The  role of the Paraná-Paraguay waterway in transnational cocaine trafficking: routes from the Southern Cone of SouthAmerica to Europe

Carolina Sampó; Valeska Troncoso

doi:10.47741/17943108.727

Authors

Carolina Sampó Camilo José Cela University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4756-2620 (unauthenticated)
Valeska Troncoso University of Santiago Chile https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6135-2964 (unauthenticated)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47741/17943108.727

Keywords:

Europe, cocaine trafficking, organized crime, Paraná-Paraguay waterway, routes, transnational

Abstract

This article presents the findings of a qualitative study on the role of the Paraná-Paraguay waterway in the transnational trafficking of cocaine from South America to Europe. The aim is to explain why this fluvial corridor has become a strategic route for criminal organizations. The central hypothesis suggests that the interaction of geographical, logistical, and institutional factors —alongside the limited capacity of state control— enables criminal organizations to develop low-risk, high-profit operations. Based on in-depth interviews with key actors across five countries and documentary analysis, the study identifies three explanatory dimensions: a geography that hinders oversight and facilitates the movement of cocaine; the use of multimodal transport schemes; and a weakened surveillance system. The research reveals that the Paraná-Paraguay waterway functions as a duplex space, where legal and illegal flows overlap, and criminal organizations exploit institutional gaps to operate discreetly. The study concludes that this waterway has become a counterintuitive yet rationally chosen route due to its low risks, extensive connectivity, and limited state oversight. The article underscores the urgent need to strengthen interstate cooperation and to broaden the scope of security policies to include peripheral corridors such as the Paraná-Paraguay waterway, whose significance in the global cocaine trade continues to grow.

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Author Biographies

Carolina Sampó , Camilo José Cela University

Carolina Sampó is professor and academic coordinator of the degree in Criminology and Security at the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid, and coordinates the Security Studies Group of the Carolina Foundation. She has been a researcher at CONICET in Argentina and associate professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) at the University of Maryland from 2022 to 2024. In addition, she coordinated the Centre for Studies on Transnational Organised Crime (CeCOT) at the Institute of International Relations (IRI) at the National University of La Plata from its founding in 2018 until December 2023. She is co-founder and board member of Amassuru, a network of women in security and defence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

D. in Social Sciences and a degree in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, she also holds a Master's degree in International Studies from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She has been a visiting researcher at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2016) and at the University of Maryland (2022-2023), and an adjunct professor at the William Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in Washington D.C. (2021).

As an international consultant, she works on security and organised crime issues, and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on transnational security, violence and drug trafficking in the Global South. She was principal investigator in a Ford Foundation-LASA funded project on the role of women in criminal organisations such as the PCC and the CJNG. She was also an associate professor at the UBA and a lecturer in the PhD programme at the IRI-UNLP. Between 2020 and 2021, she directed a UBACyT project on new criminal structures in Argentina and Brazil.
Valeska Troncoso, University of Santiago Chile

Graduate in History from the Universidad del Desarrollo. Master in International Studies from the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Santiago de Chile (USACH), and scholarship holder of the Carolina Foundation for the Master in Higher Education at the National University of Distance Education (UNED). She is currently a PhD student in Social Sciences, with a specialisation in International Relations, at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).

She is a graduate of the specialisation courses "Interagency Coordination and Counterterrorism" and "Combating Transnational Criminal Organizations and Illicit Networks in the Americas (CTOC)" at the Center for Hemispheric Studies in Washington DC; she is also a graduate of the e-learning specialisation course "National Security and Defense Strategy" at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington DC.
She is an academic at the Centre for Studies on Transnational Organised Crime at the Institute of International Relations (IRI) of the National University of La Plata. Previously, she was an academic at the Universidad Santo Tomás -Chile, where she also worked in university management.

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