Amazon Underworld is a cross-border collaborative media investigation run by InfoAmazonia (Brazil), La Liga Contra el Silencio (Colombia) and Armando.Info (Venezuela). The project used primary sources and official documents to create the first-ever interactive map, incorporating the presence of armed groups and illicit economies in the border regions of six Amazon countries. (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela)
Our objective is twofold: to quantify the burgeoning presence of criminal organizations and illicit economies, and to delve into the human stories behind these statistics. Venturing into the depths of the Amazon, we narrate the tales from within the Amazon underworld, providing a visceral understanding of its inhabitants’ experiences.
The investigation took one year and four months. The Amazon is an area with over 1,000 municipalities, so we decided to prioritize and focus on mapping the presence of armed groups in the border regions which are historically most penetrated by organized crime. It was the first time this mapping was done on this scale, enabling the audience, civil society and governments to make informed decisions based on our journalistic work.
We filed dozens of petitions to gather information and conducted interviews with primary sources in the territory. The interviewees mainly consisted of people who have direct contact with armed actors and illicit economies. These include Indigenous leaders, community members, church leaders, law enforcement officials, intelligence personnel, public prosecutors, local businesspeople, gang members and individuals involved in illicit economies.
41 journalists from 12 countries were directly involved in the project. To gather all the information for the stories, we made around 20 field trips to different Amazon areas.
We used a WordPress plug-in named Jeo, which allows building maps with scrolly-telling elements. The interactive and multimedia elements are one of the most compelling aspects of the project since they enable to guide the reader geographically through the story, which is very important when reporting about remote parts of the Amazon.
The most complex part of this project was gathering the information from scratch. Once the data was collected, the challenge was to define the criteria of which armed groups we would highlight on the map and categorize the data. After having that decided, the actual database was built in a spreadsheet, that was then linked to Mapbox to build the published maps.
With support from the Pulitzer Center and Earthrise, attempts to develop an algorithm for detecting gold mining barges faced challenges due to constant cloud coverage and the mobility of dredges. So, we opted for an actual flyover and used synchronized cameras with GPS units to map dredge locations and calculate associated revenues. Our findings also exposed the ineffectiveness of law enforcement crackdowns, with enough evidence that miners had leaked information about those operations and hid barges before enforcement actions.
To produce such an extensive and risky collaborative report, we worked out comprehensive safety protocols, which involved tracking the reporters with GPS devices.
The content has been translated and published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
