Comando Vermelho

It's, it's, uh, the, the Portuguese acronym is PCC, so you'll hear PCC, Primeiro Comando da Capital, and that's, that's the group that is the one that should be on your radar more than any other.

The other group is called, um, the Red Command.

This group is actually older and, again, born in the prison system, born of abuses inside the prison system.

They had a lot of contact with leftist prisoners that were incarcerated at the tail end of the military dictatorship.

So up through 1985, there's a military dictatorship in Brazil, and these prisoners are mixing with political prisoners, and the political prisoners are raising their consciousness, um, which is the literal expression in Portuguese and in Spanish, raising their consciousness about these abuses, and that's where they are formed.

Both of these groups, the Red Command, the Comando Vermelho, and the Primeiro Comando da Capital, are, are have evolved into these very predatory, um, you know, very controlling, they have this sort of, their own criminal governance structures in the areas and, and that they operate.

Um, but they're also, they also know how to win the, the people around them.

Um, they offer, especially the PCC, the First Capital Command, offers an incredible array of, let's call them social services.

O Ruas é objeto de investigação.

O Ruas é objeto de investigação, mas vários que eram pra ter sido candidatos ao governo, como o Bacelar, por exemplo, foi preso exatamente por ser considerado o braço do Comando Vermelho na política fluminense.

Tem os antes, presos antes, tem os presos durante, tem os presos depois.

E enquanto isso, o voto da população mais pobre, da população favelada, da população periférica do Rio de Janeiro é dificultado em todas as eleições por alguns fatores.

Se as pesquisas tivessem erradas, a gente não teria cantado Cheiro de Wilson Witzel, certo? Elas contaram direito a história.

O problema é que a definição é muito em cima do laço.

E eu tenho até uma hipótese, que é uma hipótese, não tem como provar, que é o seguinte: se você não tem opção real, se as pessoas mandam, pessoas armadas, sejam as milícias, sejam o crime organizado, Comando Vermelho, quem for, por que que cê vai se importar se a escolha já tá feita, né? O seu, o seu destino já tá selado.

Eu acho que é uma perda de poder, a pessoa se sente sem poder e, portanto, a eleição passa a ser irrelevante.

People wanna get back to that.

They wanna get back, you know, to, to fighting the drugs, fighting the cartels, fighting the criminal organizations, the Red Command, which controls the favelas, including one that I'm looking directly at, you know-

Wow

... just past down the beach line here in Ipanema.

SB17-

No one said that

... which passed last year, banned certain governments, organizations, and individuals from... and, uh, buying land in Texas.

You voted against the bill.

The US trade representative is saying that-

You know, there have been tariffs announced in the lead up to this vote and also the designation of Brazil's two big crime organizations, the Red Command and the PCC, as designated foreign terrorist organizations.

And many people see that as an attempt to allow the Bolsonaros to sort of take a hard line up on the stump against narco terrorists and announce all the tough policies they're going to take and contrast that with Lula's supposed weakness on crime.

And Trump and his administration, you know, they've been very open about their intentions to exert their domination over the Western Hemisphere and the whole of the Americas.

For, for involvement in this

Yeah, with Comando Vermelho, right.

So-

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's a lot of people.

Uh, I have seen the metropolitan area of Rio, maybe two, three million people live in Comando Vermelho neighborhoods.

Mm-hmm.

I should talk.

Anyway, the Argentines extradited a man named Diego Diraccio to Brazil, where he's accused of running a weapons business supplying both the PCC and the Red Command.

And for those who don't know, the PCC and the Red Command are the two biggest companies massive gangs in brazil i think the pcc might at this point be the most powerful gang in south america or criminal organization in south america like straight up i mean if we're not including south america i don't think we want to include mexico there but i think it might even be up there with the with the with the cartels of mexico it is it's a global organization really and these guys um they don't like each other they kill each other by the hundreds and thousands

Yeah.

In many ways, the rise of Brazilian gangs in Latin America is like the story of organized crime in this part of the world over the past couple of years.

But then they illegally export them.

So quick brief on the two gangs that we've talked about.

Red Command develops inside Rio de Janeiro's prison system in the 70s.