Thread by @InSightCrime

This month, as InSight Crime celebrates 10 years of investigating organized Crime in the Americas, read this thread with 10 criminal economies that we have studied in depth.

#10YearsInSightCrime

Cocaine. More coca is being cultivated to produce this drug than ever before in Colombia, with traffickers snaking their way up through Central America to dispatch shipments that eventually reach consumers in the United States and Europe:
insightcrime.org/tag/cocaine/ (1/10)

Contraband. A gateway illicit economy for many of Latin America’s major drug traffickers, criminal groups throughout the region move everything from illicit cigarettes to gasoline and black-market medical equipment amid the coronavirus.
insightcrime.org/tag/contraband/ (2/10)

Money laundering. Powerful crime groups and corrupt officials alike rely on local and international financial systems to clean illicit proceeds from international drug sales or money stolen from state coffers via intricate corruption schemes. insightcrime.org/tag/money-laun… (3/10)

Environmental Crimes. Encompassing a wide spectrum of illicit activities, including illegal wood and wildlife trafficking, illegal mining and land grabbing, this criminal economy continues to be one of the least studied in Latin America.
insightcrime.org/tag/environmen… (4/10)

Human Smuggling. Poverty, marginalization and violence are among the many complex factors that continue to spark large migration flows out of Latin America and to the United States, which criminal groups have been keen to exploit.
insightcrime.org/tag/human-smug… (5/10)

Fentanyl. This is the one drug that has seen the greatest spike in popularity in recent years, fueling not only the US opioid crisis, but also the brokering of new relationships between criminal groups across Latin America and the United States:
insightcrime.org/tag/fentanyl/ (6/10)

Marijuana. As one of the most widely used drugs across the United States and Latin America, criminal groups as diverse as the MS13 in El Salvador and the PCC in Brazil have all seized on the opportunity to profit from supplying consumers.
insightcrime.org/tag/marijuana/ (7/10)

Arms Trafficking. Exerting criminal control over local communities or battling rival groups over the rights to key territory would be nearly impossible without weapons, a large portion of which are trafficked over the US-Mexico border each year.
insightcrime.org/tag/arms-traff… (8/10)

Illegal Mining. From Venezuela to Ecuador and Colombia, this has become the fastest growing criminal economy across Latin America wherever there are deposits to exploit, rivaling the drug trade for profits in mineral-rich corners of South America.
insightcrime.org/tag/mining/ (9/10)

Homicides. From contract killings to massacres and public displays of murder, Latin America continually ranks as one of the most homicidal regions in the entire world, with firearms playing a central role in the bloodshed.
insightcrime.org/indepth/homici… (10/10)

Join InSight Crime tomorrow, November 18, at 9am EST to celebrate our 10th anniversary and look behind the scenes of our investigations covering organized crime across Latin America over the past decade.

#10YearsInSightCrime
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