A Cease-Fire Between Brazil’s Drug Gangs may be Responsible for the Recent Drop in Homicides
Brazil's two largest narcotics organizations, Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando do Capital (PCC), maintained a peace pact that lasted nearly two decades. That pact was shattered in 2016 when the factions went to war.
Authorities are claiming a decrease in homicides in the north of Brazil is the result of government policy, but there is evidence that the drop may be due to internal politics between drug factions.
Brazil’s two largest narcotics organizations, Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando do Capital (PCC), maintained a peace pact that lasted nearly two decades.
That pact was shattered in 2016 when the factions went to war. In prisons across the country, soldiers of the two organizations brutalized each other; mutilating the corpses of their enemies and lifting the decapitated heads above the ramparts of the prison walls for the world to see.
The war spread to the streets as the two factions and their allies fought for territory. The northern state of Ceará became a focal point for the war registering an increase in homicides of 50.7 percent in one year.
Authorities point to the numbers as evidence that deploying federal troops to Ceará worked.
However, Brazilian paper O Povo reported this week that following his December arrest, Yago Steferson Alves dos Santos told Civil Police that in September it was decided by the leaders of the gang that they would only act defensively and stop attacking their opponents throughout the north.
