UN alerts to mafias and transnational crime in Bolivia; coca cultivation rises 7%
UNODC confirms that mafias and transnational organised crime networks operate in Bolivia. Coca cultivation reached 36,400 hectares in 2025, exceeding the legal limit by 14,400 hectares.
Bolivia exceeds legal coca cultivation limit by 65% whilst UN warns of organised crime
Bolivia harbours "mafias and connections with transnational organised crime," stated Bo Mathiasen, director of the Operations Division of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), on Tuesday upon his arrival in the country.
"Yes, there obviously is, there are mafias and there are connections with transnational organised crime, they operate in Bolivia too, we have to take that into account," Mathiasen declared.
Cultivation grows 7% and far exceeds authorised limit
According to El Deber, UNODC presented in La Paz the 2025 Coca Crop Monitoring Report for Bolivia, produced with financing from the European Union. The document reveals that coca leaf cultivation area increased from 34,000 hectares in 2024 to 36,400 in 2025, a rise of 7%.
Bolivian legislation sets 22,000 hectares as the maximum permitted in designated zones of the departments of La Paz and Cochabamba. The figure recorded in 2025 exceeds that threshold by 14,400 hectares, according to Mónica Mendoza, UNODC representative in Bolivia.
The presentation ceremony was attended by three Bolivian ministers: Héctor Huanca (Foreign Affairs), Ernesto Justiniano (Defence) and Marco Antonio Oviedo (Government).
Cochabamba tropics, zone of greatest expansion
The sharpest increase was concentrated in the central zone of the Cochabamba tropics, where cultivation area grew 22%, rising from 14,275 hectares in 2024 to 17,460 in 2025, according to Mendoza.
In the Yungas, a subtropical zone in the La Paz department, the trend was reversed: cultivation area fell 4%, from 19,230 to 18,430 hectares. In northern La Paz the increase was "modest", 4%, rising from 478 to 496 hectares.
Cultivation in protected areas and national parks also expanded: 17%, from 515 hectares in 2024 to 605 in 2025.
Eradication falls 77%
The report also records a drastic decline in eradication and rationalisation efforts, which fell 77%, from 10,000 hectares in 2024 to just 2,273 in 2025.
The study covers the final ten months of Luis Arce's Government (2020-2025), of the Movement Towards Socialism, and the first two months of Rodrigo Paz's administration, who assumed the presidency on 8 November of last year.
UNODC recommendations
The agency urged the Government to strengthen control strategies, especially in protected areas, to promote sustainable development measures alongside eradication, and to strengthen inter-institutional coordination.
Legal framework for coca leaf in Bolivia
Coca leaf has in Bolivia traditional, medicinal and cultural uses recognised by the Constitution, although part of its production is diverted to drug trafficking for cocaine production. In 2017, during the Government of Evo Morales, a law expanded the legal cultivation area from 12,000 to 22,000 hectares.
Bolivia rejoined in 2013 the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 with a reservation that permits the traditional consumption of the leaf, mainly in infusions or through chewing.
Source: El Deber