Sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, Paraguay’s strategic location allows its criminal actors – who have increasingly relied on rampant corruption – to ship drugs through South America and on to Europe. While the country does not have any homegrown hegemonic criminal organizations, guerrillas from the Paraguayan People’s Army (Ejercito del Pueblo Paraguayo – EPP) continue to test the state’s authority while securing income through extorting rural landowners and kidnapping. Cigarette and other contraband smuggling is rife.
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Europe Cocaine Hauls Reach New Record Heights
While the seizure of 23 tons of cocaine by German, Belgian and Dutch police, the largest-ever haul of the drug in the EU, was noteworthy, it serves as merely the…
Paraguay Grapples with Evolving Crime, Persistent Corruption
Paraguay has long been a key link in South America's drug trafficking chain, but has grown in importance with the emergence of new criminal players and economies.
Alto Paraguay, Paraguay
One of Paraguay’s most sparsely populated but most homicidal departments, Alto Paraguay serves as an important cocaine transit corridor.
Paraguay Profile
Paraguay has enjoyed relative stability following its transition to democracy in the early 1990s. However, the nation is the region's largest producer of marijuana and traffics more illegal cigarettes than any country in the Western Hemisphere. Organized crime in Paraguay benefits from rampant, widespread corruption, and criminal opportunities come from being wedged between South America’s two largest drug consumers in Brazil and Argentina, and being adjacent to one of the region’s burgeoning narcotics hubs in Bolivia.
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In a Paraguay border state, drug traffickers and dirty politicians find common ground, and political fights spill into the underworld.
Itapúa is a minor marijuana producer but an important transit corridor for cannabis smuggled into Argentina. Some areas of the river border it shares with Argentina are considered hotspots for…
Boquerón is an important part of regional cocaine trafficking routes due to its strategic location on Paraguay's border with Bolivia and its vast stretches of unpopulated land.
Alto Paraná is home to some of Paraguay’s most dynamic criminal economies. Contraband goods continue to flood Brazil and Argentina via Ciudad del Este and surrounding river routes.
Amambay is at the heart of Paraguay’s most worrying organized crime trends: cocaine trafficking, marijuana production, and the rise of violent criminal groups.
Paraguay’s capital is a transit point for Bolivian cocaine shipped through the Tri-Border area, bound for Brazil. The Paraguay River, which passes through Asunción, also serves as a smuggling route…
