UN: Bolivia is hub for international drug cartels, warns Unodc
Unodc representative in Bolivia, Mónica Mendoza, asserts that the country operates as an operations centre for Mexican, Brazilian and South American cartels.
Bolivia, operations centre for transnational drug trafficking according to the UN
Bolivia has become in recent years a "hub" or central node for major international drug cartels, warned Mónica Mendoza, representative in the country of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc). El Deber reported her statements to the EFE agency, in which she notes that this reality represents at the same time an opportunity to "improve" the anti-drug fight under the current Government of Rodrigo Paz, which has already acknowledged the phenomenon.
Mendoza identified in Bolivia the presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) from Mexico, the Brazilian organisations First Command of the Capital (PCC) and Red Command (CV), as well as criminal groups from Peru and Colombia. The evidence, according to her explanation, is reflected in the number of citizens of those nationalities held in Bolivian prisons linked to "command operations structures" of those organisations.
To this is added a "significant" increase in cases of contract killing, which according to Mendoza demonstrate that these groups "are in confrontation" and "are fighting over territories". For months, contract murders have been concentrated in the border zones with Brazil, which led the Bolivian Government to deploy the Army and elite units to strengthen security in those regions.
"There is indeed a presence of cartels. We are not talking about Bolivian cartels, we are talking about organisations from other countries that operate with the approval, with the consensus of local organisations," clarified the United Nations official.
Beyond transit: a "holding" of organised crime
For Mendoza, Bolivia can no longer be viewed solely as a producer of raw material or transit territory. The problem, she stressed, "is far more complex": there is a "confluence" of crimes that includes smuggling, human trafficking, corruption and illegal mining, articulated in the manner of a "holding" or business consortium of organised crime.
Added to this scenario is the increase in coca leaf cultivation. According to the latest Unodc report, presented in September, the cultivated area increased by 7%, from 34,000 hectares in 2024 to 36,400 in 2025. Bolivia is the world's third largest producer of the shrub, behind Colombia—which in 2024 recorded 261,000 hectares—and Peru, which in 2025 reported 84,546 hectares.
Break with previous official discourse
During the Governments of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and Luis Arce (2020-2025), the authorities systematically denied the presence of cartels or major drug trafficking kingpins in Bolivia, limiting the diagnosis to supposed "emissaries" or local clans. The Paz administration marked a shift in acknowledging the operation of transnational organised crime in the country and defending arrests made, including that of Uruguayan Sebastián Marset, detained last March and extradited to the United States.
Mendoza argued that drug trafficking in Bolivia does "not" operate "at a low level", something which the Marset case puts in evidence. Furthermore, the capture of the Uruguayan would have ended what the representative termed "narco-peace": a tacit truce in which criminal organisations coexisted in a stable manner because they had distributed routes, functions and territories, generating the public perception that the problem did not exist.
Institutional infiltration and corruption
In South America, Mendoza noted, "there is a policy of expansion and infiltration of organised crime" that has "penetrated some institutions" of justice, transforming itself into "a network of corruption" to obstruct the prosecution of crime. The representative made these statements when asked about the dismissal and imprisonment of former attorney general Roger Mariaca, accused by the Bolivian Executive of protecting "narcoterrorism".
"Denying" that institutional infiltration would be "very complex," Mendoza warned, because it would allow drug trafficking to become entrenched in institutions and make it "very difficult" to recover them afterwards.
Comprehensive response and anti-money laundering regulations
For the Unodc representative, combating large-scale drug trafficking in a "unilateral or only bilateral" manner is "impossible". One of Bolivia's principal challenges, she affirmed, is to articulate a "comprehensive" response that pursues both the crime and its finances and deactivates the operational capacities of the major organisations.
Mendoza also urged Bolivia to advance in the approval of anti-money laundering regulations and asset forfeiture, and for the judicial system to hand down effective sentences in drug trafficking cases, which so far have been "very few".
The Paz Government has already adopted measures in that direction: it re-established collaboration with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), expelled from the country by Evo Morales in 2008, signed a bilateral agreement with Washington and incorporated itself into the Shield of the Americas for the fight against drug trafficking.
Source: El Deber