Hezbollah’s footprint in Latin America is more than an afterthought—it’s now a linchpin in the region’s evolving security landscape with clear implications for U.S. national security. By exploiting weakly guarded borders, poorly regulated financial systems, and traditional diaspora networks, the group has made parts of Latin America a focal point for financing, logistics, and even operational planning.
The company’s origins in the area date from the mid-1980s, when it had a presence in the Tri-Border Area, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay converge. It was historically a region of low state presence and high Lebanese and Shiite concentration, and it was fertile terrain for organized crime. Security authorities have tracked Hezbollah’s use of Ciudad del Este and its environs as money-laundering, counterfeiting, smuggling, and narcotrafficking conduits. The last several years have even seen such operations spill over into cryptocurrency use, adding yet another layer of complexity to attempting to seal off its financial conduits.
The Tri-Border Area is not only a source of finance, though. It is a recruitment and planning zone. Through alliances with indigenous crime syndicates from narco-cartels to guerrilla armies like Colombia’s FARC, Hezbollah established a system that could transport drugs, weapons, and money across continents. Exchanges of money, casinos, and cover businesses hide the origin of illicit cash flows, while alliances with Mexican cartels have opened windows of opportunity for narcotics like cocaine and methamphetamine to inundate Europe and the Middle East with millions in funding.
Much of that infrastructure is sustained by the Lebanese diaspora in the Latin American world, bringing both funds and some semblance of cover of community. Counterterrorism analysts say that such assistance is typically channeled through legitimate institutions—mosques, schools, centers of culture—over which Hezbollah has control through its Global Dawa program. Clerics and educators, frequently dispatched from overseas, deliver ideological homogeneity and ensure loyalty in these populations, and the network as a whole is strong and hard to infiltrate.
Iran’s influence has served to enhance Hezbollah’s strength as well. Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has attempted to export its ideology outside of its frontiers, and in the case of Latin America, it has been driven by entities like Al-Mustafa University and the clergy.
With millions of dollars at stake and an entire department dedicated to Latin America, the university brings in students from the region, trains them in religious and political issues, and then deploys them back home to set up centers and institutions that are in tune with its agendas. Such intentional building of power has not gone unnoticed by U.S. authorities and elicited sanctions for the role played by the university in fostering global extremism.
The group’s presence in Latin America is not an abstraction. Its capacities have been tested out on huge strikes, such as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center—two of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever on the Western Hemisphere. Subsequently, Brazilian authorities, assisted by foreign intelligence, thwarted a Hezbollah plot to attack Jewish sites in Brasília and São Paulo. The targets had made trips to Lebanon to have reunions, had reconnoitered potential targets, and had tried to recruit foreigners to help carry out the plan.
In spite of the risk, counter-terrorism in the area remains fragmented. Relatively few governments—Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay included—have officially declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. In the absence of a uniform legal framework, concerted effort is hindered, leaving loopholes in jurisdictions for the organization to exploit. Although efforts such as the 3+1 Group on Tri-Border Area Security enhance intelligence exchange, these are often undermined by limited resources and changing priorities.
Concerns on the U.S. border exist, too. The number of those identified on terrorist watchlists being caught at the Southwest border has been increasing, with some estimates that nearly two million have gotten past undetected in recent years. Some of these have been reported to have extremist affiliations. Vetting problems—particularly in the instances of those traveling under false names or having no derogatory information history—cause detection issues. There have been claims of suspected agents infiltrating across the border undetected and being arrested only later in the larger cities.
Transnational terrorism and border threats call for more coordinated policy, a convergence of intelligence, law enforcement, and foreign affairs. Much of the Latin American security infrastructure lacks the technical gear and resources to smash networks as complex as Hezbollah’s. Unless there is regional coordination regarding legal terminology and financial monitoring, the efforts will be isolated. U.S. support for training, intelligence assistance, and capacity-building will be valuable, but it will have to be matched with a long-term commitment by regional partners.
Hezbollah’s deepening penetration of Latin America represents a continuing and changing threat—not just to the region, but to the United States and the nations that are its allies. By combining ideology with organized crime and international logistics, the group has become a highly flexible opponent. It will be met by concerted action that strengthens border protection, pursues the money trail, gains the trust of vulnerable communities, and facilitates real-time intelligence sharing. The cost of failure can thus be quantified not just in terms of prevention opportunities lost, but in lives.