Brazil & Southern Cone - October 2025

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has attended the inauguration event of a new police base in the city of Manaus, the Centro de Cooperação Policial Internacional da Amazônia (CCPI Amazônia). Officially launched on 9 September, the CCPI will be run by Brazilian law enforcement institutions, such as the federal police (PF), and will serve as a base from which federal and state authorities can coordinate operations and share intelligence. Questions remain over how effective this new base will be, but the establishment of the police centre could represent a step in the right direction towards boosting interstate and international coordination in efforts to fight crime in the Amazon.  

In 2023 Lula and other South American leaders pledged to set up a police hub in the Amazon region where Brazilian police and authorities from other countries could collaborate on investigations and share information. This objective was included in the ‘Belém Declaration’ signed at the August 2023 summit of the Amazon Treaty Cooperation Organization (OTCA), an intergovernmental group comprising Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. In June this year, the CCPI became operational, but it was not until 9 September that Lula held the official event to inaugurate the base.

“One of the perverse consequences of globalisation is the interconnection of criminal groups across national borders,” Lula said. “We are dealing with true multinational corporations of crime.” Lula stated that this is why he is seeking to promote a transnational solution and involve groups such as OTCA and Interpol. The CCPI launch event was attended by Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro and Ecuador’s Vice President María José Pinto. Attending by videolink was Valdecy Urquiza, the Brazilian PF officer who is the current secretary general of Interpol. The financing for the base comes from Brazil’s Amazon Fund, a mechanism for investments in rainforest conservation initiatives which takes international donations.

From the Amazon Fund, R$36.7m (US$6.8m) was invested for the establishment of the CCPI, which will be managed by federal government. The plan is for the base to serve as a hub for the PF, the federal highway police (PRF), and other organisations such as the police forces of the nine Brazilian states that span the Amazon rainforest biome and police from other Southern American countries. The priorities of the base in Manaus will be to tackle crimes such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking, illegal fishing, mining, and logging, among other organised criminal activities.

However, a new police base is unlikely to be a silver bullet. Putting more boots on the ground and providing more equipment for gathering intelligence signal an increased effort to tackle organised crime, but there are other issues that need to be resolved for transnational police operations to be effective, such as questions of jurisdiction, chain of command, and aligning different procedures and protocols used by different police forces. The CCPI also seems to focus more on providing the infrastructure for money laundering investigations or drug seizure operations, but it is unclear whether the centre will engage in any form of community policing or other crime prevention initiatives that involve building trust with local communities or providing education and welfare programmes to reduce the risk of young people being recruited by gangs. 

Environmentally risky projects

Lula’s visit to Brazil’s northern state of Amazonas appeared to emphasise federal support for infrastructure in the Amazon region rather than focusing on boosting his green credentials. On 9 September, the same day that Lula inaugurated the police centre to tackle gangs in the Amazon and environmental crimes, the president expressed support for initiatives that have faced criticism from environmental groups: the BR-319 highway to connect the states of Amazonas and Rondônia, and the controversial proposal by state oil firm Petrobras to explore oil near the mouth of the Amazon River.