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The Shipyards
Of the 240 narco sub seizures analyzed by InSight Crime, over half were built in artisanal shipyards along Colombia’s Pacific coast.
The country’s western departments are home to dense jungles and winding rivers that connect to the open sea. Tucked deep within estuaries, camouflaged by thick vegetation, and strategically positioned close to rivers and inlets, these makeshift shipyards are the epicenter of narco sub construction.
Located in mostly deserted areas, each clandestine shipyard is a small hub of criminal entrepreneurship that brings together drug suppliers, skilled craftsmen, naval engineers, seamen, and security workers, in addition to representatives of deep-pocketed criminal groups, which have the finances needed to fund the project and can wait months for a payoff once the drugs reach their final destination.
Data compiled by CIMCON shows that authorities have discovered dozens of these sites: 26 in Nariño, 10 in Cauca, and three in both Valle del Cauca and Choco between 2019 and 2023.
Nariño and Cauca are some of Colombia’s main coca cultivation hotspots, and the strong correlation between cocaine production and the presence of the artisanal shipyards is logical: cocaine must travel only short distances on land to reach these narco submarine departure points.
While many artisanal shipyards are clustered on the Pacific coast, others have also been found in Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname in recent years, a reflection of how more and more drug traffickers are using the vessels to directly ship cocaine to lucrative European markets.
Some particularly sophisticated vessels have also been built far inland, where access to materials and skilled labor is higher. For example, in 2000, Colombian authorities discovered a half-built submarine in a warehouse in a suburb of Bogotá. The 100-foot-long vessel allegedly had a capacity of 15 tons, police estimated at the time.
The sub was likely going to be completed in Bogotá, disassembled, and transported to the Pacific coast, where it would be reassembled, police added. Authorities found Russian documents alongside the vessel, causing them to speculate on the involvement of Russian criminal groups in the submarine’s construction.
In 2019, European authorities seized a 22-meter LPV that they believe was constructed in a shipyard near the Brazilian city of Manaus. The vessel then travelled 1,200 kilometers down the Amazon River before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Spanish coast of Galicia. It was the first interdicted narco sub known to have crossed the Atlantic to Europe.