The governments of Bolivia and Brazil have presented this Thursday a joint operation to reinforce security at the common border, a decision that comes a few days after an increase in violence attributed to Brazilian criminal organizations.
"We officially launch the Safe Borders Plan. We are permanently deploying specialized units and elite troops of the Bolivian Police in Cobija, Guayaramerín, Puerto Suárez, San Ignacio, and San Matías to dismantle transnational organized crime," stated the Bolivian president, Rodrigo Paz, on his social media.
In the same message, the president has claimed this strategy to ensure "a border that produces, exports, and progresses." "There is no lasting social peace without productive development (...) Bolivia recovers its territorial sovereignty," he emphasized.
Paz has also led the official act of launching the plan in the municipality of Guayaramerín, in the Vaca Díez province, a ceremony attended by the ambassador of Brazil in Bolivia, Luís Henrique Sobreira, as well as other civil authorities and police commanders from both countries.
The program includes coordinated operations between Bolivian and Brazilian police forces to locate and dismantle the criminal networks operating on both sides of the more than 3,400 kilometers of shared border.
According to the newspaper "El Deber," these actions will focus on the fight against cross-border crimes such as smuggling, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.
The announcement comes after a spike in violence in the department of Santa Cruz, where ten homicides have been recorded in less than a week.
Bolivian authorities have linked these crimes to an internal dispute between two Brazilian criminal factions, the Comando Vermelho and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), and have decided to send 200 additional police officers to the area to reinforce control.