The PCC is not unstoppable, says Lincoln Gacilla, a Brazilian prosecutor who has investigated the PCC for the past 20 years and whom I visited in São Paulo. Despite persistent death threats from the PCC, Mr. Gakiya and his group of state prosecutors, the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime, have imprisoned PCC leaders in federal prison and committed the group’s money laundering agents. and launched an investigation into the politicians and businessmen involved. Blame the group for enabling it.
But that’s not enough, Gakiya said. To stop the “criminal party”, governments need to redouble their efforts to target the finances of criminal organizations. The Brazilian government, neighboring countries, and European countries also need to establish mechanisms for rapid information sharing between police and prosecutors. In Brazil, the federal government needs to reform anti-mafia laws and strengthen coordination between state and federal authorities so that Brazil’s 26 state governments do not fight the PCC on their own.
The danger is that instead of a rule-of-law approach, Brazilian authorities will follow a more brutal and less effective path known in Latin America as mano dura, or iron fist. Although the state government of São Paulo has supported prosecutors and sought to restrict PCC access to transportation infrastructure, the state government of São Paulo has taken a worrying turn in the direction of mano dura. From July 2023 to April 2024, São Paulo’s current security chief, an ally of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro, carried out one of the deadliest operations in São Paulo in decades. Police say at least 84 people were killed in clashes with suspected PCC members in a shantytown near Santos, but many local residents say it was an extrajudicial execution. Currently, eight police officers have been arrested on suspicion of murder and are under investigation.
Such repression not only violates human rights and marginalizes entire communities, it also blunts the power of the PCC. Today, it depends not on the block-by-block control of favelas, but on the collusion of national borders, money laundering networks, and national and international public authorities. Claudio Aparecido da Silva, who grew up in a shantytown in São Paulo and is now an ombudsman for the state police, sees Mano Dura as a dead end. “(PCC leaders) no longer live in favelas,” he said. They “live in upper- and middle-class apartments. If the police search there, they might be able to find them.”
Brazilian authorities should listen to da Silva’s advice and take the right approach to countering the PCC before it becomes even more coercive. The group’s foray into politics through the upcoming São Paulo mayoral election shows that Brazil must act quickly. What Brazil does next will have regional and global implications. Even if the country’s authorities treat the PCC as an illegal, transnational giant rather than the street gang it once was, it’s still possible that Brazil will eventually rein in its influence.
