Violence in Latin America

The Mafia's Shadow Kingdom

By Jens Glüsing in Rio de Janeiro
May 22, 2006,
Source

The recent violence in Sao Paulo may just be the tip of the iceberg: In many parts of Brazil and indeed across Latin America, governments have capitulated to gangsters, and the rise of organized crime could end the recent leftward shift across Latin America.

Garbage containers block the road into the slum district Vigario Geral, one of the most dangerous favelas in Rio de Janeiro. A visitor approaches the barricade, and two youths appear from the shadow of a nearby building. They're carrying machine guns, and handguns are tucked into their pants. "You want to go to church, right?" the older of the two asks the stranger politely. "We'll take you there -- we're registered."

A boy rolls the containers aside. The youths deposit their Kalashnikov rifles on the backseat of a taxi and direct the driver through the labyrinthine streets. Father Marco Freitas receives his guest in front of the congregation room of Assembleia de Deus, a Protestant sect. The priest knows the two youths: "They respect me; they often come to the service. It's only during police raids that things get dangerous."

But police raids rarely occur. "We're usually warned in advance," the youths point out. They escort the visitor back to the highway onramp and say goodbye. This is where their territory ends and the Brazil of law and order begins -- the Brazil of "asphalt," as the drug mafia calls it.

The slum Vigario Geral is part of a shadowy kingdom of drug gangs and their heavily armed footmen. The territory isn't marked on any map. Paramilitary gangsters control most of Rio's roughly 700 favelas. Drug bosses decide whether the electricity company installs a new power line or not; they decide when the pre-school closes and who can visit the priest. They've built a parallel government -- like the ones in Sao Paulo prisons, the slums of Caracas and Medellin, and the streets of Acapulco and Mexico City.

Organized crime is on the rise across Latin America. The most important mafia organization in Rio calls itself "Comando Vermelho" ("Red Command"); its main source of revenue is drug dealing in the favelas. Sao Paulo is controlled by the PCC (the "First Command of the National Capital"). Its areas of expertise include bank robberies and cargo theft; it also controls the drug trade in the prisons.

Gangs of kidnappers spread fear and terror in Caracas and Mexico City. Cocaine cartels control the area around Mexico's northern border. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are the territory of the "Maras," adolescent street gangs that live mainly off extortion. The paramilitaries and guerrillas of Columbia support themselves by raising money through kidnappings and drug trading.

Moving backwards in history

An entire continent is slipping backwards in time. The spread of violence and crime show that large parts of Latin America are far from joining the leading industrial nations of the Western hemisphere. In constantly expanding their power, the gangs demonstrate the weakness of the region's governments; wherever there is a power vacuum, the gangs take over. "Organized crime can only survive as long as it escapes punishment," says Alba Zaluar, a Brazilian researcher who specializes in the study of violence, "so it creates its own territories in order to assure that it won't be punished there."

Latin America's often decrepit democracies are easy prey. The court system barely functions in most countries; the police are often corrupt and cooperate with drug dealers. Many politicians can be easily bribed, and parliamentary positions are perceived as opportunities for self-enrichment.

Last week's events demonstrate just how powerful the gangs of Sao Paulo have become -- gangster squads plunged Latin America's largest city into a state of terror for days. They carried out 293 attacks, murdering 41 policemen and security officers, burning 83 buses and firing gunshots at subway stations and fire departments. The terrified police reacted unusually violently, shooting 107 suspects in seven days. Many of the city's residents no longer dared to leave their homes. Schools and stores closed for fear of violence. The bustling metropolis turned into a ghost town.

The PCC gang was responsible for the terror. Its boss, the incarcerated bank robber Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, a.k.a. "Marcola," wanted to resist his transfer to a high-security prison. He coordinated the attack on the government from his mobile phone, and called for mutinies in 73 PCC-controlled prisons.

The government capitulated after several nights of terror. A government delegation visited the mafia boss in his prison, 600 kilometers (373 miles) away from the capital. The delegation promised to provide imprisoned PCC members with 60 televisions and to permit them to watch the football World Cup. It allowed the gang bosses to receive "intimate visits" from their girlfriends and wives, and decided they would no longer be required to wear prison uniforms. The violence ebbed after only a few hours, both outside and inside the prisons. Marcola had told his men to back off.

The stuff that myths are made of

Such victories are the stuff that myths are made of. The gangs continue to recruit their often underage killers -- "Bin Ladens," they call them -- from among the hundreds of thousands of unemployed adolescents in the slums on Sao Paulo's periphery. Hymns are sung to Marcola and the PCC. The motto Sao Paulo's secret rulers have chosen for themselves is taken from Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers -- "All for one, one for all."

This romantization of crime has cast its spell over all of Latin America. For most adolescents, the classic Latin American idol is no longer the left-wing guerrilla, but the gang member. Mexican musicians glorify the drug bosses in popular songs, or "narco-corridas." Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, shot on the run in 1993, is celebrated as a national hero in many of the slums of Medellin, Columbia.

Prisons are among the most important hotbeds of mafia activity. Latin America's overcrowded penitentiaries are veritable "schools of crime," according to Zaluar. The gangsters decide who lives and who dies. Traitors and snitches are decapitated.

The strict organizational structure of the mafia gangs is based on that of left-wing guerrillas. Members of the Columbian FARC guerrilla group work as advisors to Rio's drug mafia. PCC leader Marcola prides himself on having read "The Art of War," a classic penned by Chinese General Sun Tzu 500 years before Christ. The prisons where he recruits his followers are referred to by him as "faculties," and the PCC itself is the "Party of Crime."

In Brazil, the advance of organized crime is causing problems for President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva's reelection campaign. In the lead-up to October's election, the president had hoped to position himself as the leader of a booming and politically stable, newly industrializing country. Now Brazil's old woes -- corruption and violence -- are catching up with him. The chaotic conditions in Sao Paulo are making foreign investors think twice about investing in Brazil -- and Lula, who always wanted to be a mediator, must now present himself as a tough fighter against the mafia.

An end to Latin America's leftward shift?

The spread of organized crime may well put an end to the leftward shift the continent has seen during the last few years. In Columbia, an international center of narcotics trafficking, voters are expected to reelect right-wing President Alvaro Uribe next weekend -- a proponent of law and order. In Mexico, where the fight against organized crime is dominating the election campaign, conservative candidate Felipe Caldéron has displaced left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the most popular presidential candidate in elections to be held in July.

Even Venezuela's Caudillo Hugo Chavéz, the showcase politician of the Latin American left, will eventually stumble over "the disorder in his own country," predicts US economist Norman Gall, who has lived and taught in Latin America for years. Caracas is now considered the most violent city on the continent. Not only does Venezuela have the highest murder rate in the world, according to a recent United Nations study, but that rate tripled between 1998 and 2005.

An especially brutal crime caused a wave of anti-government demonstrations: Three children aged 12, 13 and 17 were kidnapped along with their chauffeur at the end of February; their corpses were found after more than 40 days. They had been killed by shots to the back of the head, execution style.

The demonstrators accused Chavez of neglecting the fight against crime and corruption. "Many people voted for Chavez because they hoped he would act against the violence," says security expert Marcos Tarre. "But the government has not developed a clear policy in this area."

Even as Chavez supplies allied governments across the world with cheap oil, terror rules on the streets of Caracas. In Petare, the country's largest slum, many people refuse to leave their houses at night for fear of the violent youth street gangs, known as pandillas. The police are considered corrupt; many officers are involved in kidnappings and murders.

A former police officer who worked as a hit man is responsible for the death of newspaper photographer Jorge Aguirre, murdered in early April. Aguirre, who worked for the daily El Mundo, was stuck in a traffic jam on his way to a demonstration against organized crime when a black-clad motorcyclist stopped next to his car. The killer stepped off his motorcycle and fired several lethal shots at the photographer.

As he died, Aguirre managed to take several pictures with the digital camera on his lap. The shaky images are not just a document of the daily violence that plagues Latin America -- they helped identify his killer too.