In any case, the community is the operational arm of drug prevention programmes, due to its broad coverage, the concentration of the living forces of the population in its environment and its pronounced interest in cooperating with government agencies. The representative of UNODC commended the efforts of Bolivia during the reporting period, in particular the General Directorate of the felcn, which, despite the reduction of its troops due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had shown good results and continuity in the interdiction tasks. He also stressed that the Office will continue to support the country`s policies and actions in the fight against illicit drug trafficking. Bolivia`s participation in the international chain of drug trafficking has been determined by a number of factors ranging from the tradition of cultivation and ancestral consumption of the coca leaf in the country, to the endemic poverty of the population, whose GDP per capita does not exceed one thousand US dollars, the structural weakness of state institutions. The export of drugs from Bolivia, as already planned, reveals various modalities. By air, international commercial flights are used, where the drug travels camouflaged in mail, luggage and even in the body of passengers, whether they are tied outside or inside. It also uses legal private planes that deviate from their flights approved by the competent authority to commit illegal acts, as well as the aforementioned «drug thefts». In this sense, it should be remembered that Bolivia has a border area of 6,834 linear km with Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Chile. The border is largely vulnerable, with more than thirty points particularly critical for its constant use by cross-border criminal flows, as then-government minister Carlos Romero admitted at a meeting of the Southern Cone countries on border security. took place in November 2016 in Brasilia. This notorious vulnerability has motivated the executive branch to use military institutions to mitigate the capitalization of marginal porosity by illegal organizations. These control tasks, as well as the use of manual eradication work, summarize the current role of the armed forces in the fight against drug trafficking.1 The land drug trade in Brazil is carried out from the departments of Santa Cruz, Pando and Beni. There are nine border crossings that are particularly vulnerable to this criminal activity: Bolpebra, Cobija, Puerto Evo and Villa Bella in Pando; Guayaramerín and Bella Vista, Beni; and San Matías, Arroyo-Concepción and Puerto Quijarro, in Santa Cruz.
These points are complemented by dozens of illegal steps where the control is practically zero. As for Paraguay, there is road traffic through the Villa Montes border crossing, which is of interest to the bidirectional nature of the traffic: on the same route, Paraguayan marijuana enters Bolivia. The report recommends strengthening controls in areas where the greatest drug trafficking activity (Cochabamba, La Paz, Santa Cruz and Beni) has been detected at border crossings with synthetic drugs, new psychotropic substances and precursors and updating the control system for controlled substances. It also recommends strengthening and expanding the units of the Container Control and Airport Communication Programme (AIRCOP) and approving the UNODC and FELCN manuals on drug destruction and the dismantling of cocaine crystallization laboratories. The main reason for the high concentration of processing laboratories, collection and distribution sites and even aviation academies in the soil of Santa Cruz is the geographical proximity of Brazil, with which it shares an extensive border that is difficult to control. The South American giant is also an important component of illicit drugs in South America: on the one hand, it is the second largest national cocaine market in the world, with an estimated consumption of nearly 100 tons per year by more than 2 million people; On the other hand, cocaine is traded through its vast territory, which usually has Europe as its final destination and is sent by sea or air, which are common routes to the West African region and in particular to Angola and Guinea. In the acts of destruction in which UNODC was involved, 38 different stamps or logos were identified on cocaine hydrochloride stones, with the prevalence of fish forms, crowns, letters and various animals. It is important to conduct scientific studies such as the creation of chemical profiles of medicines, to create databases and to strengthen mechanisms for the exchange of information and cooperation with neighbouring countries in order to determine the origin, purity and composition of drugs seized in the region. The Bolivian study is based on a survey of 130 inmates at the San Pedro men`s prison in the city of La Paz, in addition to other official data.
We started from the central assumption that, as in the rest of Latin America, the Bolivian prison overcrowding crisis has a direct causal link with a drug policy model in which the application of disproportionate criminal law constitutes a violation of fundamental human rights. 1 We have analysed in detail the role of the Bolivian military sector in the fight against drug trafficking in M. Bartolomé (2019), «The Army Involved in the Fight against Drugs: The Cases of Bolivia and Venezuela», in C. Sampó and S. Alda (comps.), The Transformation of the Armed Forces in Latin America in the Face of Organized Crime, Center for Strategic Studies of the Peruvian Army and Royal Elcano Institute, Lima, pp. 227-256. UNODC in Bolivia participates as an observer in the destruction of seized drugs, verifies this process of removing these substances from the evidence rooms, weighing them, field trials, quantification, transfer and complete destruction on the ground, and strengthens national and international confidence in the institutions responsible for the destruction of drugs. Between January and July 2020, it was generally observed that this process was carried out with transparency. The report notes that in 2018, about 269 million people worldwide used drugs, up 30% from 2009, while more than 35 million people suffer from drug use disorders. Rising unemployment and reduced opportunities caused by the pandemic may also disproportionately affect the poorest, making them more vulnerable to drug use as well as the trafficking and growth of drugs for money, the report says.
According to the Argentine judicial authorities, in the border area near the city of Oran in Salta alone, about 5,000 Argentine and Bolivian residents perform the functions of «Bagayeros», while 30% of the local population lives from the smuggling of various goods, including people.