SUMMARY
The Comando Vermelho (Red Command) formed in 1979. It emerged in the Candido Mendes prison on Ilha Grande, where Brazil’s military regime housed common criminals together with leftist political prisoners. From the political prisoners, the inmates learned guerrilla tactics and the importance of organizing. The group was born with a political connotation, calling itself the Falange Vermelha (Red Phalanx) and making its motto “Peace, Justice and Liberty.” In the early 1980 it renamed Comando Vermelho. It is said to have lost any political ideology.
Initially being a gang of bank robbers the Comando Vermelho engaged in the profitable drug trade and took control of a number of Rio’s favelas (shantytowns), which were important stockpiling points in the trade of cocaine and marijuana. It did so using violence but also patronage policies promising sporadic assistance to locals, such as short-term loans, financial assistance as well as protection from crimes. The build-up of this relationship with the inhabitants of the shantytowns was facilitated by the fact that most of the members of the Comando Vermelho themselves originated from this milieu. The Comando Vermelho became one of the most established drug trafficker networks of Rio and allegedly the largest criminal organisation in Brazil. Besides the drug trafficking it made money from arms trade and bank robberies. It has a long history of tensions with rival drug trafficking networks operating in the same areas, particularly the Terceiro Comando (Third Commando).
Similarly to other drug trafficking networks, the Comando Vermelho has no big chief. Instead, it is a horizontal reciprocity network that helps the member-gangs in different favelas to support each other in acquiring drugs and guns. Still, there are great inequalities in the distribution of power and division of profits among the members. The drug trafficking organisations inside the shantytowns has a hierarchical structure headed by a chief trafficker, the dono da boca de fumo (owner of the outlet), or, the more powerful dono do morro (owner of the hill). The Comando Vermelho employs many children and teenagers as robbers or murderers.
The Comando Vermelho was linked to a powerful criminal organisation, PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital, First Capital Command) operating in São Paulo. Former drug traffickers admitted to having received training in the use of weapons by members of the Brazilian army and youths undergoing military service.
The Comando Vermelho has been involved in the non-state category of UCDP organised violence.
