Brazilian Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro thanked President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the U.S. designating the dangerous Brazilian gangs Comando Vermelho (Red Command) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Capital Command, or PCC) Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
As Breitbart News exclusively reported on Thursday, Sec. Rubio announced that effective June 5, Red Command and PCC will be designated terrorist organizations by the United States. Both group are among Brazil’s deadliest criminal organizations — each with an extensive, decades-old list of violent narco-terrorism and criminal activities all throughout South America.
The announcement of the impending terrorist designation came hours after Senator Bolsonaro, son of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro, met with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
Although the meeting was private, Bolsonaro told the press that requesting the terrorist designation of PCC and Red Command was the main subject of their conversation. After Rubio’s announcement, Bolsonaro published a video on social media thanking Trump and Rubio for the designation on behalf of the Brazilian people.
“In one trip as a pre-candidate, we have done more for Brazil and for the safety of Brazilians than the PT and [President Luiz Inácio] Lula did during their 17 years in office,” Bolsonaro said. “While Lula was on his knees before Trump, lobbying on behalf of the Red Command and PCC, I went to work to ensure they were treated as terrorists, which is what they are.”
Bolsonaro noted in the video that one in four Brazilians live in areas dominated by those two gangs of narcoterrorists, stressing, “They have no sovereignty even within their own homes.” He further affirmed that a government that has no control over its own territory and does not even control its prisons is “complicit with organized crime.”
“I thank President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for quickly responding to my request on behalf of the Brazilian people,” he added. “Now it’s up to us, here in Brazil, and starting in 2027, we will set you free. Because you deserve to be free from this parallel, violent, and cowardly government.”
Bolsonaro reiterated the gratitude of the Brazilian people to Rubio on Friday morning in a social media post, and emphasized, “The fight against the narco-terrorists needs to be carried out with the unity among the countries affected by their criminal actions.”
Despite the decades-old record of violence, drug trafficking, and numerous other criminal actions committed by the Red Command and First Capital Command gangs, Brazil’s current socialist government led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has repeatedly opposed a U.S. terrorist designation of the two groups. The Brazilian government has reportedly argued that Red Command and PCC do not classify as “terrorist” organizations under Brazilian law on grounds that their actions are motivated by “economic interests and territorial control” and are not driven by ideology.
The Brazilian government rejected Bolsonaro’s actions towards the terrorist designation of Red Command and PCC in an official Portuguese-language statement published by the Planalto presidential palace on Friday. In the statement, the Brazilian government affirmed that the United States’ actions against the two criminal gangs represent a “potential setback in the fight against crime, a risk to people’s lives, and economic damage to the country.” A copy of the statement was published on President Lula’s official social media accounts.
The presidency also criticized Senator Bolsonaro and his request to President Trump, asserting that it is “deplorable” that members of the Bolsonaro family travelled to the U.S. to “advocate for foreign intervention in Brazil, just as they did during the ‘tariff’ crisis, which caused so much damage to our country.”
“Organized crime does not respect borders, and combating it requires joint action. Over the decades, we have built partnerships with various countries, including the United States,” the statement read in part. “On April 16 of this year, Brazil presented a proposal to the U.S. Department of State focused on intelligence and international cooperation, which includes expanding controls on money laundering carried out abroad and on the trafficking of arms sent to Brazil.”
“Any international collaboration to combat criminal factions will be welcome. We remain willing to build joint solutions that benefit the countries involved,” the text continued. “But we will not accept the use of arbitrary measures from abroad as a pretext to attack our sovereignty and our economy.”
The Brazilian presidency further stated that “unilateral, non-negotiated measures” can weaken the fight against criminals and “lead to actions that endanger the lives of people who have nothing to do with crime.” Such actions, the presidency continued, could affect the nation’s financial system, including the Brazilian payment processing platform PIX. The terms of the SDGT and FTO designations mean that Red Command, PCC, and its members are all subject to U.S. sanctions and the freezing of any U.S. assets and make it illegal for American citizens to support either group. According to Poder 360, the Brazilian government’s main concern regarding the terrorist designations is that it could leave the nation’s financial institutions exposed to automatic penalties and broader legal interpretations and lead to international repercussions based on the terms of the corresponding U.S. sanctions on the two gangs.
Moments after the Brazilian presidency’s statement was published Friday, Lula publicly lamented the designation during his participation at an official government event. According to O Globo, Lula told his audience that he is “very sad” to hear that “the U.S. Secretary of State, a certain Marco Rubio, said that our criminals here are terrorists and that the Americans can intervene.” Lula reportedly affirmed that Red Command and PCC are in fact “terrorists to citizens living in outlying areas, because they disrupt families, neighborhoods, and cities.” As such, he argued, Brazil should fight them domestically.
“We passed an Anti-Gang Law, and we passed the law to combat organized crime, and we are going to combat it,” Lula said. “They are not the terrorists Trump wants; Trump wants Osama Bin Laden and we want the Brazilian terrorists who are out there.”
Poder 360 noted that Lula accused the Bolsonaro family of being “traitors” for seeking political support abroad. Per the outlet, Lula also suggested, without evidence, that the Bolsonaro family was involved in organized crime.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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