Drug traffickers, illegal miners and dissidents: The triple alliance devastating the Amazon

When the coca leaf in the Peruvian Amazon turns dark green, the Indigenous people who live in communities scattered over the thick jungle on the Colombian side of the Amazon River already know what is coming. It is harvest time. That means that several Peruvian “managers” cross the river — which is the border there, and for 110 kilometers (68 miles) — in small boats to pick up those who are willing to scrape the leaf. They take them through the same waters and then accompany them on a four- or five-hour walk, on trails that go from towns like Iceland, Santa Rosa, or Bellavista, to farms that combine hectares full of coca crops with kitchens where they apply chemistry to the crop. “The Peruvian authorities know that we are going to pass through. The danger is not there,” says Víctor, a 47-year-old Colombian Indigenous man using a pseudonym, who remembers having made at least five trips since 2020.

“The danger is if you start talking to someone else on those farms or go into the kitchens, because they are all guarded by armed men who will kill you. They bury you in the mud,” he adds. Without talking to anyone before returning, Víctor scrapes leaves for four or five days during which they give him lentils with yuca to eat and a roof to sleep under. At the end, he puts the leaves in a sack that is weighed by the “managers.” Despite being on Peruvian soil, they pay him between 200 and 300 Brazilian reales, because a good part of what is produced crosses the nearby border with that country. If it is not banknotes, the other currency used is the base paste.

“We are slaves to the white powder,” he says, standing in front of his wooden house, pointing to his nose with his fingers. In his village, small children play with plastic trucks that they drag by a rope, while the youngest are almost all glued to the screens of their cell phones. Several of them also try their luck on these trips, which even include entire families. They are worried because since the coronavirus pandemic, these trips have skyrocketed, as has drug use among teenagers. In an attempt to keep them busy, they have created soccer championships, with cups and medals. “We weren’t like that,” says the community leader, as he looks at a thread of black smoke coming out of the Peruvian side of the jungle. He speculates with other Indigenous people. “They must be burning stoves,” he says.

It is not just cocaine, marijuana, or crack paste that is spread before the eyes of the military and civil authorities of Colombia, Peru and Brazil in this triple Amazonian border, in the heart of one of the most fundamental forests for climate regulation in the world. Gold, precious woods, and mercury also pass through the area that drug trafficking has established as a sanctuary since the 1980s. A traffic that is managed by criminal alliances that, after the signing of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC in 2016, have been forged between Colombian dissidents, Peruvian drug traffickers, and Brazilian organized crime groups.

From the FARC version of drug trafficking to the “triple alliance”

The alliance between Colombian armed groups and Brazilian drug traffickers and arms dealers is long-standing. Although the former FARC tried to gain a foothold in the area with the 63rd Front and managed to bring in financial commissions, maintaining troops in such an inhospitable jungle was always very costly and they did not see it as strategically viable. “Being such an isolated department, and above all with a small population, it never had much development, given that the social base is fundamental in an insurgent project,” explains a former commander of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc. But they were already negotiating with Brazilian drug traffickers, who traveled to Colombia to sell weapons and buy cocaine. In a negotiation of this type, the Colombian army captured the Brazilian drug lord Fernandinho Beira-Mar in February 2001. He was one of the leaders of the Comando Vermelho, a criminal organization that was formed in a prison in Rio de Janeiro and today is by far the most powerful in Brazil.

More than 20 years later, the alliance between Comando Vermelho and the Colombian dissidents is looking stronger. After the signing of the 2016 peace agreement, the Amazon, Putumayo, Puré and Caquetá rivers, which flow from the Andean mountains in Colombia toward Brazil in the east, have become an epicenter of transnational crime. The first dissidents to arrive in the Colombian department of Amazonas were men from the Frente Primero, commanded at the time by Iván Mordisco, in 2016. They appeared in the Mirití-Paraná and Yaigojé Apaporis reservations, in that jungle area in the north of the department of Amazonas, neighbouring Guainía and close to Brazil, apparently convinced of the presence of mining multinationals that they could extort. What followed was the search for criminal levies that take advantage of natural wealth, the scarce state presence, and the alliance with the Brazilians.

Today, there are two Colombian groups that have their links and movements mapped out, and they have studied Peruvian, Brazilian, and Colombian intelligence, despite the transnational coordination efforts of the three countries. According to seven sources consulted for this report, they buy corrupt officials or “have a payroll” so that everything flows.

One is the Carolina Ramírez Front, which has its base in the Putumayo department, several hundred kilometers further west and between the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers. It is part of the Amazonas Bloc, whose top leader is Iván Mordisco. Colombian military intelligence says they have 53 armed men and 33 militiamen. They have come down the Caquetá, which crosses the Amazonas department toward Brazil. They use it as a route for illegal trafficking, through which they take out the merchandise in canoes, at night, evading state controls. That same bloc has another foothold in the department with the Jhonier Arenas Front, which according to the calculations of Colombian military intelligence totals 31 armed men and five militiamen, and also operates along the Caquetá River.

The other Colombian armed group involved is the Border Commandos, which has been fighting for control of trafficking routes with the Carolina Ramírez Front. The leader of the 618 armed men and 143 militiamen estimated by Colombian military intelligence is known as Araña (Spider). After forming part of the now fragmented dissident umbrella of the Second Marquetalia, he is now a member the so-called National Coordinator of the Bolivarian Army.

In the Amazon, there is a support network that answers to Jhon Fredy García, alias “Pitufo (Smurf),” and that warns about military movements, contacts Brazilians in border areas such as Tarapacá or La Pedrera, and Peruvian drug traffickers in towns located on border rivers such as Puerto Alegría, Puerto Arica, and El Encanto. According to sources in the area, the Border Commandos distributes “salaries” that range from two to 3.5 million pesos (about $400 to $800) to its members at the lowest levels, gives them “vacations,” and makes clear that if someone does not want to return, they will find someone to replace them the next day.

On the Brazilian side, the Comando Vermelho not only receives illegal drug production from Colombian dissidents, but also from drug traffickers in Peru, from the farms on which Víctor and dozens of Indigenous people travel on a journey that may not have a return ticket. In recent years, coca processing has grown in Peru, which used to export it to Colombia to finish the transformation of the leaf into cocaine, as explained in a study published in 2023 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Peruvian National Police, and the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs. With this, a criminal ecosystem of narcos, farm owners and “managers,” who come to terms with their Brazilian partners, has emerged.

In Iceland, a Peruvian town in the Yavarí district with wooden houses on stilts, a logger, wearing a cap and without a shirt, explains, while sanding a board, how a resident was caught a few months ago with several kilos of cocaine paste. “A lot of people from here in Peru go to scrape, but those who are most involved in this work are the Colombians. Here they take the merchandise out through the rivers, at dawn.”

At the police station — a green house that announces itself as the local authority and where there are 11 uniformed officers — technical non-commissioned officer Luis Enrique Vela Lozano, who has just taken over the post, says that the uniformed officers are rotated every six or seven months and that he has no information on this subject. “These are rumors and those who were here before did not inform us. We only patrol the town, we make rounds on the bridges to prevent marijuana consumption among young people.” While there are at least 20 tourist boats parked on the river bank waiting for passengers, the official points out that the police only have two boats, without motors.

Golden profits

In 2016, in the Río Puré National Natural Park — which flows into the Caquetá River in Brazilian territory and is now full of illegal mining dredges — Colombia’s National System of Protected Areas (SINAP) built a cabin. This state presence seems small, but it is unusual in thousands of kilometers of jungle and for years it prevented gold mining in that basin. But not permanently. The Puré is already another highway for dissidents, allowing them to connect more easily with the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers, and thus circumvent the Colombian and Brazilian border controls at the crossings of La Pedrera, Tarapacá, Villa Betancourt, and Ipiranga.

In 2020, the cabin was vandalized and destroyed. That same year, armed individuals who identified themselves as members of the Carolina Ramírez Front threatened SINAP officials. They had to leave and have not been able to return. This interrupted the work they were doing in a coordinated manner with Indigenous peoples, which has been essential to preserving the forest in the largest department in Colombia. Since then, they have only been able to protect the Puré River from the air and with the help of satellite images. The few overflights they manage to make each year show them the extent of the catastrophe: at least 30 dredges have gone up the river to the Colombian section, in addition to another 120 on the Brazilian side. These “dragons” are floating houses that destroy the environment, as they contaminate the river with the mercury that separates the gold from other materials.

“I would really like the Attorney General’s Office and the Judicial Police to see this as a system,” says Edilberto Cortés, an army general and commander of the 26th Brigade, based in Leticia, in his office. “Illegal mining needs fuel to work 24 hours a day. Families live there who eat every day, who have StarLink, Direct TV… how are they calm?” This seasoned Black Hawk pilot does not have a single helicopter or plane in his unit, which is in charge of supervising thousands of kilometers of dense jungle. He must ask Bogotá for them when he needs them, and there is no guarantee then that he will be sent one. The Colombian army has an infantry battalion deployed in El Encanto with 150 men, 100 more soldiers in Puerto Arica, another 100 in Tarapacá, and a further 150 in La Chorrera. But to go to the source of the illegal economy, Cortés must carry out air operations.

The “system” Cortés speaks of threatens the Puré, other small rivers such as the Cotuhé or the Puretê, and the larger ones: the Putumayo and the Caquetá. Profits from illegal mining are significant, experts agree, although difficult to pinpoint. Prices fluctuate and income varies with luck or the timing of work.

Rough calculations suggest that a gram of gold costs approximately 360,000 Colombian pesos, or about $80. A large “dragon” can produce 150 grams a day, worth about 54 million pesos or $12,000. After deducting expenses, the army estimates a monthly profit of more than 1.25 billion pesos, or almost $300,000 dollars. A smaller dredge, the “cap dredge,” can produce 100 grams a day (36 million pesos or $8,000 a day, and a monthly profit of about $194,000), and the smaller “dredge diver,” 2.5 grams (900,000 pesos, or about $200, for a profit of $4,500 a month).

Once the gold has been extracted, the profits are almost fixed because, in addition to the difficulty that the authorities have in intervening, tracing the gold is very difficult. “When is it illegal? When I arrive and find it in the dredge. If the mineral reaches Leticia, there is nothing to be done. I can get on a plane with five bracelets and three gold rings, I arrive in Bogotá, and I deliver it there,” explains Cortés.

For the Comando Vermelho, financing illegal mining is also a way of laundering drug money. According to the International Crisis Group, it also buys gold directly from miners. In contrast, Colombian dissidents demand “voluntary contributions” or “security fees,” euphemisms for their extortion. Only occasionally do they have their own dredges, which requires more capital and logistics, but generates greater profits. “They set up the artisanal dredges, hire the same people from the area and bring divers, who are the ones who earn the most, kids who go into the river to look for gold,” says Elizalde, the regional defender.

Apparently, this illegal network is not the only one that feeds on the system. Bram Ebus and Rodrigo Pedroso say, in a report on the Amazon Underworld project, that on the Brazilian side, miners told them that they pay “Military Police agents 30 grams of gold per dredge every month in exchange for protection.” The institution denies the allegation.

“They pay off many military personnel to say they saw nothing and allow the entry of rafts, fuel, and mercury,” explains a Colombian official who monitors illegal gold mining in Puré. General Cortés says he has not received formal complaints of corruption since he took office in December 2023, but he does not mince his words. “I would be wrong to believe that there are no people in the environment who do not do their job.”

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