17. Governance by Violent Non-state Actors as a Challenge to Sustainable Peace in Brazil

It has branches in several South American countries and can be regarded as a transnational actor, as it operates in drug trafficking and violent actions not only in Brazil but also in Paraguay and Bolivia, and is allied with violent groups in Colombia (Brazil 2013).

Case studies are appropriate for analysis of particular topics and place emphasis on interpretation, the most distinctive characteristic of qualitative inquiry (Stake 1995: 8). Using them for this particular issue is beneficial, given the uniqueness of the governance structure of the PCC and the FDN.

Social spaces are here understood according to Pierre Bourdieu’s definition:

The structure of social space manifests itself, in the most diverse contexts, in the form of spatial oppositions, appropriated physical space functioning as a spontaneous metaphor for the social order. There is no space that does not express social hierarchies and distances in a more or less distorted fashion, especially through the effect of naturalization associated with the durable inscription of social realities in the physical world. The structure of the spatial distribution of powers records the balance of social struggles over the profits of space, which are waged individually (as indicated by mobility) and collectively (through political contests over housing policy, for instance). The stake of these struggles is the construction of spatially based homogeneous groupings, that is, segregation that is both cause and effect of the exclusive usage of a space. These profits take the form of profits of localization, rents of situation, profits of rank and profits of occupation. The ability to dominate appropriated space depends on the capital possessed, which allows one to keep undesirable persons and things at a distance and to draw desirable ones closer. Yet one can physically occupy a location without inhabiting it properly if one does not dispose of the means tacitly required for that, beginning with the proper dispositions, for it is the habitus that makes the habitat (Bourdieu 2018: 106).

Sintonia is the slang used to refer to direction; in this case, it is the central management of the PCC.

Marcos Herbas Camacho, aka Marcola; Abel Pacheco de Andrade, aka Vida Loka; Rogério Geremias de Simone, aka Gegê do Mangue (killed); Roberto Soriano, aka Tiriça; Daniel Vinicius Canônico, aka Cego; Fabiano Alves de Souza, aka Paca (killed), Edilson Borges Nogueira, aka Biroska (killed); Júlio Cesar Guedes de Moraes, aka Julinho Carambola (Adorno/Costa 2018).

In an interview with the The Wall Street Journal in 2017, the Colombian Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas expressed concern, saying that Brazilian criminal organisations are courting the FARC dissidents to obtain heavy weapons and military training, while also hoping to expand into the highly competitive Colombian criminal territory (Jelmayer et al. 2017).