What can Washington’s new “cartel coalition” deliver?
What does the arrest of CJNG operators in Europe say about the group’s resilience?
And can a joint police push stop Brazil’s two biggest gangs from carving up Bolivia’s border with Brazil?
This week’s top three organized crime stories in On the Radar.
‘Shield of the Americas’ Meets in Panama
The Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C), the 17-nation bloc launched by the Trump administration, met in Panama City this week to begin planning joint action against drug trafficking and organized crime. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth arrived Wednesday to deliver remarks at the forum, and the gathering took place as the Pentagon retired Joint Task Force-Southern Spear, the operation behind the lethal boat strikes that have killed more than 220 people over the last year.
There are questions about what A3C can actually deliver. The coalition is largely a bloc of right-leaning governments keen to align with Trump’s strategy, the latest addition being Colombia under its new president, Abelardo de la Espriella. But Brazil and Mexico—two countries central to the region’s drug trade—are absent. The A3C’s founding declaration includes only four points, with no long-term commitments on burden-sharing among member states and no proposals for tracking cross-border criminal flows or investigating government corruption. Instead, the framework leans heavily on militarized enforcement, ignoring the drivers that sustain organized crime: weak judicial systems, poor governance, and the poverty that keeps illicit economies profitable.
InSight Crime’s investigation into what the firepower behind Southern Spear has actually achieved found little evidence the strikes have dented cocaine flows, even as the death toll and price tag have climbed—a pattern that A3C’s militarized focus risks repeating.
CJNG Operators Charged Over Guns-for-Drugs Deal in Czech Republic
The US Justice Department this week unsealed an indictment against four alleged members of the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) for allegedly negotiating a deal to trade fentanyl and methamphetamine for European machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and mortars. Two of the men were extradited and appeared in court this week; the other two await extradition. Prosecutors describe the network’s alleged financier as the godson of captured CJNG regional commander Audias Flores Silva, alias “El Jardinero.”
The case underscores how the CJNG’s international reach now extends well beyond drug trafficking and into arms procurement in Europe—even as the group’s leadership structure keeps absorbing hits from Mexican and US authorities. But removing a leader or mid-level operator rarely shuts a group down; more often it fractures it into smaller factions that compete violently for territory and don’t answer to any central command. The CJNG’s leadership structure has already been reshuffled repeatedly this year, yet the group’s drug and arms trafficking operations continue.
Bolivia and Brazil Launch Joint Border Push as PCC and Red Command Fight for Territory
Bolivia and Brazil are set to launch a binational security plan, Secure Borders (Fronteras Seguras), on Thursday in the border town of Guayaramerín, following a deadly turf war thought to be between Brazil’s two largest criminal organizations. Bolivian authorities have already deployed more than 300 police to the region after a wave of killings they blame on Brazil’s Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV) and the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC), which they say are fighting over a cocaine export corridor.
Bolivia’s emergence as a battleground reflects a broader shift: the PCC and Red Command have been steadily moving their regional operations out of Paraguay and into Bolivia, drawn by its proximity to coca-growing regions and its more than 3,400-kilometer border with Brazil. A binational police plan may slow the violence but does not address why Bolivia’s borders have become so attractive to Brazil’s gangs in the first place: the area is difficult to patrol, corruption is rampant, and until recently, there was no Drug Enforcement Administration presence in the country.