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BRAZIL
IS GETTING A NEW POLITICAL PARTY: ITS BASE IS IN STATE PRISION
Larry
Rohter
São Paulo, Brazil — Having demonstrated its dominance of the prison
system during a mass uprising, Brazil's most notorious criminal group is now
looking to extend its influence by organizing a political party. Naturally,
its platform calls for penal reform.
The group, the First City Command, known by its initials in Portuguese,
P.C.C., has already designated its first candidate for Congress in next
year's national elections.
He is Anselmo Neves Maia, a lawyer here who represents leaders of the
organization. He says the group also plans to endorse candidates in other
states who sympathize with the party platform.
"Prisoners all over the country are mobilized behind this cause,"
he said, "and I am already getting calls from them asking me who their
families should support and vote for."
He added, "I am the candidate not just of the P.C.C., which has had the
courage to rebel against the injustices practiced in the system, but of all
the thousands of prisoners in Brazil's prisons."
The new political organization is to be called the Party of the Incarcerated
Community, whose initials would also be P.C.C. Its secretary general is Júlio
César Silvério, who is serving six years for robbery and was described by
Mr. Maia as "dynamic and enlightened, an admirer of your Benjamin
Franklin." But the director of prisons for the state of São Paulo,
Nagashi Furukawa, has characterized the First City Command as a crime
syndicate that controls the trafficking of drugs, alcohol, weapons and
mobile telephones within the state prison system.
The authorities say the group also runs a flourishing "escape
industry" that has resulted in the flight of more than 1,000 prisoners
since 1998 and further enriched the group's coffers.
São Paulo, with more than 36 million of Brazil's 170 million people, is
Brazil's most populous state. Nearly 100,000 people, or just under half of
the national total, are being held in the state's jails and prisons. The
national government does not operate prisons.
In February the First City Command organized the largest prison rebellion in
the nation's history. Using cell phones smuggled into their cells, the
group's leaders ordered their followers in 29 prisons around the state to
take control of cellblocks and hold thousands of hostages. The uprising was
meant to stop the authorities' actions to weaken the gang.
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Web designer: Otálio Afonso |
Brasil
Rio
Grande do Sul