RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Criminal gangs operate in more than a third of municipalities in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, causing a boom in violence, according to a report published Wednesday by a prominent nonprofit group.
According to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, gangs were present in 260 of the region’s 772 municipalities in 2024, compared to 178 last year. The entrenchment of “mafia-like” organizations – particularly the Red Command and the First Capital Command (PCC) – “greatly aggravates the situation in the legal Amazon, which is now seen as a highly strategic area for transnational human trafficking, with the circulation of various illegal goods,” the report said.
The Legal Amazon is an area in nine states of Brazil that is home to the largest hydrographic basin in the world.
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Of the 260 municipalities where organized crime groups are present, the Red Command controls half, up from a quarter last year, Renato Sérgio de Lima, president of the nonprofit, told The Associated Press.
The Red Command expanded to cities in Brazil’s northern region after PCC took control of the drug trafficking route through Ponta Pora, a municipality on the border with Paraguay in the center-western region. The Red Command has since swallowed up some local factions that no longer function autonomously, Lima said.
The fact that gangs secure monopolies on criminal activity could help explain the 6.2% drop in violent deaths in the region between 2021 and 2023, authors wrote in the third edition of the report titled ‘Cartographies of Violence in the Amazon’ .
But “the internalization of violence in rural and forest areas has turned small, quiet communities into the most violent in the country,” they said.
The murders of indigenous peoples expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in 2022 sharply eased the rise in violence in the region. They were traveling along the Itaquai River near the entrance to the Javari Valley indigenous territory, which borders Peru and Colombia, when they were attacked. Their bodies were dismembered, burned and buried.
Brazilian police have formally charged a Colombian fishmonger as the person who planned their killings. The killings were motivated by Pereira’s efforts to monitor and enforce environmental laws in the region, police said. Phillips was working on a book about Amazon preservation.
Federal Police Detective Alexandre Saraiva, who headed police forces in three Amazon states between 2011 and 2021, knew both Phillips and Pereira. “There is no doubt whatsoever” that organized crime has increased in the region in recent years, he said.
The expansion of criminal organizations in the Amazon occurred at the same time as the growth of illegal mining, Saraiva said, which increased sharply under former President Jair Bolsonaro, who encouraged the practice.
After defeating Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections and returning to office for a third, non-consecutive term in January 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to tackle crime and deforestation in the region. Although deforestation has declined, the report shows that his government has had little success in controlling the expansion of drug gangs.
“Today, might makes right in the Amazon,” Saraiva, author of the book “Jungle: Loggers, Miners and Corruption in a Lawless Amazon,” said by phone from Rio. He said some Brazilian lawmakers and local politicians were also responsible for the situation, accusing them of receiving money from criminal groups in exchange for protection.
The grip of criminal organizations on the region poses a problem for public safety, but also an obstacle to the development of sustainable practices that experts say are essential for its preservation.
Tackling drug trafficking, environmental crime, land grabbing and other illegal actions requires coordinated, multi-pronged government policies and local development projects, the report said.
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