Identify and asses armed groups and criminal actors through the largest database on organized crime in the region. Understand each group’s history and leadership structure, and review in-depth profiles of key criminals.

  • The Shottas
    The Shottas are one of the leading criminal groups in Colombia’s port city of Buenaventura. The group gained notoriety due to its fierce and violent rivalry with the city’s other principal criminal group, the Spartans (Espartanos). In 2022, both groups agreed to participate in President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan, which seeks to establish an “urban peace laboratory” in Buenaventura as part of the greater aim to end the country’s decades-long conflict.
  • FARC
    The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — FARC) were Colombia’s largest irregular army. They operated in various regions of the country in search of resources to finance their nearly 50-year war against the State. The FARC was the oldest and most important guerrilla group in the Western Hemisphere, and for a long time, they financed their political and military battle against the Colombian government through kidnapping, extortion, and participating in the drug trade on various levels.
  • Griselda Blanco, alias ‘La Madrina’
    Ana Griselda Blanco Restrepo was one of the pioneers of the cocaine trafficking pipeline from Colombia to the United States. As a key trafficker in the 1970s and 1980s, she played a leading role in the Miami drug wars of the period. Blanco was known as “La Madrina” (The Godmother) due to her alleged relationship with Pablo Escobar, and “La Viuda Negra” (The Black Widow) in reference to the deaths of three of her husbands.