Illegal gold mining has quietly overtaken cocaine as the most profitable criminal activity in parts of Latin America, reshaping the region’s criminal landscape and fueling a new wave of violence, corruption, and environmental devastation. As global gold prices hit historic highs, traffickers, cartels, and armed groups are shifting their resources from drug trafficking to the far more lucrative—and easier to launder—trade in illicit gold.
The shift comes even as the Trump administration targets alleged drug-smuggling vessels with drone strikes amid a surge in cocaine production in Colombia and Peru. But the real story lies deeper in the Amazon, where the booming gold trade has become inseparable from the coca economy.
Gold: The New Cocaine of the Amazon
Peru has become ground zero for this transformation. Former Peruvian foreign minister Elmer Schialer revealed in July that the illegal gold economy in Peru is now seven times larger than the country’s cocaine trade. The economics are simple: while cocaine is illegal from cultivation to distribution, gold—once refined—is indistinguishable from legally mined metal, giving criminals an easy way to launder profits.
Peru, alongside Colombia and Brazil, has witnessed an aggressive expansion of coca crops as well. Cocaine production in Peru exceeded 800 tons last year, according to the U.S. State Department, driven by new coca strains that thrive in the Amazon lowlands.
Amazonian regions like Ucayali have seen explosive growth in coca farms, clandestine landing strips, and trafficking routes. A report by Amazon Watch found that criminal groups have carved more than 100 secret airstrips through Peruvian forests, many surrounded by coca plantations. As the illegal gold trade expands, these very same routes have become dual-use corridors.
COVID-19 Accelerated Criminal Expansion
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically amplified the problem. Strict lockdowns isolated remote Amazon regions, effectively handing territorial control to organized crime groups. With more than 70% of Peru’s population working in the informal economy, many locals turned to illegal mining and coca production for survival.
Investigative journalist Dan Collyns explains that Peruvian producers have traditionally worked with Mexican cartels, shipping product from the Pacific coast toward the U.S. While U.S. drone strikes have targeted vessels in the Pacific, most Peruvian cocaine actually heads to Europe, according to former Peruvian interior minister Rubén Vargas.
The Rise of “Narco-Minería”
The merging of drug trafficking and illicit mining has created a new hybrid criminal economy known as narco-minería. Criminal organizations discovered that gold is safer to transport, easier to legitimize, and far more difficult to trace than narcotics.
Collyns notes that gangs use the same supply chains, fuel sources, smuggling routes, and territorial dominance to extract whatever resource is most profitable—gold, coca, timber, or arms.
Across Peru’s borders, powerful groups have entrenched themselves:
Peru–Colombia Border
Dissident factions of the former FARC guerrillas now control both coca production and gold mining.
Peru–Brazil Border
Brazil’s feared Comando Vermelho (Red Command) has taken over coca fields in Ucayali and mining zones in Madre de Dios, often enforcing brutal “security” protocols.
Peru–Ecuador Border
Ecuador has seen escalating violence around illegal mining near Peru, with Peruvian gangs like Guardianes de la Trocha extorting miners. The group is accused of more than 100 murders, including the assassination of prominent local leader Ana García Solsol.
Venezuela: A New Hotspot for Illegal Gold
Across the Amazon basin, criminal networks from Colombia and Venezuela collaborate in both gold mining and cocaine trafficking. The Crisis Group reports “unchecked illegal mining” in Venezuela’s Amazonas and Bolivar states—regions now notorious for lawlessness and violence.
Venezuela is believed to host over 30% of illegal mining sites in the entire Amazon, with corruption reportedly reaching the highest levels of the military and political elite. Some armed forces members run mining pits for personal profit. Others partner with Colombian gangs and Venezuelan syndicates known as sistemas. Illegal mining profits are regularly used to launder drug money.
Environmental and Human Toll
The collision of mining and narcotrafficking has unleashed catastrophic environmental damage. Illegal miners burn forests, poison rivers with mercury, and destroy habitats at an unprecedented pace. Many of the affected territories have long been home to Indigenous communities, whose lands are now overrun by violent criminal operations.
Investigative journalist Pamela Huerta said the damage is becoming irreversible, citing deforestation, river contamination, and the collapse of wildlife populations.
Weak Governance Fuels the Crisis
Peru’s political instability and corruption have further exacerbated the crisis. The country has cycled through more than a dozen interior ministers in five years, undermining consistent law enforcement efforts. Illegal mining and logging often flourish due to corruptly awarded permits from officials and bureaucrats.
Collyns emphasizes that influential political factions within Peru’s Congress openly support illegal gold operations—largely because criminal profits have begun seeping into political campaigns ahead of next year’s elections.
A Growing Criminal Empire
Former interior minister Rubén Vargas argues that criminal groups now dominate both drug trafficking and gold mining in ways Peru has never seen. The Red Command and other syndicates are consolidating control over production centers and smuggling routes. Meanwhile, demand in Europe and Brazil is rising rapidly.
Vargas warns that “the fight against drugs has been abandoned” in key consumer regions, leaving producer countries increasingly vulnerable to the influence of multinational crime networks.
As illegal gold mining spreads across South America—from the Peruvian Amazon to Venezuelan jungles and Ecuadorian borderlands—it is reshaping the region’s underworld economy. For the cartels, the message is clear: gold is the new cocaine.
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