SUMMARY
Brazil's most powerful criminal organizations Comando Vermelho and PCC dominated drug trade in the country and for many years peaceful relations were maintained by a truce that was established in 1993. Although the groups originated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo respectively, their power reached nationwide.
In 1998, PCC started a movement of territorial expansion throughout the country, and although both groups coexisted in peace, such growth started to worry Comando Vermelho. The criminal faction from Rio de Janeiro had been facing major losses in its drug activities since 2008, when the federal government installed UPPs (Pacifying Police Units) in the favelas of its home state. These police actions undermined the drug sales and territorial domains of Comando Vermelho. As a result, internal conflicts within the faction intensified, as did its disputes with rival criminal organizations, especially Amigos dos Amigos, PCC's new ally.
Meanwhile, with the expansion of PCC to other states, the faction dedicated itself to the "baptism" (conversions of criminals to a faction) of new members to its ranks as a way to strengthen its dominance. However, this move conflicted with the interests of other local factions, such as the FDN, a major faction from Northern Brazil that was allied to Comando Vermelho at the time.
In this sense, FDN was central to the split between of Comando Vermelho and PCC. The constant conversions of FDN members to PCC displeased the leadership of the Northern faction, which ordered the assassination of PCC members in June 2015 in the state of Amazonas. It resulted in 38 people killed, in what became known in Amazonas as ‘Fim de semana sangrento’ (Bloody Weekend).
In addition, on 22 June 2016, the drug lord Jorge Rafaat was shot dead in the Paraguayan city of Pedro Juan Caballero. With initial investigations by the Paraguayan police having suggested that the crime was an assassination orchestraded by PCC, the 23-year alliance between Comando Vermelho and PCC came to an end. The former allies became mortal enemies, initiating a bloody war in the streets and prisons across Brazil.
The Comando Vermelho and PCC then proceeded to strengthen their alliances with other criminal organizations, which caused the conflict to spread to the North and Northeast of the country. In the prisons of the northern states of Roraima, Rondônia, Amazonas, Acre, Amapá and Pará, Comando Vermelho partnered with FDN. In the Northeast region, it allied with the Sindicato do Crime and other local groups that also rivaled PCC.
The conflict between the Comando Vermelho and the PCC then began in October 2016, four months after the murder of Jorge Rafaat. The first events were a series of prison riots in which PCC inmates and its local allies executed a total of 23 rival members of the FDN and Comando Vermelho in prison units in Roraima, Rondônia and Acre states.
In retaliation, on 2 January 2017, inmates linked to the FDN executed 56 PCC members in the Anísio Jobim Penitentiary Complex (Compaj), located in the city of Manaus, Amazonas. Days later, on 6 January 2017, came the retaliation, with 31 rivals affiliated to the FDN being killed by members of the PCC after they rebelled in the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo (PAMC) in Boa Vista, Roraima.
On 14 January 2017, PCC members again committed massacres. In this event, they executed 30 members of the Sindicato do Crime, ally of Comando Vermelho and FDN, at the Alcaçuz prison in Rio Grande do Norte state.
Still in 2017, following its project to expand organized crime, PCC alongside Terceiro Comando Puro, tried to invade and dominate the largest favela in Brazil: Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro, then under Comando Vermelho’s control. Although the attack failed, it was a move that showed the extent of the conflict, as the groups were now confronting each other in their own home states. In 2021 it was discovered that Comando Vermelho was taking another move to challenge PCC’s authority. Investigations by the police were able to discover a Comando Vermelho cell acting in Ribeirão Preto region, countryside of São Paulo state, which was a region for years dominated by PCC.
The non-state conflict between Comando Vermelho and PCC is first included in UCDP data in 2015, with the conflict having resulted in over 25 battle-related deaths that year.
