In recent years, South America's vast riverine networks comprised of the Amazon basin, other major waterways and their thousands of tributaries, have transformed into major arteries in the ever-expanding flow of cocaine and illegally extracted goods to global illicit markets, including strategically important minerals. This transformation is part of a new wave of transnational organized crime driven by multiple factors including: the shift of cocaine markets toward Europe; the expanding use of ports on the Atlantic coast in this evolving dynamic of emerging illicit markets; new extra-regional criminal actors; and the Trump administration's aggressive use kinetic force to destroy or disable dozens of traditional cocaine transportation nodes–go-fast boats along the Pacific coast of South America and the Caribbean coastline. With the most efficient cocaine transport systems crippled, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) have adapted, turning increasingly to riverine networks for cocaine and a plethora of other illicit products. Though it is complex, slower and less efficient, these networks are highly reliable. These riverine networks have long been supply routes for rural guerrilla armies, smaller scale smugglers and contraband networks. They are also a vital economic artery carrying tons of legal products including soy, timber, and minerals, moved on the vast system on thousands of barges that transit international borders with virtually no inspection or control. Paraguay has the third largest fleet in the world with 3,000 registered barges. Thus they can be expanded quickly to accommodate the new flows of illicit products, including cocaine, gold and other minerals, timber, precursor chemicals, and weapons. This adaptation comes with the rise of a new key element as TCOs and extra-regional actors are diversifying into gold, timber, wildlife, weapons, and precursor chemicals. Criminal groups have begun mining and moving strategic and critical minerals, such as coltan and tungsten in the Amazon, where the only export routes are by river. The extraction of minerals, now at the strategic center of geopolitical global competition, is driving waves of violence and environmental catastrophe pitting buyers from the PRC, narco-guerrilla criminal groups, indigenous communities and local Community Embedded Transnational Armed Groups (CETAGs) in a sprawling conflict across borders.
