Tracking the Spread of Crack Cocaine in Sao Paulo and Rio
The market for crack cocaine is booming in Brazil,
and may already be bringing in major profits for organized crime in Sao Paulo and Rio
de Janeiro.
The extent of Brazil’s
crack cocaine problem became clear in January 2012, when Sao Paulo police raided a central
neighborhood known colloquially as a “cracolandia,” or crack land. Over 100
people were arrested and around 350 addicts were placed in the care of social
services.
Brazil’s
next largest city, Rio de Janerio, has also deployed police this year to sweep
through “cracolandias,” bringing hundreds into government recovery
programs.
Such operations are part of a widening effort to hamper crack
distribution and consumption in Brazil,
the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine after the United States. And cocaine’s
cheaper, more addictive by-product is attracting both the wealthy and the
desperately poor in Brazil.
According to news website UOL, an estimated 40 percent of crack users in·Rio de Janeiro are
believed to belong to the middle class. Police have said that the country now
consumes around one ton of crack a day, amounting to some $11 million in
profits a day. In the city of Rio de
Janeiro alone, the crack trade brings in over $800,000
per month, according to police estimates.
There are some indications that the criminal group most deeply involved
in the crack trade is prison gang the First Capital Command (PCC). One top
anti-narcotics official has said that the PCC supplies much of the crack
cocaine distributed in northeast Brazil,
from the group’s homebase in Sao Paulo.
Coca base is reportedly processed in Bolivia
and shipped to Paraguay,
where it is purchased by the PCC and moved to Sao Paulo. The PCC processes the base into
cocaine, and sells the by-product as crack. Frequently, anyone who buys a
cocaine shipment for distribution must also buy a percentage of crack,
according to the UOL report. Drug dealers inside Brazil's prison system will then
place orders to PCC distributors via cell phones. After the deals are made, the
crack is moved by trucks and buses all over the northeast.
Police have also voiced the theory that the PCC is responsible for
flooding the Rio de Janeiro
city market with crack, supplying it to the region's most powerful criminal
group, the Red Command (Comando Vermelho). About 90 percent of Rio's crack is
reportedly shipped from Sao Paulo to the
southeastern city of Taubate, then onto Rio via
the Dutra highway, the primary road connecting Brazil's largest two cities.
Rio de Janeiro
police told news website UOL that they first began seizing significant
quantities of crack in 2003. By 2008, as many as ten favelas were suffering
from a booming crack trade, all of them controlled by the Red Command. Police
seizures increased dramatically, from just 14 pounds seized in 2008 to nearly
200 pounds seized in 2010. According to anti-narcotics agency the DCOD, the
number of crack addicts in the city doubled during a 16-month period between
2009 and 2010.
The Red Command is so strongly associated with Rio's crack trade that
rival gangs in the city's favelas, including the Friends of Friends (Amigos dos
Amigos - ADA)
and the Pure Third Command (Terceiro Comando Puro), have tried to disassociate
themselves from the business. In one Rio
de Janeiro neighborhood, UOL notes, the Pure Third
Command hung a banner at the entrance to a favela they controlled, reading
"Here we do not sell crack." On one hand, this may be a ploy to shore
up support from local communities hit hard by the crack epidemic. But it is
more likely that these groups refused to begin peddling crack out of concern
that the cheaper drug could drain profits from their cocaine sales.
The militia-controlled favelas in Rio
have also reportedly banned the sale of crack. Nor is the drug sold in the
favelas which house the community police force units known as the UPP,
according to UOL.
The federal government has already promised $2 billion in aid to fight
the spread of crack cocaine across Brazil. A successful strategy would
likely have to involve breaking up the PCC's control of the business in Sao Paulo and the northeast, as well as the Red Command's
monopoly in Rio de Janeiro.
For now, there are plenty of alarm bells indicating that the crack market can
only grow larger.
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