Deadly Gestures: Brazilian Gangs Crack Down on Hand Signs

Latin America News

In Brazil, where shifts in gang dynamics have created new violent hotspots, innocent bystanders are becoming victims of turf wars as criminal groups react violently to innocuous hand gestures and social media posts. 

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), 16 people were executed in 2024 for motives directly linked to hand gestures, up from 4 in 2023. Many of them had unwittingly posted photos with the gestures on social media. 

The numbers are almost certainly an undercount due to the ambiguity surrounding many of Brazil’s homicides. 

SEE ALSO: What a Decade of Data Tells Us About Organized Crime in Brazil 

Brazil’s powerful gangs have claimed such hand signals as their exclusive symbols. Even the simplest gestures – often used in everyday life – can warrant a death sentence, particularly if a criminal group already suspects the individual of being an enemy. 

The Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV), for example, is associated with the number two, while its rival, the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC), claims the number three. That means innocent gestures, such as making a peace sign with two fingers raised, or an “OK” sign with three fingers raised, can be enough to trigger an execution order – depending on the location and who is scanning social media. 

In one high-profile case in 2024, two sisters from Porto Esperidião in Mato Grosso were kidnapped, tortured, and killed after attending a fishing festival. One of them uploaded an Instagram photo displaying a three-fingered gesture associated with Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC.

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The execution, ordered by leaders of rival group CV, was live-streamed to a local prison in a video call that lasted over three hours, according to local investigators. The police officer in charge of the case told local press that there was no evidence the victims had been involved in illegal activities. 

In another case involving a PCC gesture, a teenage tourist visiting the coastal village of Jericoacoara with his father was abducted and murdered, allegedly for raising three fingers in a photograph. The victim’s father claims he did not have any links to criminal groups.

Even celebrities have been caught in the crossfire. In early 2025, popular trap singer Duquesa, from the state of Bahia in the north, scrambled to pull a music video offline after viewers warned that she featured a gesture linked to a criminal faction. The artist’s production company later issued a statement saying it “regretted” the incident and emphasizing that the singer had “no criminal intent.” 

InSight Crime Analysis

Notably, the latest killings are concentrated in areas where gangs are fighting to control drug markets and transportation routes but have come after a significant shift in the location of gang conflicts in recent years. 

Urban areas of Bahia state and rural parts of Mato Grosso appear to be the most dangerous regions for those flashing gang-related symbols, with 14 gesture-related executions recorded between 2018 and 2024 in each state, according to ACLED data. 

While the states have unique criminal contexts, both are disputed territories between powerful factions of Brazil’s criminal groups. In Bahia, violent conflicts rage between gangs fighting over the state’s lucrative retail drug markets. And in Mato Grosso, a strategic border state, criminal groups battle for control over key transit routes for drugs destined for Brazil and Europe. 

The spike in executions linked to symbols and hand gestures is just part of a broader redistribution of gang-related violence, which has increasingly concentrated in Mato Grosso and Bahia. Between 2018 and 2024, violence attributed to gangs more than doubled in both states, while remaining similar for Brazil overall.

Mato Grosso is also a hotspot for extreme acts of violence. The state’s homicide rate is 31% higher than Brazil’s national average of 18.7 homicides per 100,000 residents. What’s more, beheadings — used by drug trafficking groups to punish rivals and debtors — occurred at a rate five times higher than the national average between 2018 and 2024, according to ACLED data.

The continued boom in cocaine production and consumption in Brazil and beyond appears to be fueling these conflicts, tightening the social rules in gang-controlled territory. 

Luiz Silva, a researcher for the Peripheral Studies Network and the Security Observatories Network at the Federal University of Maranhão, told InSight Crime that Brazil’s gangs closely monitor social media platforms and had developed surveillance “mechanisms” to identify those suspected of being enemies.  

SEE ALSO: What Is Behind Rising Violence in Bahia, Brazil?

The gangs “know that not all the people who make symbols are participants in a particular group, but the violence is not irrational. It follows the logic of territorial control,” said Silva. 

“If gangs suspect a threat, they will monitor mobile phone data, WhatsApp messages, stickers, and photos” of their victims, he added. 

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