Brazil

 by Cameron Cassar

Brazilian Prison Gangs: Message Delivered

Source: The Washington Post/Alex Gomes/AP

Author: Cameron Cassar

The newly elected right wing president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, had just been newly inaugurated when he had to deal with his first security crisis; terrorism attacks led by prison gangs in the Brazilian state of Ceara. The attacks have been centered on the capital of Ceara, Fortaleza, which is a metropolitan home to about 4 million Brazilians. These attacks have destroyed homes, businesses, modes of transportation, and has left many residents stuck in their homes due to threats of violence.

All of these attacks have been motivated by a desire to get the Brazilian government to end the practice of segregating gang factions in the Brazilian prison system. This goes completely against Bolsonaro and his ideologies. In fact, a major point of his political platform was that he vowed to enact strong policies to combat crime in Brazil. These policies include military takeovers in crime ridden Brazilian cities and shoot to kill policies for violent criminals.

This current wave of violence in Brazil shares many similarities to the wave of violence led by Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel during their reign of narcoterrorism in Colombia. However, while the Brazilian prison gangs have opted to mainly use violence, the Medellin Cartel not only committed violence to instill fear in lawmakers in Colombia, but they also bribed police officers to turn a blind eye towards their criminal activities. Importantly, both of these organizations have used “violent lobbying” tactics to scare lawmakers into implementing policies that benefit them. Pablo Escobar wanted to get rid of extradition while the Brazilian gangs want to eliminate desegregation in prisons. The gang leaders want to end the prison reform which includes ending the separation of rival gang members and the blocking of cell phone service in the prisons.

These reforms would hinder the effect of the gang leaders who are locked up inside of the prison by disconnecting them from the outside world, which gives them the chance to coordinate their attacks. However, many gang leaders do not want desegregation in the prisons because they fear for their safety amongst the other prisoners who are often times rival gang members with a personal vendetta against one another. Incidentally, the violent lobbying of the gangs has united them in an unusual alliance due to the “common enemy”. The First Capital Command and the Red Command, two of the biggest gangs in the area have already formed a pact and there are plenty more that will be formed as the conflict ensues.

Brazil has the third highest prison population behind China and the US (of course). The problem is that President Bolsonaro wants to be even tougher on crime, which will result in even more Brazilians being sent to prison. Some of the policies he wants to implement include lowering the age of criminal responsibility from age 18 to age 16, which will only increase the number of Brazilians in the prison system. More Brazilians in the Brazilian prison system will not help reform the broken prison system. If anything, the country needs less prisoners so they can focus on improving the conditions in the prisons due to the overcrowding. The point of prison is to rehabilitate the prisoners so they can be reintegrated into society when they are released, but a prison in bad condition and ran by the prisoners instead of the guards is not suitable for rehabilitation.

President Bolsonaro must now deal with the crisis that has begun to unfold in his country. However, many members of the left saw this wave of terror coming. As Renato Roseno of the Socialism and Liberty Party stated, “This crisis was entirely predictable, we were sitting on a barrel of gunpowder and it just needed someone to light the fuse”. It is now up to him to decide if he will counter these actions, if he will send in foreign help, will peacekeeping troops be deployed, and will he still be able to stick to his tough on crime policy? It will be interesting to see how Bolsonaro deals with his first major crisis as a president. Will he be able to stick to his hard right policies or will he be pressured to renege on the promises that got him elected as president in the first place?

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 by Roberto Malta

World Cup and Olympics and Terrorism in Brazil

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, terrorist attacks occurred in countries that were hosting global events, including incidents at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and at the Atlanta games in 1996. Since then, the risk of violence and terrorist attacks have become a growing concern for nations hosting these high profile events as well as the international community attending the events. However, on the occasion of Brazil hosting both the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the context and the problems experienced by Brazil and most Latin American countries became evident.

During the Cold War, the vast majority of these countries were under brutal military dictatorships that oppressed the people and labeled every opposition group as terrorists, whether they were peaceful or not. Brazil was among the countries where opposition groups were labeled as terrorists for the simple act of opposing to the government; in many cases protesters were interrogated and tortured by military officers. As a result, following the democratization in 1985 and its consolidation four years afterward, the term terrorist was removed from the vocabulary of Brazilian leaders due to its strong connotation and alignment with the military dictatorship.

As Brazil prepared to host the two most popular events in the world, the World Cup and the Olympics, the international pressure for security was so strong that the country had to pass more extensive anti-terrorism legislation. President Dilma Rousseff, fought in a guerilla during the 1970s and 1980s, and her successor, Michel Temer, is of Arab origin, both common among Brazilians. This resulted in the Brazilian law being much broader and ambiguous than ones in other Western countries, leaving many organizers and security professionals related to the events unhappy.

The consensus at the time was that Brazil was not prepared for an attack the scale of Munich in 1972. As an example, Brazil focused its preparation on so-called lone wolves, which act alone rather than having a group or cell supporting and coordinating the attack. At the time of organizing these events, the Islamic State was publishing videos and statements in Portuguese, creating fears that it could be behind an attack during these events, while the eyes of the world would be fixed on Rio de Janeiro.

Another issue of concern as noted by the New York Times was that the Brazilian soldiers in charge of protecting the various event sites were not prepared to deal with various terrorist scenarios. Not only was the training to counter terrorist attacks or violent insurgency insufficient, but the soldiers and police officers were poorly paid and inadequately equipped, as the state lacked the financial support for basic supplies and equipment, such as gasoline for police cars.

Luckily, there were no terrorist attacks during the World Cup or during the 2016 Olympics. However, the problems remain, and the event highlighted the inability of the Brazilian government to properly respond to terrorist activity.  In fact the same factors limiting efficacy for terror response actions such as insufficient training, lack of equipment, and poor pay, are also partly responsible for the high incidence of violence in Latin America. Thus, the region is unprepared to deal with terrorism and violent extremism, as well as to the day-to-day violence, with few resources invested in police which can counter violence, and even less devoted to tackling the issues that create and enable the rise of violence and drug trafficking. The World Cup and the Olympics exposed the lack of preparation and weakness of Brazil in terms of public safety, but until it becomes a priority for the state, nothing will change and Brazil will not be able to transcend its drug trafficking or homicide epidemics, let alone be prepared for a terrorist event.


Brazilian Army Forces soldiers patrol on Copacabana beach ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

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 by Roberto Malta

Legalization of Drugs in Brazil

Brazil continues to wage war against drug trafficking, prioritizing police and arrests. This past April, President Michel Temer deployed the Army to occupy the areas controlled by drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro. Traffickers sought to maintain the trafficking operations, stay hidden, and let the smoke settle. They planned to return and regain control of the poor communities of Rio’s favelas once the Army pulled out.

The usual response of the security forces is in many ways contradictory. They seem to cooperate and fight the drug gangs, or commandos, simultaneously. Moreover, they accept bribes and let the drug traffickers take care of the slums, in a complete absence of the state. The country is marked by constant deaths and violence, against police officers, drug traffickers, and civilians.

Luiz Eduardo Soares’ book, Elite Squad, realistically sheds light on the interactions between police and drug traffickers. The book depicts how when faced with a security system that punishes honesty, police officers only have three options: to become a corrupt and join the system, to omit oneself from the violence, or to go to war. However, the Brazilian police are ill-equipped to go to war. They remain poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly paid. At the end of the day, these police officers have hopes and dreams and families at home. They do not want to go to war and risk putting their head in the path of the guillotine.

So how does the war on drugs continue under a context of intense police corruption and poor working conditions? This occurs in two main ways. Firstly, elite police squads are responsible for most of the incursions against drug traffickers. The ROTA acts in Sao Paulo, while the BOPE, which is represented in Elite Squad, acts in Rio de Janeiro. They are not paid any better than the usual police, but have a much more intensive training and are better equipped. Corrupt officers have no chance on these squads and are kicked out if they happen to sneak in after the tough and humiliating training they have to go through, in order to join the squad. The second option is to deploy the armed forces, usually the army or naval fusiliers when a politician needs a boost on his approval rating or Brazil is hosting a big international event, such as the World Cup.

The growing consensus around the world, among experts, politicians, and jurists, is that the War on Drugs has failed and that it only serves to shake up the ranks of criminal organizations and exacerbated the violence in poor communities all around the world. Luis Roberto Barroso, minister of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court, defends the legalization of drugs as a way to counter this failure. According to Barroso, after 40 years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives ruined through killings or imprisonments, things are far worse.

The main argument of Barroso is that drugs are bad and therefore it is the role of the state to “discourage consumption, treat dependents and repress trafficking”. He adds that legalization should be applied as a means towards achieving these goals. More than that, it is important to dismantle the drug traffickers’ strongholds in Brazil, which convince and force those living in poverty to join their ranks.

Barroso also compares the current situation to the cigarette issue. Cigarettes were not forbidden, but many restrictions have been imposed on advertising, the minimum age to purchase, and hefty taxes have been applied. As a result, in the past twenty years, the consumption of cigarettes in Brazil has been cut in half.

The criminalization of drugs in Brazil assists numerous people. It helps the drug traffickers that maintain their monopoly. It also helps the politicians who are corrupt and look for a scapegoat for the angers of the population about the high violence. Furthermore, it aids the police and the perverse public security system, which is deep in corruption. The one group it does not help is the working class. They continue to live under the violence and attempt to earn an honest living. However, they are met again and again with failure because of the control and temptations that drug traffickers spread throughout the favelas.

The solution is clearly to legalize drugs, but given that criminalization benefits so many powerful people, society as a whole will keep suffering from this failed policy. While corruption reigns supreme in Brazilian politics, the poor man will keep suffering, the traffickers will keep profiting, and the police will either become more corrupt or blatantly ignore the problems. Furthermore, the elite squads will remain at war against drug traffickers. Brazil’s drug problem is a reflection of its corruption problem. Legalizing drugs could be a start on solving the larger national problems. It is better to take small measures and improve the lives of many than to do nothing at all and ignore the issues that affect millions of people.

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 by Roberto Malta

Profile: Brazilian Journalist Tim Lopes

O filho de Tim Lopes, Bruno Quintela, com a avó e mãe do jornalista, dona Maria do Carmo Leia mais<\/a>

The media alerts us to human rights violations and wars between the oppressed and their oppressors. An under-reported story, however, is how journalists, photographers, and radiographers put their lives on the line to tell us the stories that must be told.

Many of them die in the process of doing so: Robert Capa, a Hungarian war photographer, took some of the best-known photographs of World War II. Capa shot the D-Day landing at Normandy. He died when he stepped on a landmine in the Vietnam War. Paraguayan journalist Candido Figueredo has covered his country’s criminal organizations for years. Figueredo has received numerous, credible death threats and has lived under government protection for 13 years.

Tim Lopes was a Brazilian journalist who was killed while covering drug traffickers. Arcanjo Antonino Lopes do Nascimento, aka Tim Lopes, was born in November 1950 in Pelotas, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. When he was eight years old, his family moved to the Mangueira favela in Rio de Janeiro.

Lopes had a humble upbringing. However, that did not stop him from studying journalism at the Faculdade Helio Alonso (FACHA). He won the coveted Premio Abril de Journalismo award twice early in his career in 1985 and 1986.

Lopes was an investigative journalist who preferred to do fieldwork on the street over sitting in an air-conditioned office. In pieces like the newspaper O Dia’s Funk: Sound, Joy, and Terror, Lopes openly criticized the drug traffickers in Rio’s Favela. However, he also went after those he saw in the municipal government ceding control to the criminals.

In 1995, Lopes joined Rede Globo, Brazil’s largest broadcaster, and began a career in broadcast journalism. Lopes kept his focus on fieldwork, specifically on the impact of those who grew up in the favelas as he did. He excelled at the network and within a year Lopes was a producer. Lopes and his team were awarded the Premio Esso, which is the Brazilian equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize. This was for a 2001 piece on drug traffickers. Lopes exposed traffickers openly selling cocaine in Rio de Janeiro’s streets. His work often included hidden cameras and disguises.

In June of 2002, Lopes left his middle-class apartment in Copacabana and stopped at the Rede Globo office. He continued to the Vila Cruzeiro favela to work on a piece about prostitution amongst minors. The local population had pleaded for Lopes to write such an expose. Lopes was filming when traffickers who had spotted his hidden camera approached and beat him. They kidnapped him, taking him to the Morro do Alemao, another favela where he had made enemies throughout his career.

There, he was tortured and condemned by a trafficker’s court. After being dismembered alive, Lopes was executed by being put inside car tires that were then set on fire, a method known as the microwave. The police listed the 51-year-old journalist as disappeared until an anonymous tip led police to a secret grave. There, a piece of Lopes’ rib was found, along with his wristwatch, crucifix, and camera.

Lopes left behind his wife Alessandra and their sons Diogo and Bruno. He also left behind many grieving coworkers and friends. Lopes received a proper send-off during Rede Globo’s Jornal Nacional, Brazil’s most popular news broadcast. Ending the show in silence was the habit when covering gristly developments. But anchor and chief-editor William Bonner led the newsroom in a standing ovation for Lopes and his work. To the last, they prevented the drug traffickers’ violence from having the last word. They proclaimed that journalists’ work would continue.

Tim Lopes’ life and legacy reflect his work. In life and in death he brought attention to the crimes and brutality of drug traffickers and government inaction. In the arduous work of improving the security of a city like Rio de Janeiro, his journalism led to action against drug traffickers. Lopes became nationally known after his death and a national conversation ensued. Lopes’ name is alive in the Newseum, in Washington D.C. There, he is commemorated among too many other journalists like him who were murdered in pursuit of career and moral commitment. In 2012 President Rousseff posthumously awarded Lopes the Premio Direitos Humanos, Brazil’s highest human rights prize. His death was an indictment of the favelas’ brutal realities – a testament to the terror that reigned there.

His life, however, proved no matter how humble one’s origins, no one has to join the criminals. In fact, one’s living could be made fighting them. Tim Lopes’ was a vital contribution to Brazilian society. His fight against drug traffickers led to better living conditions. Though our eyes may tear up, let’s not linger in the sadness following deaths like his. Let us, too, follow Bonner’s lead and give a standing ovation. We thank them for their vitally necessary work, their positive impact on society, and their inspiration for others to follow their path. That is how we make better and more peaceful societies and as a result, Lopes and his colleagues smile in Heaven for the survival of their work and legacy. 

The Complexo do Alemão. For many years these hilltops were used by leaders of drug trafficking gangs as sanctuary from law enforcement; they now feature the stations of a gondola transport system connecting the Complexo (operational since July 2011).

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 by Roberto Malta

Two Birds, One Stone: Terror and Drug Trafficking Recruitment

A favela, Brazilian Portuguese for slum, is a low-income, historically informal urban area in Brazil.

The last half of a century has seen a turn away from conventional warfare as armed conflicts shifted to guerrilla and other unconventional war-time tactics. It also saw the rise of two new armed efforts: The War on Terror and The War on Drugs. While there have been limited triumphs in each case, time has proven these approaches have been ineffective at producing stated goals such as putting a definitive end to terror organizations and gangs.

The world over, people are shaken by daily terrorist attacks that leave dozens dead and hundreds injured. All the while, drug traffickers control swathes of countries, destroying promising lives, especially in Mexico and Brazil – two of Latin America’s biggest economies.

For better or worse, humans are unique in their ability to adapt and increasingly, researchers and experts today, especially those studying Conflict Analysis and Resolution point toward the necessity of shifting our approaches if we hope to make real progress in our stated aims. Recruitment is often identified as terror and drug organizations’ Achilles Heel. Besides conspicuous differences in their missions – terror organizations aim to introduce political change through violence, and organized crime aims to profit through any means it can hoard – the pools from which the two cull new recruits are remarkably alike.

Amy Doughten from the Queens University of Charlotte’s Department of Psychology in North Carolina enlightened readers by itemizing similarities between gang and terror recruitment. Such efforts, she wrote, “…focus on young individuals,” and, “…provide an overarching answer and appeal to individuals marginalized from society. Recruited individuals may also have higher than normal levels of alienation and conflict with the larger societal environment.” Simply stated, both types of organizations target young people searching for inclusion in impoverished communities because they are easy to influence.

The international community has the power to cut these organizations’ recruitment bases in the long run, and at root, if it insists on improving the lot of marginalized populations at the local level. Current bellicose strategies, while perhaps well-intended, only produce the hydra-head phenomenon wherein the elimination of the heads of these organizations only see such people replaced with the next belligerents in line. Attack and retribution, in perpetuity, has been the result.

World leaders must learn from their mistakes in the wars on drugs and terror. They can shift their focus toward investing in local, marginalized, poor areas in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Around the world, we can provide a more humane alternative to gangs of any sort for at-risk youth. Terrorists and drug traffickers can be defeated by reducing enrollees in their ranks. Only this can bring terror and drug organizations into their final days. It seems our current strategy necessitates that additional adversaries rise to stand against us. Let’s resolve, not perpetuate the problem.

Sources:
https://cides.fryshuset.se/files/2012/07/differences_and_similarities.pdf
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=jss
http://time.com/3716160/terrorism-gangs-white-house-summit/

Julio Falas, portalvermelho.org Children: between drug traffickers and the oppression of the state

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