Comando Vermelho, a criminal organization focused on drug trafficking with 30,000 members

The Comando Vermelho (Red Command) gets its name from the alliance forged between common criminals and political prisoners in 1979, during the Brazilian dictatorship. The adjective, however, aptly describes the reputation for bloodthirstiness that has accompanied the most powerful criminal group in Rio de Janeiro and the second most powerful in Brazil ever since. Although it was the pioneer, it has long been surpassed by its main rival, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command, known by its initials PCC) of São Paulo. The Comando Vermelho (CV) “is the most violent faction, the one that most resists the police; its response is usually direct and confrontational,” explains Ignacio Cano of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Cano, a scholar of organized crime, maintains that whoever designed the police operation to penetrate the CV’s main stronghold knew that its members would react furiously. They responded with hours of gunfire using heavy weaponry and bombs launched from drones, “like in Ukraine,” a Rio native remarked in amazement.

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