs.

• Join allies in the European Union, Great Britain, and Latin America in developing a joint and coordinated strategy to confront malign extra-regional actors and undercut their support for synthetic drug production.

• Create a task force of leaders in the law enforcement and intelligence communities empowered to reorient and recalibrate policy initiatives, funding streams, and operational authorities to the new realities of the fourth transnational crime wave in Latin America.

Farah, Douglas, International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE), “Fourth Transnational Criminal Wave: New Extra Regional Actors and Shifting Markets Transform Latin America’s Illicit Economies and Transnational Organized Crime Alliances” (2024). Research Publications. 64.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/jgi_research/64