The clashes between heavily armed police forces and members of the Comando vermelho in Rio de Janeiro are not the first between the state power and the criminal organization with all the waters of organized crime – and they will not be the last.
Because the governor of Rio did not just seek confrontation now. Shortly after he took office in 2021, the bloodiest clashes to date broke out, with more than 20 deaths.
If this number is now exceeded many times over, it is also because it has not been possible to reduce the Commando’s radius of action. On the contrary.
Control over entire city districts
The police are as brutal as ever, but the criminals’ firepower has increased as they have consolidated their control over entire neighborhoods, but also over the routes that transport cocaine from Colombia and Peru to the Brazilian coast.
From there the drug, whose production is accompanied by the destruction of nature and whose transport routes are marked with blood, makes its way to Europe. Here it is indispensable as a stimulant in the world of the rich and the famous.
But they are just as indifferent to the images from Brazil as they are to the fate of those who die from crack cocaine in this country.
