<incom> Riots in Sao Paulo: Prison cells and cell phones

[Soenke Zehle]

Riots in Sao Paulo: Prison cells and cell phones
Brazil, Weblog, Governance, War & Conflict, Politics
<http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/05/22/riots-in-sao-paulo-prison-cells-and-cell-phones/>

PCC - Riots in Sao PauloOne week has passed since the city of Sao Paulo 
was paralyzed by gang attacks and the blogosphere in Brazil is wildly 
spinning the many aspects of this unprecedented confrontation. Here, we 
will present an overview of the various narratives generated from the 
multifold and multicolored currents flowing through the ever more 
popular and impassioned personal journaling of Brazilians.

     “Sao Paulo, with a population of 17 million and a land mass which 
spreads over 3,00 square miles is the world’s third largest city and the 
largest metropolis in South America. This most modern cosmopolitan city 
in Brazil, has often been compared to New York because of its 
attraction, which lies in ethic minority communities, upthrusting 
skyscrapers, and the outstanding cuisines that the city offers. Apart 
from the outstanding qualities that this city portrays, it is also 
considered a home to organized crime groups. The vile and evitable 
drama, which has really turned ugly, sparked up when around 700 members 
of the PCC [First Command of the Capital] crime gang were moved from a 
low to a maximum-security prison to minimize the influence they have had 
over the years on other inmates. The PCC was formed years ago as a gang 
within the prison walls to protect the rights of prisoners. Today, they 
have spread immensely outside the prison system and formed organized 
crime gangs which deal in drugs, kidnapping and armed robbery in most 
crucial and economically vibrant Brazilian cities.”
     São Paulo, Brazil on Fire - Negritu.de - Blog

     “I believe I imagine civilization as a circle because I’ve grown up 
in Sao Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, there is a close contact 
between privilege and poverty which does not happen here. From an 
historical perspective, what differentiates São Paulo is its urban 
expansion model, which left the poor crowds on the margins of the city. 
It created a central privileged zone kept orderly by the control of 
public authorities and a periphery that was invisible. INVISIBLE… Until 
now!!!! The PCC attacks present a new reality, tearing down the illusion 
that Sao Paulo was different from other cities. The expansion of the 
privileged center grew to the poverty zones, crossing to the world 
beyond the bridge… Sao Paulo is exactly the same as the rest of the 
country, built upon a brutal inequality which concentrates and does not 
distribute wealth.”
     PCC attack’s (II) - Jaw of 1984

[Video editing by Spyk]

A week ago the whole country incredulously watched the images of the 
biggest Sao Paulo avenues completely empty at 7 pm on a working Monday. 
The unimaginable shown on TV sparked reactions that reverberated at many 
levels of the ongoing political conversation. The main character of the 
present story — the PCC gang — immediately jumped right into the debate 
as another powerful voice to be dealt with. Although the novelty left 
the media and politicians speechless at first, the blogosphere was quick 
in identifying and tagging the political motivations in every new fact. 
One of the main pieces on this level of the debate would be the Statutes 
of the PCC, which have been referenced in many blogs:

     “Article 16 (last one) - most important of all is that nobody will 
detain our fight because the Command’s seed has spread to all prison 
systems in the state and we have structured ourselves outside also. 
Although suffering many sacrifices and many irreparable losses, we 
consolidated our position on the state level and we will surely fulfill 
our national presence in the long run. In connection with the CV (Red 
Command) we will start the revolution in the country from inside the 
prisons. Our military arm will bring terror to the ones in power, the 
oppressors and tyrants who use Taubaté Annex and Bangu I [high security 
prisons] in Rio de Janeiro as society’s vengeance tool in fabricating 
monsters”..
     PCC’s Statute - Nude Moon - Blog

     “Is PCC a leftie party? Well, if it is not yet, they’ve got plans 
to be, as they will try to elect two representatives in Ocotber. How 
nice, hum? As if it was not enough for us to deal with the PT 
[government party] gangs, now we will have a PCC congressional bench.”
     Is PCC a leftie party? - Resistência

     “Who would be interested in so much blood, fear and uncertainty 
right now? Who are the political beneficiaries of such tragic events? 
Everybody agrees that the recent events will seriously damage the main 
opposition candidate presidential campaign - Sao Paulo ex-governor 
Geraldo Alckmin… Many have already mentioned the PT connections with 
organized crime and international drug dealers. But, in spite of the 
extreme gravity of such charges, those denunciations were never looked 
into in a way that could clarify the facts.”
     Sao Paulo under attack… from PT? - The Fire Throat

Then the visceral reaction from security forces in Sao Paulo started to 
be noticed, firstly under the radar, but soon generally acknowledged by 
the mainstream media and authorities. There were also strong 
speculations about a possible deal with the PCC as the only explanation 
for the way the attacks abruptly stopped after a meeting between its 
main leader, Marcos Camacho (aka Marcola) with his lawyer and three São 
Paulo government authorities on Sunday night.

     “Attention please, friends!! I am asking everybody following this 
blog to help stop what is going on right now. The civil and military 
police, wounded by the PCC killings, are generating a Nazi-like state in 
our periphery. There are already more than 100 murdered ’suspects’ and 
none of them are from PCC. I already have four dead colleagues, not to 
mention the ones in the hospital. None of them had any previous filings 
with the police and that’s why I beg you to spread the word. People are 
dying with bullets in the back while delivering pizza, while going back 
home from work. The cowardly police tremble in front of real thieves but 
they are ready to kill someone who is simply going back home from work. 
It is a shame and, if they call this ‘duty’, it’s time for us to react 
with concerned citizenship, showing them that we do not want this 
slaughter. MARTIAL LAW FOR INNOCENT POOR PERSONS DECREED.”
     Attention - Ferrez

     “This is what some policemen are doing in the periphery, in the 
poor neighborhoods in which they also live, where the abandonment of the 
law is more radical and more rooted than in the central areas of the 
city. In those dark alleys the police fulfill their vengeance by 
shooting the pizza boy, or the guy waiting for his fiancé in the bus 
station, or the unaware group of friends that chats in some dark 
crossing. Or even the motoboy who was fleeing frightened — who told him 
to run? He must have done something… Are these policemen aware that this 
truculent and arbitrary behavior contributes to and builds the prestige 
of the big gang leaders, who become the only alternative for protection 
in these communities?”
     A voice of sanity - The dead

     I am very afraid of this [killing of anonymous ’suspects’]. I am 
more afraid of this than of any PCC, in any part of the world.
     Urban Guerrilla / Dead in Battle - Nothing Simple is Ever Easy - 
Deinha in NY

     “The order to stop the riots came from Marcola during the night of 
the meeting through a note which read: ‘We are making everybody aware 
that the facilities (prisons) under our control will be normalized at 
9:00 am tomorrow, when our brothers (leaders) will be taking their sun 
bath in Venceslau (high security prison).’ Although the PCC leaders 
stayed in their cells without sun baths, the rebels obeyed and ended the 
biggest simultaneous prison rebellion in the country, which included 73 
prisons in Sao Paulo state. On Monday at 4 pm there were still 20 
prisons out of control and at 8 pm they were all at peace — a strong 
indicator that the deal really happened”.
     Governor dealt with the bandits - President Lula’s Friends

If there is one thing that was crystal clear to all in the aftermath of 
the riots is that PCC’s power arises from its communication capabilities 
from within the prisons. The issue became spicier when a TV network 
showed what is supposed to be a cell phone interview with someone who 
presented himself as the PCC leader, Marcola, on Wednesday night. State 
authorities asserted that the interview was false and that it would be 
impossible for Marcola to talk to anybody as he is incommunicable in a 
high security jail.

     Following the wave of unprecedented violence over the weekend in 
São Paulo - coordinated by inmates from inside the jails with their cell 
phones - the Brazilian mobile operators are under pressure by the 
government to block signals in prisons, reported Cellular News. 
Meanwhile, in a related article, the BBC, reports on “a row which has 
broken out over an interview which a journalist says he got with a gang 
leader - via mobile phone from a maximum security jail”.
     Interview of PCC leader from jail by mobile phone - textually.org

     “Marcola demonstrated great capability for communication and media 
manipulation on Wednesday night, when he gave a cell phone interview to 
the Bandeirantes TV network. Besides presumably overriding the closed 
Differentiated Disciplinar Regime [high security restrictions] in which 
he is imprisoned, he portrayed himself as defending the society, saying 
that the police are putting the population at risk by promoting a war to 
respond to PCC movements, “in a war where both parties have great fire 
power, the citizen who has nothing to do with both parties will loose”. 
Marcola said that the PCC attacks were a reaction to the bad treatment 
in prisons.”
     Tropical Mob - Option Journal

It has been a tense week in Brazil. Everything started to feel and look 
quite different from what we used to expect as ‘normal’. São Paulo was 
so paralyzed by fear of the PCC’s attacks that few noticed the official 
announcement of the members of the Brazilian soccer team that will play 
the World Cup in Germany. And the weekend brought a surprising interview 
with Sao Paulo ’s governor Claudio Lembo — of the conservative 
opposition party PFL. His words sounded like a leftist manifesto. He was 
clearly pissed by his abandonment by those having a direct interest in 
his success. — the ex-governor and presidential candidate Geraldo 
Alckmin and the ex-mayor of the attacked city of São Paulo and now 
gubernatorial candidate, José Serra.

     “Brazil is a country of many defeats, social defeats. We have an 
evil bourgeois, a very perverse white minority. Their wallets will have 
to be opened to eradicate misery, to help to create more jobs, more 
education, more dialogue and equal opportunities for all. If we don’t 
deal with the Brazilian mentality –especially of the white minority — we 
won’t go anywhere.”
     Cladio Lembo interview with Monica Bergamo, in Received by E-mail - 
blogless

When asked if his allies had supported him during the tense days, 
Claudio Lembo answered that Alckmin had called twice — “you know, phone 
calls are expensive“. Serra didn’t call and neither did former president 
and main opposition leader Fernando Henrique, “he was in New York“. 
“President Lula called, and was very elegant with me. I talked a lot 
with the President and he gave me a lot of support“.

These days of chaos and violence in Brazil have revealed technology as a 
multi-edged sword. Demons as well as Saviors can be unleashed through 
the expansion of something as simple as a cell phone conversation. When 
long-standing grievances and inequities are combined with the new tools 
of communication and as people who have never talked to each other 
before hurl their passions at one another, and trigger each other into 
action, we who struggle for open systems will be challenged to create 
and make firm a commons that is both democratic and civil.

Important update [05/23/2006]: The blogger / writer Ferrez quoted in my 
last post is being threatened after denouncing police action in the 
periphery of São Paulo after the PCC attacks and riots. He was 
interviewed by Agência Carta Maior before fleeing the city this weekend 
because of death threats.

Jose Murilo Junior