[HN Gopher] Sand trafficking in Latin America
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Sand trafficking in Latin America
Author : josh-sematic
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-02-06 01:32 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (insightcrime.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (insightcrime.org)
| boringg wrote:
| It would be interesting to know percentage of market
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| There's a chart about half way through the article - around 40%
| in Brazil
| RajT88 wrote:
| Brazil seems like a wild place. I mean that in several senses
| of the word.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| If you are interested in what anarchy would actually look
| like as a political system, Latin America gives some very
| good insights
| bboygravity wrote:
| Anarchy in a political system. Isn't that a
| contradiction?
| lazide wrote:
| It's a sliding scale. On one end you have Germany. On the
| other you have Somalia/Horn of Africa or the like.
| sali0 wrote:
| A great book that goes deeper into the sand industry is The
| Material World by Ed Conway. Highly recommended!
| throwaway519 wrote:
| About $10 per metric ton end customer price (wholesale, CFR), if
| anyone's interested.
| dkasper wrote:
| Sand is heavy af. A ton is only like 20 cubic feet. Still...
| that's not very much money.
| lostlogin wrote:
| My eye is twitching remembering a fiasco where someone
| ordered concrete assuming 1 cubic metre required 1 ton of
| concrete.
|
| Ever since that I've assumed it's about 2.5 tons per cubic
| metre. This works much better.
| blackguardx wrote:
| But concrete is measured by volume at least in the US
| (cubic yards...sigh). I think this is because different mix
| designs can change the resulting weight. I've even heard of
| adding air to make for better pumping.
| SECProto wrote:
| Air entrainment is critical for freeze-thaw protection,
| so any exposed concrete in places that have below
| freezing should have 5-6% air entrained.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The bags of ingredients at the hardware store are usually
| 20-25kgs here, and labelled that way.
|
| It's a silly way to buy a lot of concrete, but does help
| someone without a tow bar.
| locusofself wrote:
| how can anyone possibly make money off of that with transport
| costs and labor?
| throwaway519 wrote:
| A big slow barge can carry $200-500k, depening on how big the
| barge is. That's a fair amount of cash.
|
| From there, you've got 40-100 truck runs from wherever the
| barge unloads to wherever the sand's in use, assuming you
| can't run the barge straight to the customer. Again, that's
| not a huge amount +to the CFR above.
|
| Above using barge capacity of 20-50k tons, and truck capacity
| 50 ton.
| bboygravity wrote:
| In case of the Chinese, when I was at sea, I heard stories of
| massive prisoner ships that are essentially used for slave-
| labour at-sea. That time it was for fishing (massive mother
| ship with smaller, still huge ships spreading out to empty
| out the seas in waters very far away from China).
|
| If they would engage in sand stealing, the prisoner slaves
| might help keep the labour cost down.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Is anyone else fascinated more about the stories of the people
| that get into this kind of stuff? I mean, it seems like you must
| just be destined to be in this business if you are in it. Nobody
| goes on the Internet and researches how to get started sand
| trafficking.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| It seems to me that business springs up wherever there is
| arbitrage and this is especially true for "free" natural
| resources (timber, water, etc).
|
| Organised crime can make it profitable because they already
| have manpower and equipment, but it isn't necessary.
|
| The smuggling operations between Guatemala and Mexico go both
| ways, depending on market prices in both countries for some
| very unglamorous products like eggs and gasoline.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Makes sense. Being in organized crime must be fucking
| fascinating. One day, you're haggling on the price of black
| market eggs. Next day, you're arranging the smuggling of sand
| from Latin America to Australia.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| It's not, you fucked up once and you either go to prison or
| 6 feet under.
| sbassi wrote:
| your answer was like "tell me you don't live in a third-world
| country without telling me..." I am from Argentina so I know:
| You go to buy sand and are offered the legit one at a price
| hard to afford, or the "black" one with some discount. This way
| you learn there is a black market. Maybe for one bag you will
| get the same price anyway, but when you need an important
| amount of it, there will be 2 prices. If you are in a beach
| town, you hear the rumors about why there is less sand.
| nophunphil wrote:
| Is the same seller making both offers? One for the difficult
| price, one for the black market price?
| ty6853 wrote:
| I've forgotten the name, but I once watched a documentary on
| illegal gold mining in Brazil. One of the most successful of
| them was a German (illegal immigrant? not enforced in brazil
| anyway) , who was attracted by the wild west aspect.
|
| There definitely does seem to be a breed of people like this,
| and Latin America or Africa can present some interesting
| opportunities (see alo cowboy capitalists by vice).
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I personally think getting into organised crime kind of mirrors
| the process where corps pick up fresh grads. Someone who fits
| the profile of being suitable for organised crime is someone
| without legal opportunities due to a lack of education, illegal
| immigration status, prior convictions, etc. In similar ways
| they are "headhunted" in a process that is more about
| convenience than key skills in a resume. If you're one of these
| people you'll end up floating around spaces where the
| "headhunting" happens.
|
| I remember when I was young and unemployed being plucked from
| the street when I was looking at job cards in the window of a
| job centre by members of an MLM. They tried to rope me into
| their ugly embrace selling door to door on commission only
| deals that were dubious in nature.
|
| What's kind of spooky to me is how thin those lines can be, it
| only takes one mistake, lapse in judgement in youth or rolling
| your birth into an unstable family to end up on the wrong side
| of that line. This is why I personally find it quite
| distasteful when people who travelled the happy path turn up
| their nose at people who fell off onto the darker one. In some
| cases some kids excel in their black market roles and would
| have applied the same gusto to a white market profession if
| they'd had that opportunity.
| lazide wrote:
| Once you're in, it also gets progressively easier to get in
| deeper, and harder to get 'out'.
|
| All your contacts are 'in', you have a reputation and people
| trust you to do what they expect, etc. etc. If you get
| arrested, even more so, as now people 'outside' have a clear
| signal which side of the line you're in.
|
| People looking down on you is as much a defense mechanism for
| them as anything else too, of course, as it provides not only
| a us vs them mechanism, but also makes it easier to segregate
| themselves and avoid crossing the line.
|
| It's genius really.
| netsharc wrote:
| The documentary the Act of Killing [1] follows a man who
| was a regime-sanctioned killer of "communists" in
| Indonesia. Watching interviews with the director, he talks
| about how after someone's killed a couple of people,
| refusing to do more means admitting that the previous kills
| he's done are something wrong/terrible.
|
| The director helps reveal what's inside the killer's mind
| by suggesting to him to make a movie of his experiences. In
| one scene [2], we're at a lush waterfall, we see angels
| dancing and the victims of the killers thank him for
| freeing them from communistic godlessness and sending them
| to heaven, with the song "Born Free" playing in the
| background...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CfG-VmDyjE
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ta9To14yw
| lazide wrote:
| Having been close friends to some killers (legally
| sanctioned by the gov't at the time), the other issue is
| killing is, frankly, really easy. Way easier than anyone
| in polite society is going to be comfortable with really
| knowing, frankly.
|
| Emotional and social consequences from killing are not so
| easy though, usually, but the actual act itself is pretty
| straightforward, especially with a little training and
| some forethought/prep.
|
| It tends to change one's view of society and other people
| quite a bit. Which makes re-integrating with society
| and/or integrating childhood conditioning hard. Hence the
| flight to delusions or drugs for many.
|
| But often the hardest part for many people to understand
| is how easy it can be for many to just shrug their
| shoulders and go 'ok' and continue on with their lives
| with not only no guilt, but feeling good about it.
| Because sometimes people needed killin'.
| close04 wrote:
| Aren't soldiers just that? Governments sanctioned
| killers? The only "guideline" is that the victim must be
| the "enemy". Just that the definition of "enemy" is vague
| and arbitrary, enough that it can mean anything needed at
| any time.
|
| Being government sanctioned it makes sense that it would
| attract people who find it easier (even enjoyable for
| some) to kill and live with it afterwards, or at least it
| makes it easy by providing the moral cover that it was
| necessary and moral. They were enemies after all.
|
| These people are far more likely to continue to find
| killing easy during and after the fact as ling as they're
| given even the vaguest sense of moral cover.
| lazide wrote:
| The vast majority of soldiers will never plausibly be in
| a position to kill anyone, even in self defense.
|
| And even in the worst wars, very few front line soldiers
| ever actually killed anyone - even infantry.
| holoduke wrote:
| I lost a best friend that few years prior to his jail
| conviction got his phd in economics. I always knew about his
| business and he told me many stories about why he was doing it.
| I even advised him. But I always stayed out of it. One thing
| got clear to me. The people in that world are similar to our
| 'normal' world. You have the same hierarchy as in normal
| society with smart and dumb, nice and not so nice people. His
| story took place in Europe. He started after meeting some
| people in his fighting gym. Got a first assignment and things
| rolled fasr from there. High reward and thrill was an important
| motivation for him. He occasionally had hundreds of thousands
| of euros in cash. which we mainly spend on parties, escorts and
| drugs. Sometimes huge chunks of the money got lost because a
| person in the chain got caught or stole the money. But on
| avarage he was making like 200k a month. He got caught on the
| highway few years ago with several kilos of heroine and cocaine
| and has to sit for 22 years.
| ggm wrote:
| If he told you more than he should do, seek advice.
| datavirtue wrote:
| This is the way it is with everyone. Rarely does someone choose
| their industry and job. I was into computers as a child because
| I had access to them through my grandparents' bookeeping
| business and being taught by my grandfather.
|
| I really wanted to build houses but could never find a
| confluence of opportunity. I was sucked in by the available
| opportunities. My family were all artists and skilled
| industrial laborers. A lot of whom picked up their trade in the
| military. My opportunity was tech and I consider myself very
| lucky.
|
| My father was a failed artist turned retailer bootstrapped by
| his father's GE stock he was granted as a precision welder, and
| I worked as a retail clerk and manager in the retail business
| for a time when I wasn't working in tech.
|
| Farmers kid becomes a farmer. Maybe another opportunity comes
| up and they take it.
|
| I'm never impressed by anyone's professional title until I hear
| their story. 99% of the time it's a result of the circumstances
| they were born into. Usually the only people with an
| interesting story were born into very modest or limited
| opportunity and had to grind it out until a better opportunity
| presented itself.
|
| Sand trafficking is a perfect example. It is the best
| opportunity they have.
| dhagberg wrote:
| First learned about this from a Carl Hiaasen book, Razor Girl
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_Girl)
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Queue the next batch of YC sand companies
| malloci wrote:
| SandGPT
| avodonosov wrote:
| Innovation may be needed for recycling of the old concrete from
| demolished buildings. Including extraction of sand from it.
|
| If anyone invents a cheap process, it may have revolutionary
| consequences, probably.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I think that's a joke but honestly I think there's a disruption
| opportunity here.
|
| The easy thing about sand is that it takes whatever shape you
| want it to. The hard thing about sand is that it has to be firm
| (strong internal chemical bonds) and in small granules
| (somehow, lots of energy had to go into breaking those bonds,
| in the beach case this is wave energy).
|
| But if you had a large enough library of rocks with known
| shapes or which will break along predictable lines, and a
| precise enough idea of the ultimate desired shape for your
| project, you could skip the energy intensive middle part and
| just use large rocks that mostly fit instead of tiny rocks in
| the form of sand-based concrete. Then you'd glue those rocks
| together with concrete--which would still require sand, but now
| much less of it.
|
| I'm not sure how the monetary economics would shake out, but
| from an energy budget perspective it seems like a win to not
| require things to be broken up so tiny just to have them glued
| back together into something so large. "cheaper" to just mostly
| solve the puzzle out of already large pieces.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Isn't this why often pebbles are simply added to the cement?
|
| How do you imagine competing in price with _pebbles_?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| No I imagine competing in price with boulders and a 3d
| scanner.
| lazide wrote:
| Nah, sand has huge advantages in that it has very large
| surface area and small physical size, while also being
| physically quite strong (if selected/graded appropriately).
|
| You can't replace it with fist sized rocks and expect it to
| behave appropriately, regardless of 'compensation'
| notpushkin wrote:
| I think rectangular rocks would work best here. You can lay
| those down as even rows and get flat walls very easily.
|
| Perhaps we don't need to use actual rocks, even! Dried clay
| can work just as well. If we put it in fire, it should become
| firm enough for most purposes.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Actually there's a lot of innovation to be had in sand
| itself. Currently only certain grain sizes are used. So
| desert sand gets skipped and beach sand gets smuggled.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I imagine most concrete applications in the world are
| actually reinforced concrete applications. Without rebar, I
| don't think you can build most spanning concrete structures
| that we're use to.
|
| This would leave block/stone to mostly go into pure vertical
| loading applications. It'd probably be reasonably useful for
| some wall applications, but that seems pretty limited. Even
| for a true foundation application, it seems like large stone
| blocks embedded in a concrete matrix would be pretty
| heterogenous, and you could potentially end up with weird
| stress concentrations that would be more difficult to model
| (and perhaps have less desirable failure modes) than rebar
| concrete.
|
| Another benefit of the "break down and put back together"
| approach of concrete is that it allows you to get very
| accurate and precise predictions of behavior. Large blocks
| will be less predictable. This will likely lead to requiring
| higher safety margins (which means more
| material/energy/cost).
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| I have a gf in Goias brazil . She told me that she was mugged 7
| times for her cell phone years ago . Then a new governor came
| along and began a policy of. allowing police to execute dangerous
| criminal gang members rather than arrest them. Now the area is
| considered one of the safest regions. He's rummored to have
| presidential ambitions. Guess there is a breaking point when
| crime and corruption gets to a point where people just have had
| enough and only want results Justice be dammed.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Any sources for the shoot-to-kill policies?
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Loads. This wasn't a secret policy:
|
| > "The police will do the right thing: Aim at their little
| heads and fire! So there is no mistake"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/world/americas/brazil-
| rio...
| caty12 wrote:
| This happens in other countries too. I thought this podcast about
| it was good:
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Dya11oWUSsbCkBA9AAzrM?si=E...
| frellus wrote:
| In the TV show Barry, this is what NoHo Hank was doing. I thought
| it was sort of a joke, but guess not.
| calme_toi wrote:
| Reminds the sand trafficing espicode from NPR Planet Money: Peak
| Sand
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/epis...
|
| >A few years ago, an entire beach in a remote area of Jamaica
| vanished. Thieves dug up hundreds of tons of sand and hauled it
| away in dump trucks in the middle of the night. The sand--white,
| powdery, Caribbean sand--was worth about a million dollars.
| silisili wrote:
| This is happening in SEA, too. The Chinese show up with a giant
| ship to some rather remote island, offer a few promises or money
| in exchange to take a little, and completely ravage what beach
| exists. I've seen it firsthand.
|
| To my knowledge, but not necessarily fact, they aren't even
| working with the country's national government, but small poor
| regional governments directly.
| SEJeff wrote:
| This reminds me of Singapore, where the national stockpile of
| sand is a literal state secret:
| https://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/built-on-sand...
| rockyj wrote:
| There is "Sand Mafia" in India also. A lot of people have sadly
| lost their lives and the corruption / rot runs deep.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft
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