Untangling Knots: Narcoterrorism in Latin America

“Security” has many different facets. There is the security of knowing that one has a statistically lower chance of being struck by an arrow. And there is the security of knowing that, if one is struck by an arrow, there are people in the world who will take extremely good care of the wounds.

David Graeber and David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2022, p. 36)

The term “narcoterrorism” has gained prominence in recent discussions on combating organized crime. Especially in Latin America, the circulation of this category has become commonplace in political debate. Operation Southern Spear was announced in November 2025 to “mobilize a task force and the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM)” with the aim of combating narcoterrorism in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean (Alvim, 2025). To date, the operation has been responsible for the killing of 227 people, who have not been identified, nor has any evidence of their alleged crimes been presented. After a period of suspension, the attacks resumed in August of this year and have already claimed at least six more lives (Arcanjo; Menon, 2026).

The attacks carried out in the Caribbean were the prelude to what would happen in January in Venezuela. Among the charges brought by the United States against Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, after both were captured, is “conspiracy to commit ‘narcoterrorism’” (Veja, 2026). These operations are part of what Trump named the “Shield of the Americas,” an initiative launched in March 2026 whose stated aim is to combat drug trafficking and organized crime in the Western Hemisphere (Alonso, 2026). To date, the Shield includes 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean¹, whose activities center on joint military operations and information sharing (Péchy, 2026).

Beyond the security measures that have been carried out through the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” the mobilization of narcoterrorism has also appeared in the domestic political discourse of countries in the Global South. In Colombia, newly elected president Abelardo De La Espriella campaigned on a promise to implement hardline measures and defeat narcoterrorism in the country (BBC News Brasil, 2026). In Brazil, presidential candidate and senator for Rio de Janeiro Flávio Bolsonaro included in his public security plan, titled “Brasil Sem Medo” (“Brazil Without Fear”), the classification of the CV (Comando Vermelho) and PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) factions as narcoterrorist organizations (Poder360, 2026). This proposal follows the classification of these two groups as terrorists by the United States government in June of this year (G1, 2026).

If the term already circulates freely in the speech of political figures around the world, becoming popular in social debates, its conceptual delimitation has advanced at a much slower pace. Looking at the genealogy of this category, one finds an early use in Latin America by the then-president of Peru, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, in 1983, to describe the alliance between drug trafficking and the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group. During the same period, the war on drugs in Colombia was also formulated by mobilizing the idea of narcoterrorism (Gale, 2020). Later, the term would be popularized by Ronald Reagan in the context of Soviet and Cuban influence over Latin American and Central American countries (Bobkier; Herman, 2022). Broadly speaking, the concept brings together the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror,” both markedly U.S.-born, though in distinct political contexts. Their convergence emerges especially as a way of linking insurgent groups and left-wing governments in Latin America, gaining even greater force after the September 11 attacks (Mantilla-Valbuena, 2008; Vasconcelos; Cavalcante, 2026).

In attempting to delimit the term’s definitions, Bobkier and Herman (2022) identify meanings ranging from (1) the involvement of terrorist organizations in drug-trafficking schemes as a way of covering the organization’s costs; (2) joint action between drug trafficking and terrorist organizations; to formal definitions, such as that of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), which considers narcoterrorism to be (3) “a form of terrorism in which terrorist groups or individuals associated with them participate, directly or indirectly, in the cultivation, manufacture, transportation, or distribution of controlled substances, as well as in the financial proceeds derived from these activities” (Hutchinson, 2002, cited in Bobkier; Herman, 2022, p. 26). The authors’ discussion concludes that narcoterrorism would be a “polymorphic” term – that is, one that can assume different forms or meanings depending on the context – but does not delve into the problems arising from this polymorphism.

In this sense, Vasconcelos and Cavalcante (2026), as well as Mantilla-Valbuena (2008), help identify the conceptual and political dangers surrounding the term. As with any legal term, it must be understood as a politically constructed concept, mobilized according to penal selectivity. Its discursive relevance is linked above all to the growing conception of Latin American nations as “incubators of global threats” that justify external interventions and practices of exception (Vasconcelos; Cavalcante, 2026; Mantilla-Valbuena, 2008). This becomes explicit when one looks at what has occurred in Venezuela since the Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles were classified as terrorist organizations by the United States government in 2025. This process is also visible in El Salvador’s security policies. Since 2022, the country has lived under a state of exception: at the request of Nayib Bukele’s government (elected in 2019 and reelected in 2024), the Legislative Assembly approved a regime of exception in 2022 that has been successively extended, while the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) – intended to lock up members of, or people suspected of involvement in, the country’s gangs – has become the showcase of its securitarian policy.

Bukele has enjoyed success around the world by consolidating his government as a benchmark security model, especially with regard to measures based on combating organized crime in the country and their effects on containing the gangs, the “pandillas,” and reducing homicide rates. Whether Xiomara Castro on the left or Nasry Asfura on the right in Honduras, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, Abelardo de La Espriella in Colombia, or Keiko Fujimori in Peru, Bukelist influence now moves on its own among governments of the South. The former advertising executive’s ability to combine hardline security measures, electoral popularity, international projection, and the TikTokization of politics generates fascination among critics and admirers alike. Far from representing the pioneering figure he purports to be, however, Bukele is nothing more than the product of a long and complex history of violence, punitive measures, and unmet social demands.

The Bukele model has served as the limit horizon toward which our securitarian democracies have been moving, but it doesn’t represent an exception among them. What matters here is less whether Salvadoran security measures are exportable or effective in other countries than the logic through which they are justified and how that logic is shaping the political decisions of current governments, particularly in Latin America. Narcoterrorism offers a practical example: the Salvadoran president himself doesn’t usually use the term in his speeches.

Bukele’s non-use of the concept in the Salvadoran context doesn’t result from its weakening; on the contrary, it demonstrates the strength of the logic that sustains it. The pandillas were legally classified as terrorist organizations in 2015, still under the left-wing government of Salvador Sanchez (FMLN), and their consolidation as a national enemy had been under construction long before the Bukele government. The establishment of CECOT, the largest prison in the Americas, as a symbol of the fight against terror in the country stems not only from the understanding and internalization of this discourse across social strata, but also from the demand for the consolidation of an increasingly punitive apparatus.

Narcoterrorism as a Government Project? - The 2026 Presidential Elections

In Brazil, the mobilization around the concept of narcoterrorism has become increasingly central to public debate, especially in an election year. An avowed admirer of Bukele, Flávio Bolsonaro is perhaps one of the main exponents of this idea in the country. In his government program – “Para o Brasil Vencer o Atraso” (“For Brazil to Overcome Backwardness”) – he sought to show how he would “give Brazil back to Brazilian families and take it out of the hands of crime.” The “Brasil sem Medo” (“Brazil Without Fear”) project thus aims to declare war on organized crime, classifying criminal organizations as “narcoterrorists” under the promise that “terrorists will be treated as terrorists” (Partido Liberal, 2026, p. 11). Beyond contextual questions, this framing follows the discursive logic in force in the Americas since the 1980s, according to which public security issues must be treated as problems of war and, therefore, their targets must be hunted down and eliminated rather than, as modern law provides, controlled, arrested, and prosecuted.

The objective effect of this, as a campaign promise, is the construction of a Federal Maximum-Security Complex, composed of five new maximum-security prisons modeled after CECOT, which would create more than half a million new places in the prison system – necessary if Brazil aspires to move beyond its position as the world’s third-largest prison population and soar to even greater heights. Flávio names this project “TREVA” as a way of discursively reaffirming his goal of “taking fear away from citizens and putting fear into criminals” (Partido Liberal, 2026, p. 14; Senado Federal, 2024).

Within this logic, beyond punishing those who are to be punished, Bolsonaro’s government project also intends to monitor the other potential suspects – all of them. The nationwide expansion of “Smart Sampa” and “Muralha Paulista,” through “Muralha Brasileira,” aims to install more than one million new facial-recognition cameras integrated with criminal databases. Far from guaranteeing the security of any citizen, the expansion of these monitoring mechanisms raises anyone to the level of suspicion until the State decides that intervention is necessary – a dynamic made quite evident by the 56 deaths caused by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the United States since January 2025. In short, for Flávio Bolsonaro, “whoever does not fall in line will be cut off from society” (Partido Liberal, 2026, pp. 15–16; RFI, 2026).

The Brazilian right’s capacity to reinvent itself means that Flávio is not the only one loudly echoing Bukele’s message in the country. Renan Santos, who is the face of the “Missão” party – founded by members of the Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) – promises a “glorious future” in his government program, a condensed version of the party’s “bible,” the “Livro Amarelo” (“Yellow Book”), with more than 500 pages of diagnoses and proposals for Brazil. By criticizing PTism for “provincial promises” and Bolsonarismo for leaders “below mediocrity,” Renan Santos casts himself as a counterpoint to national politics, speaking to a younger stratum already dissatisfied with the possible horizons of the country they call “Bostil” (Missão, 2026).

Missão’s public security project revolves around the idea of “Prendeu, matou” (“Arrested, killed”), which, despite the wording,

Naturally, it does not consist of arresting and killing criminals, but simply of allowing security forces to treat as enemies those who threaten the security of citizens and the sovereignty of the Brazilian State (Missão, 2026, p. 12; author’s emphasis).

It is worth recalling that the 2026 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook recently released data on police lethality in the country, showing that 2025 set a record in the historical series begun in 2016, with 6,602 deaths (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, 2026, p. 74). Understanding the landscape of police violence in Brazil is fundamental to understanding the cynicism present in Renan Santos’s discourse.

Missão’s diagnosis of the state of Brazilian security begins from the premise that Brazil is one step away from becoming a narco-state. This is the pretext, once again, for demanding the construction of CECOT-style prisons, the implementation of a “State of Defense,” the criminalization of ties to organized crime, the reformulation of the “Anti-Faction Law,” and the “deployment of the Armed Forces through GLO (Guarantee of Law and Order), with authorization to use heavy force in ‘dominated’ territories” (Missão, 2026, pp. 11–13). All these measures are justified in the name of “Enemy Criminal Law,” which, in the party’s own words, consists of a

[...] doctrine formulated by the German jurist Günter Jakobs, [which] distinguishes between two criminal-law regimes: citizen criminal law, which preserves full guarantees, and enemy criminal law, which applies preventive measures and disproportionate penalties to those who demonstrate that they do not accept the social pact through lasting participation in criminal organizations. (Missão, 2026, p. 12).

Amid the right’s domination of the security agenda – which, contrary to what the left would like to admit, enjoys strong appeal and social demand – the Lulista project attempts to distinguish itself through a conciliatory approach that, in practice, continues to reproduce a shared logic. In the guidelines for the Lula/Alckmin ticket’s program, the section “Protecting Life through More Efficient and Integrated Public Security” attempts to address the country’s security issue. Even without mobilizing the term “narcoterrorism” and while openly disagreeing with it in the name of “national sovereignty,” the PT government proposal revolves around combating organized crime. Whereas in the guidelines for the 2022 elections the term “organized crime” appeared only once in the entire program, in 2026 it is repeated eighteen times throughout the text (Partido dos Trabalhadores, 2022; Partido dos Trabalhadores, 2026, p. 26). Could organized crime in the country have changed so radically in character since then? The Anti-Faction Law, enacted in March of this year, while not defining factions as terrorist organizations, plays an important role in expanding what is considered “conduct carried out by ultraviolent organizations” (Brasil, 2026, art. 1). Thus, practices commonly used as forms of resistance to State forces – such as the use of barricades or blockades to prevent or hinder police action – can be criminalized within the framework of the Anti-Faction Law. Even if the word terrorism is not explicitly mobilized, the logic of suspicion and punishment directed at figures who oppose the State is present all the same (Senado Federal, 2026).

In this sense, the Anti-Faction Law merely institutionalizes a practice already common among Brazilian security forces. As occurred in 2013, several people were arrested for carrying vinegar. Among those sentenced to prison within the political context of the time, two emblematic cases were those of activist Elisa Quadros and aluminum-can collector Rafael Braga Vieira. Elisa, arrested twice on accusations of “participating in violent acts” and “leading” black blocs, was convicted in 2018 and acquitted in 2024, together with 22 other activists. Rafael Braga was not as fortunate. A Black man who was homeless at the time, he was arrested in Rio de Janeiro carrying disinfectant and became the first person convicted in cases involving the protests. In 2021, he was granted parole after a series of legal battles that included, in 2017, an accusation of drug trafficking (Mora, 2013; BBC News Brasil, 2023; Mídia Ninja, 2024).

Thirteen years after the June 2013 protests, the fight against insurgent figures has taken an increasingly predictive form. Lula’s security plan provides for R$10 billion from the National Social Infrastructure Investment Fund (FIIS) to be allocated to the “Programa Brasil Contra o Crime Organizado” (“Brazil Against Organized Crime Program”), so that states and municipalities can invest in equipment and infrastructure. In addition, the government intends to sanction the Public Security Constitutional Amendment Proposal and make possible the creation of a Ministry of Public Security. The amendment, reviewed this month by the CCJ (Constitution and Justice Committee), aims to “toughen the fight against organized crime, expand instruments for confronting criminal factions, and alter constitutional provisions related to public security” (Partido dos Trabalhadores, 2026, p. 27; G1, 2026).

Whether Lula’s “Brasil da Esperança” (“Brazil of Hope”) or its more discursively truculent alternatives, such as those of Flávio Bolsonaro and Renan Santos, punitive rationality – grounded in generalized suspicion and the expansion of the State’s apparatus of force and monitoring – makes the boundaries between “crime” and “war” even more diffuse. The concept of narcoterrorism, besides serving as a discursive resource for those who benefit from it, helps give a face to a new movement of convergence between Public Security and National Defense that has been taking place at the institutional level. If the category of “terrorism” is a State monopoly, anyone who opposes it can be classified as such. In the most recent articulations, this narrowing between “inside” and “outside” is not inscribed only in discourse, but is putting down important material roots.

Narcoterrorism and the Struggle over Security

The logic sustaining the notion of narcoterrorism is not new. It is possible to trace the history of these forms of framing and combating the internal enemy from the persecution of groups and individuals classified as insurgents in the context of Operation Condor, beginning in 1975, through the War on Drugs and, later, the convergence between combating drug trafficking and the War on Terror after 2001, up to the most recent discourses. If the rationality behind the phenomenon is easy to trace, the novelty introduced by the contemporary notion of narcoterrorism operates in a more diffuse manner. More than a new concrete enemy, along the lines of what the criminalization of insurgency was during periods of dictatorship, and less centralized than what was perceived in the War on Terror, narcoterrorism appears to rearticulate the boundaries between Public Security and Defense within an old logic, but under a new purpose.

Recent experiences involving the Shield of the Americas and the bombings of vessels allegedly linked to organized crime have made this dynamic clear. The United States government itself stated that it is in armed conflict with these groups, which “would allow them to be treated as military targets under certain circumstances” (Arcanjo; Menon, 2026). The “Donroe Doctrine” has been effectively put into practice across the region. At the national level, the mobilization of narcoterrorism has yielded electoral results and taken concrete directions, with “mano dura”-style security measures and under the promise of the continent’s “Bukelization.”

What has been seen, especially in Latin America and with the Salvadoran experience as a limit case, is an extensive process of institutionalizing the fight against terror. More than a discourse that problematizes organized crime, narcoterrorism can also be read as its own solution. Thus, one can see an entire movement toward radicalizing the means through which this solution will be applied: from the legislative expansion of the definition of terrorism to the construction of mega-prisons intended for these figures, the idea of narcoterrorism is already putting down roots and producing quite tangible material effects (Trindade, 2026).

The use of the term, then, even if it does not constitute a stable analytical category, plays an important role as a discursive resource that is, above all, productive of specific dynamics, apparatuses, and political measures. Narcoterrorists, members of organized crime, factions, pandillas, delinquents, or terrorists are all subjected to the same apparatus of suspicion, surveillance, monitoring, and, if necessary, lethal intervention or punishment. Left, right, traditional political figures, or “outsiders” appear to operate under the same rationality of valorizing security, consolidating what is understood as “securitarian democracy” (Augusto; Wilke, 2019).

Footnotes

¹ United States, Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina.

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