In the 1990s, government officials in the state of São Paulo said that the PCC did not exist. It was a press fantasy. But this unicorn had been founded in 1993even with statute.
In 2001, the PCC had already dominated São Paulo’s prisons. In 2002, it began to improve governance. More intemperate bandits lost their power or their heads. It was assessed that the alliance with Comando Vermelho did not yield synergies. Management was professionalized, under the command of Marcos Camacho, alias Marcola.
As 2006 uprisingthe PCC showed that it was capable of terrorizing and paralyzing São Paulo with attacks on police officers, riots in prisons, rumors, attacks and crimes in general.
“The story of the PCC’s murderous uprising begins to fade away. It gradually turns into one of those confusing legal cases that languish in the drawers of bureaucracy and politicking. Maybe we’ll hear about Marcola again when we discover the PCC’s monthly allowance. That’s right, deputies taking money from the official crime lobby” this journalist wrote in 2006, in this Sheettwo weeks after the insurrection.
It wasn’t prediction, just bitter despair. But happened. There is glaring evidence, to put it mildly, that São Paulo councilors receive bribes from the PCC. Bribery, in fact, is just part of a much larger scheme to expand political power and criminal business, already established in areas such as public transport, gas stations, commerce, cleaning and surveillance.
After prisons, the PCC dominated poor neighborhoods with quasi-state authority (police power, justice and economic “regulation”). Invaded the Amazon. It is not yet known which group operates, but PCC and similar groups organize or finance pirated extraction of wood and ore, human trafficking, and deforestation. Crime has also internationalized. It is part of global cocaine value chains.
The news is that prosecutors and police are systematically investigating this horror in the state. The reader will say that the journalist is naive, as something worse had already happened. The Bolsonaros paid relatives to the militia, for example.
Between the municipal politics of São Paulo and Rio and the heights of federal power, how much more is already taken over by crime? The question is also naive. As so many social scientists show, there is more than the invasion of the State by crime, but the development of a criminal State. Meanwhile, the Congress is busy constitutionalizing the mass arrest of people caught with bundles of marijuana.
These lines are not even a superficial summary of the known disaster. The idea is to remember how we let a monster grow out of control, if it doesn’t already control us. It is easy to list other disasters in the making.
The demoralization and failure of vaccination campaigns invites epidemics and the death of children.
The parliamentary progress on the Budget will soon exhaust the capacity for federal impact investment, spending money on small projects, accelerating the ruin of the already very precarious national infrastructure.
Even if we had faster economic growth, it will not be possible to employ part of the population, due to the constant neglect of education; lack of schooling and aging will raise the issue of labor immigration.
The ominous growth of public debt could turn into a sudden crisis when interest rates rise again, due to inflation or another crisis.
The endless destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado, in our country, a greater threat of catastrophe, would leave us without water, electricity and agriculture.
We keep a lot of crisis pots on the fire. One day, the broth spills. We have seen.
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