Runashitu, a small Indigenous village nestled alongside the Napo River in Ecuador’s Amazon region, used to be a safe place, according to Nely Shiguango, who has lived there for decades. Residents could once wander freely whenever they wanted, but in recent years, many of them have lived in fear.

The village has seen a decline in arable land and an increase in illness, while nearby communities have experienced more kidnappings and killings—all because of a surge in illegal gold mining in the area, Shiguango said. Napo province, where Runashitu is located, recorded 19 homicides last year, nearly twice the number in 2024.

Illegal gold mining is rapidly expanding in the Amazon rainforest. By 2023, the industry was believed to be worth as much as $12 billion annually across South America, according to a report in part authored by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

An activist, Shiguango has sought to educate members of her Kichwa Indigenous community on the dangers of illegal gold mining for years and has helped to spearhead local regulations for land management. She expressed disdain toward the organized crime groups that have moved onto Kichwa lands, extracting gold without permission or regard for environmental safeguards.

“They destroy. They pollute the river, they pollute the environment, they pollute our food, and they also pollute our social life,” Shiguango said.

A report last year by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition found that illegal gold mining now makes more money than the illegal drug trade in both Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers. Experts estimate that the value of illegal gold exports surpassed the value of cocaine exports in Peru by 2010 and in Colombia by 2016.

Peru is the “epicenter of illegal gold mining in Latin America, accounting for an estimated 44 percent of the region’s illicit gold trade,” according to the FACT Coalition’s report. Ecuador is not a major producer of cocaine, but authorities there seized $9.85 billion worth of the drug being trafficked through the country in 2022. The FACT Coalition report calls Ecuador a “relatively new front in the illegal gold trade,” where proceeds from illegal gold mining may reach up to $1 billion per year.

Two main factors have driven organized crime groups to diversify into gold. The first is that, in the past few years, the price of cocaine has fallen—by as much as half in Europe—while the price of gold has soared, recording a year-over-year increase of 65 percent in 2025. Second, there is a lower risk of being arrested for smuggling illegal gold than for drug trafficking, largely because gold “is not an inherently illegal product,” said Julia Yansura, one of the authors of the FACT Coalition report—as opposed to cocaine. “If a policeman stops you and you’re carrying a backpack with some gold that is illegally sourced, you’re probably not going to jail because it would be really hard to determine that that product is illegally sourced.”

According to Yansura, the main use for illegally sourced gold is investment, such as in gold bars, especially “during uncertain economic times.” Prior to export, criminal organizations, such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia, frequently launder illicit gold from the Amazon into bars and other forms so that it appears to have been legally sourced when it is shipped to buyers in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, she said.

This laundering makes it impossible to know the exact dollar value of illegal gold exports, Yansura said. However, in 2022, Colombia’s comptroller general’s office estimated that 85 percent of the country’s gold exports were illegally sourced. As of 2024, the United States was the largest single importer of Colombian gold, at $1.43 billion, followed by India ($580.9 million), Italy ($477 million), and the United Arab Emirates ($429.6 million).

A lack of legal clarity about what constitutes illegal gold mining has provided a gray area for criminal groups to exploit in some countries. Though small-scale artisanal gold mining is generally legal across South America, operations that involve forced labor, encroachment on Indigenous lands without permission or prior consultation, and a disregard for environmental laws are among the hallmarks of illicit mining across the continent.

Peru is a case in point. The country has a government registry for informal miners known as Reinfo. As long as informal miners are “on this indefinite list that keeps being extended and extended and extended, they can’t really face criminal charges because they’re in the process of formalization, which is a very problematic gray area,” Yansura said.

Among the most damaging practices stemming from illegal gold mining is its use of mercury, which is highly toxic. Illicit groups can quickly and cheaply use mercury to extract gold from ore and form an amalgam; the amalgam is heated; the mercury evaporates and leaves the gold behind. Vaporized mercury then settles in soil and waterways, contaminating drinking water and fish, and leading to mercury poisoning, according to the World Health Organization.

Although the element’s use is widely restricted or banned in gold mining in South America, in recent years, Shiguango said, mercury has shown up in blood tests among members of her community, and there have been increases in illnesses and deaths that she links to mercury poisoning. “Right now, there are young people who are dying, young people are dying at 28 years old, 25 years old because they already have cancer at that age,” she said, adding that her 20-year-old son suffers from headaches and memory issues—problems that Shiguango suspects come from mercury ingestion.

As illegal gold mining has grown in the Amazon, the practice has also contributed to higher levels of deforestation, the FACT Coalition said in its report. In Ecuador, criminal gangs such as Los Lobos—which the U.S. State Department designated a foreign terrorist organization in September 2025—have deployed heavy machinery to clear vast portions of the rainforest in order to extract gold from the ground, according to the report.

Organized crime groups behind illegal mining operations bribe local officials to look the other way, Shiguango said: “All these authorities have already been bought off by these miners.” She added that her activism had led to threats, saying she gets “threatening calls” every day. “I can’t walk freely in the street anymore.”

Furthermore, conflicts between illegal and legal gold miners have had deadly consequences, as criminal groups seek to take over areas operated by legal mining ventures. In May 2025, 13 gold mine workers were kidnapped and killed by members of an illicit gold mining group in Peru’s Pataz province. Warnings by Indigenous groups about mercury contamination led the Andean Community trade bloc in October to order Peru to urgently reform its laws to fight illegal gold mining and mercury trafficking, as well as to seize machinery and mining equipment used by illicit miners.

Since then, Peru’s government published a decree to toughen penalties for illegal gold mining, including longer prison terms. However, in December, it also extended temporary permits for informal miners under Reinfo. While some experts have blamed the program for contributing to a surge in illegal gold mining, informal miners have protested government attempts to end it.

In an innovative effort, Brazilian authorities are expanding their so-called Ouro Alvo (Targeting Gold) program, in which federal police investigators examine the isotopic structure of seized gold to determine its area of origin, like a fingerprint or DNA. Brazilian authorities prosecuted their first case using this technique in 2023, and they are working on forming partnerships with other countries in the region to expand their library of gold samples. Last year, member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization created a new commission to coordinate cross-border efforts to fight crime, including illegal gold mining.

The United States is also considering legislation to fight illegal gold mining. In February 2025, Sens. John Cornyn and Tim Kaine introduced the bipartisan U.S. Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act, which would require the U.S. secretary of state to coordinate with other federal agencies to develop a strategy to fight illicit gold mining in the Western Hemisphere.

“Illicit gold mining operations in Latin America and the Caribbean are a hotbed of human rights abuses and a haven for crime and terrorism,” Kaine said in a statement accompanying the bill’s introduction.

Yansura and the FACT Coalition say the United States should toughen laws that require travelers to declare gold when entering the United States. While inbound travelers must declare cash and monetary instruments valued at more than $10,000, the rules on declaring gold are less strict, Yansura said: Currently, “if you’re caught with a suitcase full of gold, you may or may not face legal consequences.”

Large quantities of gold being transported in suitcases have attracted the attention of authorities in recent months in airports. In November, an airport security official and two passengers were arrested at the airport serving Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, after authorities seized 22 kilograms of gold worth roughly $3 million.

In addition to her advocacy in Ecuador to protect communities like hers, Shiguango traveled last year to New York to speak at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “These criminal enterprises contaminate our rivers with mercury, destroy our food sources, deteriorate our health and our economy, and sow fear in our communities, assassinating leaders, recruiting our youth, and displacing us from our territories,” she told the U.N.

Despite the threats she faces for denouncing illegal gold mining, Shiguango believes that she has a duty to protect her community. “I used to be afraid, I used to cry, I used to get nervous,” she said. “But if our voices get tired, who will do it?”