US designates Brazil’s two largest gangs as terrorist organizations

The United States has designated Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command, as foreign terrorist organisations.The announcement, made by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, on Thursday, is being widely seen in Brazil as a setback for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president who had strongly opposed the designation – and a boost for Lula’s main challenger in October’s presidential election, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro.Chosen to run in place of his father, Jair Bolsonaro – the former president who is barred from running because he is in house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup – Flávio spent this week in the US, where he met with Donald Trump and Rubio.The senator was at his lowest point in the campaign, after revelations that he had been caught on tape asking a banker accused of corruption for $26.8m (£20m) to fund a film about his father caused a significant drop in his poll numbers.Announcing the designation, Rubio wrote that the groups are “two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil. Their reach extends throughout our region and into our country”.Both groups emerged inside Brazilian prisons, originally as a response to torture and abuse. They are now among the largest criminal organisations in Latin America, exporting cocaine produced in neighbouring Colombia, Peru and Bolivia primarily to the US and Europe, while expanding into other parts of the world.The Red Command is the older of the two, emerging in the 1970s from interactions between political prisoners jailed by the military dictatorship and common criminals in a prison in Rio de Janeiro. The PCC was founded in the 1990s in a São Paulo prison, months after 111 prisoners were killed when police crushed a rebellion at another prison.The two groups compete for control of drug distribution and trafficking routes, but operate in distinct ways: while the Red Command has a more decentralised leadership structure and resembles the more overtly violent and conspicuous crime factions of Mexico and Colombia, the PCC functions almost like a corporation, with well-defined hierarchies and a low-profile, businesslike approach.Lula had opposed the US proposal to classify the groups as terrorist organisations, describing the move as an affront to Brazilian sovereignty and arguing that the country already actively combats them. Just hours before the US announcement, Brazil’s federal police launched a new operation targeting PCC infiltration into the country’s financial sector.The president has not yet commented on the US decision.Flávio Bolsonaro immediately celebrated it. “On a trip as a presidential candidate, we did more for Brazil and for the security of Brazilians than Lula,” he said. Months earlier, commenting on US attacks against boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed 196 people, he said he felt “jealous” of those countries and suggested the US could do something similar in Rio’s Guanabara Bay. “Wouldn’t you like to spend a few months here helping us combat these terrorist organisations?” he wrote to Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence.The US decision to classify the organisations as terrorist groups – following similar designations of organisations in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela – had been widely anticipated for months, but was not mentioned during Trump’s meeting with Lula at the White House three weeks ago.Flávio’s visit to the White House last Tuesday was not listed on the president’s public schedule and, unlike Trump’s meeting with Lula – during which the US president even praised the Brazilian leftist – was not mentioned by Trump even in a social media post.There is still little clarity about the practical consequences of the designation. Analysts fear it could have financial repercussions even for innocent Brazilians, but the move is already being widely interpreted as another example of the growing pressure exerted by the White House across the region as part of its so-called “war on drugs”. A report published this week by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that US pressure drove an 18% increase in clashes between security forces and armed groups across Latin America and the Caribbean in 2025.