The Chapare Drug Cartel is a Bolivian criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking and human trafficking [1] that operates in the Chapare region. [2] For this, several journalists have baptized this organization simply as the Chapare Cartel [3] [4] [5]
During the entire presidency of Evo Morales in Bolivia and the expulsion of the DEA [6] from this country in 2008, drug trafficking has skyrocketed in the country. Since 2014, Bolivia is one of the principal producers of cocaine in the world. [7] According to the UN 94% of the coca production of the country goes to illegal markets. [8]
The cartel currently has strong connections with the political party of the Movement for Socialism. [9] [10] [11] For all these reasons, the Interamerican Institute for Democracy described the government of Evo Morales as that of a Narco-state . [12] This vision is shared by researcher Diego Ayo from the Vicente Pazos Kanki foundation. [13] Currently the structure of the cartel is unknown. However, according to the Peruvian journalist Jaime Bayly, the head of the cartel would be the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales [14] [15] while the coca growers unions are the main drug suppliers for the international market. [16]
The Chapare Cartel has its origins in the merger of six Federaciones Cocaleras del Trópico, in the región of Chapare. This federations are dedicated to the production and commercialization of coca leaves, the oldest being the Federación Especial de Colonizadores de Chimoré, founded in 1964. [17]
In 1996, a then unknown Evo Morales became president of the coordinating committee of the six federations of the tropics. [18]
A boost that this organization would gain would be with the assumption of Evo Morales to the presidency of the country with his first term, which began in 2006.
In 2008, Evo Morales decided to expel the DEA from the country. [19]
The Chapare region had long been declared by the Special Force for the Fight against Narcotrafficking (FELCN) as a "red zone for drug trafficking". [20]
In 2010, Evo Morales admitted to the British BBC news network that drug trafficking had permeated all levels of the state, although he accused the United States of this, without proofs. [21]
On July 29, Valentín Mejillones, Evo Morales' personal priest, was arrested for possession of 350 kg of drugs. [22]
In 2011, the General of the Bolivian Police, René Sanabria Oropeza and former anti-drug chief assigned by Evo Morales, is accused [23] and sentenced in the United States for drug trafficking. [24] That same year, Morales declared his fear that Sanabria would reveal MAS names in exchange for negotiating his sentence. [25]
In 2012, the Brazilian magazine Veja accused Evo Morales and his then minister Juan Ramón Quintana, of providing raw material for the production of drugs that were destined for Brazil [26] [27] [28]
In 2012, former senator Roger Pinto asked Brazil for political asylum for fear of an attack on his personal security and for having "evidence of corruption and links with drug trafficking at the highest levels of the government of President Evo Morales". [29]
In September 2013, a ghost town exclusively built for drug production was discovered in Oruro and the media points responsibility to the government. [30]
That same year, in November, Luis Cutipa Salva, then a substitute deputy of the MAS was arrested for diverting 45,000 tons of coca leaf to drug trafficking hot spots.[ citation needed ]
In September 2015, former Bolivian businessman José Luis Sejas Rosales is arrested for an international arrest warrant for drug trafficking in Argentina. [31] Sejas Rosales was a former advisor to Yacimientos Petrolifos Fiscales Bolivianos. [32]
In July 2017, Romer Gutierrez Quezada, a former MAS adviser, was arrested in Brazil when he tried to enter 100 kg of drugs. [33]
In October 2017, in a joint operation between the Brazilian Federal Police and the Matto Grosso Military Police, a plane containing 480 kg of cocaine was captured, and arrested, in this country, Carmen Iris Lima Lobo, former candidate for the sub-government of the department of Beni. [34] Previously, in September, his nephew, Abio Adhemar Andrade Lima Lobo, was arrested in this same country for trying to enter Brazil 480 kg. of cocaine. [35]
On April 18, 2018, the former consul of Bolivia in Brazil, Haisen Ribero, is arrested for possessing 528 kg. of high purity cocaine. [36] Days later, at the request of the government, he is released. [37]
On April 23, 2019, Gonzalo Medina, former director of the FELCN and the captain of the Bolivian Police, Fernando Moreira, are arrested on alleged drug trafficking charges. [38]
On June 4 of that same year, another MAS official, Mayerling Castedo, was arrested, along with members of her family (her children: Darío and Joice Candia Castedo as well as her son-in-law Hugo Yañez and her nephew, Luís Darío Candia Zelada) [39] by members of the police for alleged drug trafficking. [40]
On September 13, 2019, Winston Julio Rodriguez was arrested for possession of 166 kg of cocaine. Newspapers of the country begin to circulate photos of Evo Morales next to Winston Julio Rodriguez. [41]
On December 18, former consul Diego Fernando Vega Ibarra was arrested in Argentina for drug trafficking in that country. [42]
On February 6, 2020, Dora Vallejos, wife of drug trafficker Bismark Carlos Padilla and personal friend of former MAS minister Carlos Romero and General Gonzalo Medina, was formally arrested for drug trafficking. [43]
On March 5, 2020, Terán and Elba Terán, sisters of Margarita Terán (a member of the MAS party), are sentenced to 15 years in prison for the crime of drug trafficking. [44]
On April 10 of that year, Faustino Yucra, a former coca grower leader and friend of Evo Morales, was arrested, accused of drug trafficking, terrorism and sedition. [45]
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén is a Mexican drug lord and the former leader of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Originally a mechanic in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, he entered the cartel by killing Juan García Abrego's friend and competitor Salvador Gómez, after the former's arrest in 1996. As confrontations with rival groups heated up, Osiel Cárdenas sought and recruited over 30 deserters from the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales to form the cartel's armed wing. Los Zetas served as the hired private mercenary army of the Gulf Cartel.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come from its indigenous population, his administration worked towards the implementation of left-wing policies, focusing on the legal protections and socioeconomic conditions of Bolivia's previously marginalized indigenous population and combating the political influence of the United States and resource-extracting multinational corporations. Ideologically a socialist, he has led the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party since 1998.
Ismael Mario Zambada García, also known as El Mayo, is a Mexican former drug lord, co-founder and top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Before he assumed leadership of the entire cartel, he allegedly served as the logistical coordinator for its Guzmán-Zambada organization, which has overseen the trafficking of cocaine and heroin into Chicago and other US cities by aircraft, narcosubs, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles.
Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas is a Colombian and German former drug lord who was co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. Born to a German father and Colombian mother, he was the first high-level drug trafficker extradited to the United States, after which he was released from prison in the United States after 33 years in 2020. Originally from Armenia, Colombia, Lehder eventually ran a cocaine transport empire on Norman's Cay island, 210 miles (340 km) off the Florida coast in the central Bahamas.
Gilberto José Rodríguez Orejuela was a Colombian drug lord and one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel. Orejuela formed the cartel with his brother, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, José Santacruz Londoño, and Hélmer Herrera. The cartel emerged to prominence in the early 1990s, and was estimated to control about 80% of the American and 90% of the European cocaine markets in the mid-1990s. Rodríguez Orejuela was captured after a 1995 police campaign by Colombian authorities and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He obtained early release in 2002, and was re-arrested in 2003, after which he was extradited to the United States. There, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, where he died in 2022.
A narcocorrido is a subgenre of the Regional Mexican corrido genre, from which several other genres have evolved. This type of music is heard and produced on both sides of the Mexico–US border. It uses a danceable, polka, waltz or mazurka rhythmic base.
The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
Bolivia–United States relations were established in 1837 with the first ambassadorial visit from the United States to Peru–Bolivian Confederation. The Confederation dissolved in 1839, and bilateral relations did not occur until 1848 when the United States recognized Bolivia as a sovereign state and appointed John Appleton as the Chargé d'Affaires.
The domestic policy of the Evo Morales administration refers to the domestic policy initiatives of the former President of Bolivia, including past pre-presidential advocacies by Morales.
Roberto Suárez Gómez, also known as the King of Cocaine, was a Bolivian drug lord and trafficker who played a major role in the expansion of cocaine trafficking in Bolivia. In his prime, Suárez made $400 million annually, was one of the major suppliers of the Medellín Cartel as well as the leader of the largest Bolivian drug empire, and was considered to be the biggest cocaine producer in the world.
The history of Bolivia since 1982 begins with the restorations of democracy after the rule of the military junta of 1982. Evo Morales held the presidency from 2006 to 2019. A new constitution was enacted in 2009. Bolivia's population has roughly doubled over this period, from 5 million in 1980 to 10 million as of 2012.
The Villa Tunari Massacre was a 27 June 1988 mass murder committed by UMOPAR troops in response to a protest by coca-growing peasants (cocaleros) in the town of Villa Tunari in Chapare Province, Bolivia. The cocalero movement had mobilized since late May 1988 in opposition to coca eradication under Law 1008, then on the verge of becoming law. According to video evidence and a joint church-labor investigative commission, UMOPAR opened fired on unarmed protesters, at least two of whom were fatally shot, and many of whom fled to their deaths over a steep drop into the San Mateo River. The police violence caused the deaths of 9 to 12 civilian protesters, including three whose bodies were never found, and injured over a hundred. The killings were followed by further state violence in Villa Tunari, Sinahota, Ivirgarzama, and elsewhere in the region, including machine gun fire, beatings, and arrests.
Narcotics in Bolivia, South America, is a subject that primarily involves the coca crop, used in the production of the drug, cocaine. Trafficking and corruption have been two of the most prominent negative side-effects of the illicit narcotics trade in Bolivia and the country's government has engaged in negotiations with the United States (US) as result of the industry's ramifications.
The Milenio Cartel, or Cártel de los Valencia, was a Mexican criminal organization based in Michoacán. It relocated to Jalisco in the early 2000s. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel was born from the splintering of the Milenio Cartel.
This is a list of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords as published by Mexican federal authorities on 23 March 2009. According to a BBC Mundo Mexico report, the 37 drug lords "have jeopardized Mexico national security."
Coca has been cultivated in medium-altitude parts of the Bolivian Andes since at least the Inca era, primarily in the Yungas north and east of La Paz. Cultivation expanded substantially in the 1980s into the Chapare region of Cochabamba and some production flowed into the international cocaine market. The US-backed efforts to criminalize and eradicate coca as part of the War on Drugs were met by the cocalero movement's growing capacity to organize. Violence between drug police and the Bolivian armed forces on one side and the movement on the other occurred episodically between 1987 and 2003. The cocaleros became an increasingly important political force during this period, co-founding the Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples party. Coca growers from both the Yungas and the Chapare have advocated for policies of "social control" over coca growing, maintaining a pre-set maximum area of cultivation as an alternative to drug war policies. In 2005, cocalero union leader Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia. Morales has pursued a combined policy of legalizing coca production in the Chapare and Yungas and eradication of the crop elsewhere.
Los Rastrojos is a Colombian drug cartel and paramilitary group engaged in the Colombian armed conflict. The group was formed by Norte del Valle cartel capo Wilber Varela, alias "Jabon" and one of his right-hand men, "Diego Rastrojo", around 2004 when Varela fell out with fellow-capo Diego Leon Montoya, alias "Don Diego". The group became independent after the murder of its main founder in Venezuela in 2008 and at its height was one of the most important drug trafficking organizations in Colombia.
The Clan del Golfo, also known as Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and formerly called Los Urabeños and Clan Úsuga, is a prominent Colombian neo-paramilitary group and currently the country's largest drug cartel.
José González Valencia is a Mexican suspected drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a criminal group based in Jalisco. He is part of a clan that heads a CJNG money laundering branch known as Los Cuinis. Since 2015, González Valencia reportedly held a leading role within the CJNG as the security chief of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the top leader of the criminal group. Security forces in the U.S. and Mexico suspect he was also responsible for coordinating drug trafficking operations from Mexico to the U.S., Asia, and Europe.
Andrónico Rodríguez Ledezma is a Bolivian cocalero activist, political scientist, politician, and trade unionist serving as president of the Senate since 2020. A member of the Movement for Socialism, he serves as senator for Cochabamba. Rodríguez's lengthy career in the cocalero union hierarchy saw him serve as general secretary of the 21 September Workers' Center from 2015 to 2016 and as executive of the Mamoré Bulo Bulo Federation from 2016 to 2018, in addition to a multitude of other minor positions. He has served as vice president of the Coordination Committee of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba since 2018 and held office as president of the organization from 2019 to 2020 in the absence of the body's longtime leader, Evo Morales.