The First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC) is Brazil’s biggest and best-organized criminal network. It arose in São Paulo in the 1990s and has forged a bloody path to dominance throughout the country. The group is believed to have members in all of the country’s states, and has expanded its operations internationally to other Latin American nations in addition to Europe and Asia.

History

The PCC formed in the wake of the October 1992 massacre in São Paulo’s Carandiru prison, in which Brazilian security forces killed over 100 prisoners following a riot. 

In August 1993, a group of eight prisoners who had been transferred to Taubaté prison formed the PCC to fight for justice for the massacre and to push for better prison conditions. They expressed solidarity with another prison-based gang, the Red Command, adopting its slogan “peace, justice, freedom,” and advocated for revolution and the destruction of the capitalist system.

In 1999, the group carried out the biggest bank heist in São Paulo’s history, stealing some $32 million.

In subsequent years, the government moved to split up the PCC’s leaders, transferring them to prisons across the country. However, this allowed the gang to forge stronger links with other crime groups and to spread its ideas more widely.

It had become impossible to deny the PCC’s existence by 2001, when it coordinated the biggest prison rebellion the world had ever seen, with simultaneous shutdowns in 29 facilities across São Paulo state.

In 2006, the PCC launched an even more significant rebellion in protest after the transfer of members to remote facilities. Imprisoned members took over more than 70 prisons across the country, holding visitors hostage. Simultaneously, the group launched coordinated attacks on the outside focused on São Paulo that left more than 150 dead.

Over the next decade, the PCC grew in strength and sophistication, aided by a virtually unimpeded ability to conduct business in Brazil’s under-resourced prisons as well as a reported truce with the São Paulo police. In the early 2010s, the group began branching out to establish drug and arms trafficking operations in neighboring countries like Bolivia and Paraguay.

During the early 2010s, the PCC also made attempts to influence politics in its home state of São Paulo. And with increasing recruitment and revenues, the gang began to emerge as the most powerful criminal organization in Brazil.

Boasting more than 11,000 members across much of Brazil, and with multimillion-dollar monthly revenues, the PCC expanded its criminal portfolio to include large-scale international drug trafficking operations. The group developed ties with the powerful Italian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, and began laundering money in foreign countries like China.

In the latter half of the decade, the PCC grew bolder in its use of violence. The group was blamed for a series of armed robberies in Paraguay in 2015. And in early 2016, a video surfaced on the internet depicting the decapitation of a teenager, reportedly linked to a dispute between the PCC and its erstwhile ally, the First Catarinense Group (Primeiro Grupo da Catarinense – PGC).

In late 2016, the PCC broke a longstanding truce with the Red Command, setting off months of bloody prison riots that led to hundreds of deaths. Authorities linked the violence to clashes between the two groups over control of lucrative drug trafficking routes running through the remote northern Amazon region of Brazil. Reports also suggested that the PCC was seeking to challenge the Red Command in its home city of Rio de Janeiro, and that the PCC was fending off challenges from a rival group in São Paulo state, contributing to a spike in violence there.

In 2017, the PCC appeared to move into expansion mode. The group was linked to international drug shipments traveling through Uruguay, kidnappings and robberies in Bolivia, and attempts to recruit dissident members of the demobilizing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC).

The PCC was also blamed for a spate of murders reportedly linked to conflict over the drug trade in Paraguay. And in April 2017, the gang reportedly carried out the biggest armed robbery in Paraguay’s history.

The fallout from the breakdown of the PCC-Red Command truce continued to generate violence in early 2018, with the PCC seemingly undeterred in its ongoing campaign of domestic and international expansion.

By the end of the 2010s, the PCC had become a significant transnational criminal organization, with strong control over drug trafficking and other criminal activities in much of Brazil, and strong connections to the international drug trade.

In the early years of the 2020s, however, the group came under increasing pressure from Brazilian and international authorities. The group’s senior leadership was destabilized by authorities’ interception of the group’s communications, ongoing warfare with rival organizations, and transfers of top leaders to federal penitentiaries.

In 2024, the gang entered the worst internal crisis in its 30 years of existence, following the leak of a recording of a conversation in which top-ranking PCC leader Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, alias “Marcola,” calls fellow gang leader Roberto Soriano, alias “Tiriça,” a “psychopath.” 

The recording of the conversation was used in the criminal case against Tiriça, and he declared that Marcola was a whistleblower. Together with Abel Pacheco, alias “Vida Loka,” and Wanderson Nilton de Paula Lima, alias “Andinho,” Tiriça issued a statement demanding Marcola’s exclusion from the PCC leadership, which was responded to with another statement by Marcola and the PCC highest level leadership group declaring the expulsion and ordering the death of the other three leaders. 

Leadership

The PCC is run at the highest level by a group of powerful regional leaders, many of whom are incarcerated. It organizes itself with strong independent local leadership working through a franchise system instead of being dependent on a vertical hierarchy. Dues are collected from members of the organization and are used to pay lawyers, buy off prison guards and police, and to purchase drugs and weapons. 

Two founding members of the PCC, Jose Marcio Felicio, alias “Geleião,” and César Augusto Roriz da Silva, alias “Cesinha,” were expelled from the organization in 2002 as Marcola took power. Geleião and Cesinha founded a rival organization, the Third Capital Command (Terceiro Comando da Capital — TCC).

Marcola serves as the group’s maximum leader, operating from prison, where he is serving a two-decade drug trafficking sentence.

Geography

The PCC is strongest in his home base of São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous and economically important state, though it maintains a presence around the country. In recent years, the PCC has expanded its activities internationally, developing operations in nearly every country in South America in addition to establishing ties with European crime groups. 

Paraguay has become an important stronghold for the Brazilian organization in Latin America. In Europe, Portugal is the country with the most PCC activity. According to a 2023 report by the Portuguese Security Intelligence Service, around 1,000 PCC members operate in the country.

Allies and Enemies

A 20-year truce between the PCC and the Red Command broke down in late 2016, resulting in a rapid grab for territory and allies by both sides.

To shore up support in the northern territories, which are home to important drug trafficking routes, the PCC allied with rivals of the Red Command. However, some of those alliances appear to have broken down. The group maintains an alliance with the northeastern gang Bonde do Maluco (BDM), through which they trade drugs and weapons and enable the migration of criminals. Reports suggest that the Pure Third Command (Terceiro Comando Puro – TCP), a dissident gang from the Red Command, and criminal groups from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul are also allied with the PCC. 

Prospects

The PCC’s ambitions are not limited to the domestic environment. Its recent spread throughout Latin America has resulted in it filling a void in countries where no homegrown criminal organization has taken charge. The gang has also been diversifying the types of crime in which it operates through participation in cybercrimes, such as money laundering with cryptocurrencies and virtual fraud, as well as public contracting graft.

The gang’s diffuse leadership structure has made it resilient to challenges from rivals, as well as authorities’ attempts to disrupt its leadership. Despite tensions among top leaders, the group will likely remain among Latin America’s most powerful criminal organizations due to its strong territorial control and its involvement in a multitude of criminal economies.

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