In Brazil, walking through majority-black Salvador da Bahia’s working-class neighborhoods, one can now spot garages with the Hells Angels’ painted insignia, in Portuguese and English. Their compounds are confined, far from commercial areas, though a new feature of the city, like in many other urban areas throughout the Latin American subcontinent.
The Hells Angels, one of the most notorious outlaw motorcycle gangs, have now reached Latin America. However, unlike their reputation for high-profile criminal activity in North America, Australia, and Europe, they have so far maintained a low profile in the region—likely a calculated decision given the dominance of entrenched criminal organizations like Mexican and Brazilian megacartels. This low-key approach may not last.
As organized crime continues to expand in Latin America and may soon explode with a global economic recession, the Hells Angels face a pivotal choice: remain in the shadows as auxiliary players or attempt to carve out their own criminal fiefdom—risking confrontation with both rivals and law enforcement.
The Hells are one of the largest criminal gangs worldwide, with hundreds of chapters in, reportedly, 66 countries, with over 6,000 members. They reportedly earn over $1 billion annually from drug sales alone, according to FBI statistics.
In the last two decades, accelerated by the 2008 and 2012 recessions and COVID-19 pandemic’s criminal economy booms, they have started their own chapters in Latin America, with allegedly hundreds of members of their own.
The Hells’ influence in the region is, like in the United States and Europe, highly dependent on their alliances with support and feeder clubs, like the Rising Devils in Brazil, the Vampiros in Chile, and the Red Devils worldwide. These clubs, also engaged in criminal activities on a local and sometimes large scale, act largely as proxies for the Hells Angels’ interests.
Chile and Brazil are the only two countries with known feeder motorcycle clubs to the gang, and some of the areas with the largest number of Hells Angels members. They reportedly operate in the two countries’ largest cities, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Salvador, Brasilia, Recife, Valparaiso, and others. Other countries in the region, including Peru, Argentina, and Colombia, also have members according to social media posts from the Hells Angels branches, though with a much smaller presence. Hells Angels MC Brasil has 400 members according to their Facebook page, which would make it the most prominent branch in South America.
The Mexico branch, however, is its own can of worms. It reportedly works with Mexican cartels and local White Supremacist gangs, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas, and Clan del Golfo, among others. They have the largest social media presence of any Latin American branch of the gang. They concentrate their activities at and near the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as in the heartlands. The Mexican H.A. alliances and activities have attracted some retaliation from rival gangs. In 2024, a drug trafficker linked to the Hells Angels was killed in a targeted hit by a Mexican cartel in Playa del Carmen, a popular tourist spot.
Such retaliation is at the heart of the Hells Angels’ strategic dilemma moving forward. The Hells Angels, despite their connections to dozens of criminal and motorcycle gangs and their influence in the drug trade and prostitution rings, tend to stay relatively local in their activities. Their local and national chapters allow them to run their operations through concentrated locales.
Expanding to Latin America, and running regional or global criminal operations, brings them a slew of potential rewards, but not without significant risk and threats. In Chile and Mexico, in particular, the state has already responded with force to the Hells Angels’ new settlements, particularly their association with much larger gangs like the Sinaloa Cartel. In the former, the Chilean Investigations Police (PDI) and other law enforcement agencies have essentially killed the entirety of the gang’s presence in the country, detaining their top leaders, seizing significant weaponry and drug-producing materiel, and banning their presence on social media.
In the latter, the motorcycle gang has been caught up in ongoing, and growing, counter-narcotics and counter-sex-and-human-trafficking operations by the Mexican and American governments, resulting in arrests and deaths of H.A. operatives and leaders. Attracting the attention of rival gangs, some of which are much larger, more powerful, and more connected, like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), can also be a magnet for further operational disruption and violence. Such confrontation between the H.A., their affiliates, and rival gangs may attract further government crackdowns, which are bad for business.
Latin America is a land of golden opportunity (sometimes literally) for criminal enterprise, at the moment, and may be further strengthened by an almost-certain upcoming global recession. Megacartels are growing, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Brazil’s First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (CV), Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, and, most recently, the Colombian armed groups are regrouping.
The Hells Angels must decide whether to latch on to other gangs’ success, catching their gains while minimizing costs, or try to establish a presence of their own, earning a larger piece of the market pie while attracting more negative attention. Their efforts, largely successful, to establish ties to local motorcycle clubs and criminal gangs, including some of the largest in the world, seem to indicate they have gone with the first option. They have extensive experience providing protection services to their members and allied gangs, which could be a hot commodity in the region given security challenges.
Whether they change course and opt for a riskier play, however, remains to be seen. Given geopolitical strife, the Hells Angels may also have to go the route of the Albanian and Russian gangs, and move to Latin America in a more significant fashion to avoid government crackdowns. If the U.S.-Canada border becomes militarized, and immigration and cross-border commerce become more strenuous, the Hells Angels will also have to think about whether Latin America will represent a long-term shift, or just another frontier to sustain their North American dominance.
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