‘There’s no law on the Amazon’: river pirates terrorise ships by night

© Antonio De Azevedo Negrão

We’re always on the look-out for new piracy hotspots, and it appears the vast inland waterway that is the Amazon river, and its multitude of tributaries, could be one. It has always been a lawless place, of course, but this absorbing account in The New York Times describes how a surging riverine population, emboldened drug trafficking gangs and an under-resourced police force, shows that things have got significantly worse in recent times, with murder and rape not uncommon. “’Every riverboat ...