Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Last Tuesday was one of the deadliest days in Brazilian history.
A Rio de Janeiro police raid aimed at capturing several leaders of Comando Vermelho (CV)—Brazil’s second largest gang—left at least 132 dead, including 4 officers. By now, many will have seen the photo: a disturbing aerial shot of the narrow street where locals laid the dead shoulder to shoulder, forming a trail of bodies a full city block long.
Since then, we learned police plans leaked to suspects in advance, the top gang leader sought for arrest escaped, and for all the bloodshed, the authorities were unable to retake control of the full CV-controlled area. Police acknowledged at least four civilian bystander deaths, and the true number could be higher.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) was “appalled,” according to his justice minister. UN human rights officials were “horrified.” English-language media issued reports of widespread public “outrage.”
But for Rio’s right-wing governor, the operation was a “success.” Most city residents saw it that way, too. 62 percent polled said they approved of the operation—including 83 percent of individuals in the lowest income bracket: i.e., those most likely to live under criminal control.
Why? To rule its urban stronghold, the CV—really, a small clique of powerful individuals dominating hundreds of thousands of their much poorer neighbors—had tortured, disappeared, and killed locals it suspected of disloyalty. Elsewhere in Rio, militias made up of off-duty cops do the same. Criminal governance is deeply oppressive.
It’s not clear the Brazilian left or center have proposals to address the problem. But the right does. And as ultimately ineffective and brutal as its solutions can be—eliminating easily replaceable foot soldiers without changing the structural conditions that allow organized crime to thrive—if they are the only ones on offer, people will take them.
My latest piece for the Financial Times argues this is a hemispheric trend. The left’s and center’s lack of answers—often, their tendency to speak little or not at all about organized crime—has allowed the right to turn security policy into political theater from the United States to Brazil, much to right-wing candidates’ political advantage.
We know what Trump proposes for gangs and cartels: boat strikes. We know what the Brazilian right proposes: deadly raids. What do the Democrats or Brazil’s Worker’s Party propose? It’s much harder to come up with an answer.
The piece is short (so read it and tell me what you think) but to briefly expand here: the smart-sounding idea that gangs are really businesses so states should hit their finances—the Lula government just published a video arguing this point—is, in my view, not enough.
I agree: states must fight money laundering. But it’s violent robbery, extortion, and criminal territorial control that most directly affect and concern ordinary citizens, none of which are clearly connected to the state of criminal groups’ finances. Nowhere is it proven that making big transnational gangs poorer makes them less predatory. In fact, the opposite may be true: where states disrupt gangs’ logistics, financing, and leadership structures, the splintered offshoots left behind often double down on crimes like extortion and kidnapping because they are relatively cheap and simple to pull off (what happened in several Mexican states since the government declared war on cartels in 2006).
The center and left must instead offer real counterproposals. They must explain how to use policing, prosecution, sentencing reform, and sometimes lethal force to dismantle criminal fiefdoms and stop predation—in combination with policies that address crime’s structural drivers. Until then, right-wing security theater and its collateral damage will win out.
The other topic dominating the news this past week was, of course, Venezuela. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration had identified Venezuelan military facilities for potential strikes. On Friday, the Miami Herald reported (citing an anonymous government source) on a decision to strike them, before Trump said otherwise.
In a recent interview with Council on Foreign Relations President Mike Froman, I give my take on what’s motivating Trump, why land strikes are likely, why Maduro (even in the event of such strikes) is unlikely to fall, and what I predict comes next.
Thanks for reading.
