Bolivia elected a new president who will immediately face an acute economic crisis that could limit the government’s ability to tackle organized crime and push more people into criminal activity.
Rodrigo Paz of the center-right Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano – PDC) won 54% of the vote, defeating rival Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in a runoff election on October 19. Paz has pledged to strengthen customs enforcement, end illegal mining, and curb corruption. His vice-presidential pick, Edman Lara, is a charismatic ex-police captain popular for calling out alleged graft on social media and broadly credited for giving Paz a decisive electoral boost.
However, organized crime and security took a backseat to economic concerns during the campaign. The country is in the midst of a severe crisis with acute shortages of food and fuel. Inflation spiked to 23% this year, and an export slump has hit government finances, threatened the value of the currency, and dragged the country to the brink of debt default.
This could push more Bolivians towards informal and illegal economies and put pressure on the government’s capacity to combat crime at a time when it is facing several urgent criminal challenges.
Booming Cocaine Trade Attracts Transnational Organized Crime Groups
In recent years, there has been a surge in cocaine transiting through Bolivia, and the country is also a growing cocaine producer. Security forces discovered 1,501 drug laboratories in 2024, up 74% from 2023. And coca cultivation continued to expand far beyond the country’s 22,000-hectare legal limit, reaching 31,000 hectares in 2023, according to the latest statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Bolivia shares borders with five South American countries, positioning it at the heart of regional drug trafficking routes. While the country lacks large-scale homegrown trafficking organizations, there is increasing evidence foreign groups are moving in to fill the gap.
The eastern department of Santa Cruz has become a frequent flashpoint for violence linked to Brazilian drug gangs, including the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC) and the Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV). A spate of drug-related homicides in the region killed 11 people in the last three months, according to local police.
The department is close to Bolivia’s drug-producing zones and the border with Brazil, which gives it strategic importance on drug trafficking routes. Rapid economic growth in the region’s capital, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, has favored organized crime, according to Gabriela Reyes Rodas, a Bolivian organized crime expert.
“Santa Cruz has grown so much economically that ways of laundering money — concerts, luxury cars — have become invisible,” she told InSight Crime, adding that the traffickers “blend in among the people.”
Multiple high-level traffickers have felt comfortable enough to make Santa Cruz de la Sierra their home. Brazil’s most wanted trafficker, Sérgio Luiz de Freitas Filho, lived openly in a gated suburb for over a decade before being exposed by the Brazilian media outlet G1 in September. Uruguayan trafficker Sebastián Marset also lived in the city and even bought a local football team before fleeing ahead of a police raid. Both traffickers remain fugitives.
Paz has acknowledged there has been a spike in drugs intercepted while transiting the country and that these seizures represent only a “fraction” of actual drug flows. His policy plan hinted at increased cooperation between Bolivia and unnamed international partners and increased investments in technology, though he did not elaborate on a plan to confront the drug trafficking networks in the country.
Illegal Mining Boom
Surging gold prices have fueled illegal mining in Bolivia, exacerbating environmental damage and creating new opportunities for organized criminal groups.
Bolivia’s gold deposits are mined almost exclusively by small-scale cooperatives that wield significant political power and face minimal oversight, according to a recent InSight Crime investigation. They also frequently exceed the boundaries of their mining concessions, launder illicit gold, and approximately 85% operate without environmental licenses.
The cooperatives are also voracious consumers of mercury, a toxic metal used to separate gold from its ore. Between 2013 and 2023, the official value of Bolivia’s mercury imports spiked tenfold to $4.17 million, making the country Latin America’s largest importer, according to global trade monitor the Observatory for Economic Complexity
Organized crime has permeated deep into the mercury supply chain. A network that smuggled the metal from Mexico to Bolivia was allegedly supplied by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG), according to a report from the Environmental Investigation Agency, a non-profit that investigates environmental crimes. In July, authorities in Peru intercepted a record illegal 4-ton mercury shipment in transit from Mexico to Bolivia.
Paz’s campaign manifesto stated that illegal mining must be eradicated, but it stopped short of explaining how his administration would confront the complex criminal networks embedded in the sector.
Contraband Smuggling
Bolivia’s continued economic crisis also creates new room for growth of the country’s already-flourishing contraband economy.
Goods smuggled in and out of Bolivia were worth as much as $3.5 billion in 2022, nearly 8% of the country’s economic output, and smuggling is growing faster than the country’s legal economy, according to the National Chamber of Industries (Cámara Nacional de Industrias – CNI). Small-scale smuggling groups have scaled up, paid off military and border officials, and even commandeered bus companies to move larger quantities of goods.
The country’s porous borders allow a diverse range of goods to trickle in and out, from onions to precious metals. By avoiding tax and import restrictions, smugglers pocket easy profits. Economic hardship provides these groups with labor to move and sell contraband, as well as large markets for cut-price black-market merchandise.
SEE ALSO: Lake Titicaca: A Smuggler’s Paradise in Bolivia and Peru
During the campaign, Paz briefly sparked panic in neighboring countries by signaling openness to legalizing “chutos,” unlicensed vehicles, which are frequently stolen in Chile, then smuggled across the border. However, Reyes, the organized crime expert, said that fears about the legalization of chutos in the country were overblown.
Legalization could provide police with a “convenient way to identify which cars have been stolen and return them through cross-checking databases at the time of legalization,” said Reyes.
But perhaps the more serious risk is that continued failure to manage the flow of goods entering and exiting the country’s borders could further embolden the country’s criminal clans, who use the same smuggling routes to move drugs, precursor chemicals, and people.
Featured image: Rodrigo Paz watching the election results in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, on Sunday. Credit: Claudia Morales/Reuters