Executive Summary
Latin America today represents one of the main global enabling environments for the intersection of transnational organised crime, hostile intelligence activities, logistical facilitation networks, illicit financial flows, and hybrid operations conducted by state and non-state actors. Although the region remains commonly associated with drug trafficking and organised crime, a multidimensional analysis shows it increasingly functions as a strategic ecosystem that can indirectly support operations affecting European and Euro-Atlantic security, including threats to critical infrastructure and financial stability.
The combination of extensive, poorly governed areas, high levels of informal economy, corruption, globalised logistics infrastructure, constantly evolving clandestine maritime capabilities, and highly adaptive criminal networks creates favourable conditions for the development of activities that go well beyond drug trafficking. These activities include money laundering, circumventing sanctions regimes, procuring dual-use technologies, producing and using fraudulent documentation, clandestine logistical support, moving high-risk individuals, and creating facilitation networks exploitable by hostile intelligence services.
The analysis identifies Central and South America as areas of particular strategic interest. Brazil emerges as a central hub due to its geographic location, territorial depth, simultaneous access to the Amazon and Atlantic corridors, and its growing role in transcontinental criminal routes. The Amazon region and the South American Atlantic basin are also becoming increasingly important as logistical platforms for long-range maritime trafficking, including semi-submersibles and other clandestine platforms capable of reaching Europe, Africa, and Oceania. The analysed material highlights a progressive evolution in the operational capabilities of Latin American criminal organisations, including the use of ocean-going semi-submersibles, autonomous vehicles, and low-observability maritime networks.
Numerous indicators suggest Latin America’s vulnerabilities-such as porous borders and maritime clandestine platforms- can be exploited. Foreign intelligence services, proxy networks, and hostile actors could exploit this corruption, underscoring the need for proactive awareness among security professionals.
For Italy, the main concern is not direct violence. Still, the convergence of criminal networks, mafias, and hostile actors-potentially targeting ports, logistics hubs, and critical infrastructure-could threaten operational continuity, requiring heightened vigilance.
Confidence Level: Medium-High.
📌 Inside This Assessment
Latin America as a Hybrid Permissive Ecosystem
Hostile Intelligence Activity in the Region
Proxies, Facilitators and Indirect Recruitment
Convergence between crime, facilitators, and intelligence
Brazil as a Strategic Hub
Latin American Organised Crime
Italian Mafias and South American Connections
Maritime Domain and Logistics Infrastructure
Terrorism, Proxies, and Support Networks
Hybrid Facilitation Risk Matrix
Italian Vulnerabilities
Counterintelligence implications
Implications for Europe
Future Scenarios 2026-2030
Analytical Conclusions.
Latin America as a Hybrid Permissive Ecosystem
Latin America continues to be frequently analysed through the lens of drug trafficking, organised crime, and political instability. While these elements remain central, a strategic, security-oriented approach calls for a broader perspective. Today, the region is a permissive environment in which transnational criminal networks, logistical facilitators, opaque economic operators, hostile state actors, financial intermediaries, and individuals involved in clandestine activities can coexist and interact. This does not necessarily involve structured cooperation among these actors, but rather their ability to exploit the same territorial, economic, and institutional vulnerabilities simultaneously. The region’s relevance for European security stems primarily from its function as a facilitating platform. Indeed, in many Latin American contexts, one can observe consolidated logistical corridors, large informal economies, limited control over vast territorial areas, and growing interconnectedness with global markets. These conditions make the continent a favourable environment for the movement of people, goods, capital, and information, creating opportunities that criminal organisations and state actors can exploit to operate outside the theatres most closely monitored by Western security structures.
1. Geographic Factors
Geography represents one of the main risk multipliers. The continent features vast, poorly controlled areas, extensive land borders, difficult-to-access Amazon regions, river networks that cross multiple states, and thousands of kilometres of coastline facing both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Brazil, in particular, occupies a central position within this system. Connections between the Amazon Basin, Atlantic ports, and major regional trade hubs-such as [specific ports or corridors]-offer strategic depth that criminal and hostile actors can exploit for clandestine activities, complicating monitoring efforts.
2. Political Factors
The regional political situation is characterised by varying levels of institutional stability, but shares some common elements. Corruption, limited territorial control, administrative fragility, and strong political polarisation persist in several countries. These conditions do not necessarily imply the existence of failed states. Still, they can create institutional ambiguity that criminal actors or individuals seeking to develop clandestine activities under commercial, diplomatic, or financial cover can exploit. In some cases, limited regional cooperation and the varying operational capacity of security agencies further contribute to this room for manoeuvre.
3. Economic Factors
Latin America is deeply integrated into global trade networks through ports, airports, free zones, logistics corridors, and energy infrastructure. At the same time, the informal economy remains a significant component in many countries in the region. The coexistence of large legitimate trade flows and vast, poorly regulated economic zones offers significant opportunities for money laundering, the creation of front companies, the covert transfer of funds, and the concealment of illicit activities within normal commercial transactions. For criminal or state actors seeking to circumvent controls, sanctions, or financial traceability systems, this environment offers a significant operational advantage.
4. Criminal Factors
The region is home to some of the world’s most structured and resilient criminal organisations. However, the strategic importance of these groups stems not only from their drug trafficking capabilities, but also from their progressive transformation into logistical, financial, and transnational players. In recent years, Latin American criminal networks have demonstrated a growing capacity for innovation, technological adaptation, and international reach. The evolution of clandestine maritime routes, the use of ocean-going semi-submersibles, and the development of new concealment and transportation methods confirm a trend toward increasingly sophisticated forms of illegal mobility. These capabilities should not be interpreted solely as a criminal threat, but as infrastructures potentially exploitable by multiple actors interested in discreetly moving people, materials, or resources.
5. Structural Vulnerabilities
The most significant element is not a single threat, but rather the overlapping of different vulnerabilities. Within the same geographical space. In many areas of the region, the informal economy, organised crime, insufficient territorial control, high cross-border mobility, advanced logistical capabilities, and direct connections to international markets coexist. This combination creates an ecosystem conducive to the emergence of facilitation networks that can serve a variety of purposes, from illicit trafficking to sanctions evasion, from the clandestine movement of individuals to the creation of economic and financial cover. From the perspective of Italian and Euro-Atlantic security, the primary risk therefore lies not in the threat posed by a single actor, but in the possibility that criminals, facilitators, intermediaries, and hostile actors simultaneously exploit the same regional vulnerabilities to pursue different but convergent objectives. This makes Latin America not only an area of investigative interest, but a truly strategic environment to be monitored from a multi-domain security perspective.
Hostile Intelligence Activity in the Region
Latin America has occupied a unique position in international strategic competition for decades. While not a priority theatre compared to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or the Indo-Pacific, the region continues to offer operational opportunities that attract the interest of various foreign intelligence services. The combination of large geographic spaces, uneven counterintelligence capabilities, high international trade flows, opaque financial networks, and the presence of diaspora communities makes the continent particularly suited to developing intelligence gathering, logistical support, building cover, and facilitating international mobility. The primary objective of these activities is not necessarily the conduct of offensive operations within the region itself.