How Latin American prisons became command centers for some of the top drug gangs in the region

In Ecuador, prisons are the epicenter of an unprecedented public security crisis. In Brazil or Venezuela, criminal groups born behind bars are expanding throughout the region. And in Central America, governments are taking extreme measures against the power exercised by gangs from prisons.

Across Latin America, several penitentiaries established by the states to improve the security of those outside them have had the opposite effect of what was sought: they became command centers for major criminal organizations.

In general, these gangs that originated and are run from prisons have the drug trade as their main source of income. But specialists believe that some have engaged in other forms of crime, from extortion to illegal mining.

“The prison is not what we imagined,” said Gustavo Fondevila, an expert at Mexico’s Center for Economic Research and Education (Cide).

“These prisons in the region they have become conductors of violence: you build a prison in a place and crime in that area increases”adds Fondevila in dialogue with BBC Mundo.

“It’s a parallel state within the prisons.”

An emblematic case

The prison challenge for Latin American countries has grown as their cells have overflowed with inmates in recent decades. without effective policies to guide and rehabilitate this trend.

According to the World Prison Brief, a global report of prison data to be published in 2021 by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR).

This increase in the number of prisoners reached 200% in South America and 77% in Central America, according to the study.

In Brazil, where the prison population has increased by 3.5 since the beginning of this century, a group that turned up in a prison in São Paulo in the 1990s has been regarded in recent decades as the largest criminal organization in the country and perhaps in South America: the First Command of the Capital (PCC).

Initially conceived as a prisoner protection union with its own statute, the PCC strengthened itself within prisons until, in 2006, it demonstrated its ability to take to the streets with a series of violent attacks that bathed in blood and the largest city in the world laid lamb. America Latina.

“Crime amplifies crime” is one of the slogans of the PCC.

The group expanded as authorities sent its leaders to prisons in other Brazilian states where it recruited more members, until it now has nearly 30,000 members inside and outside prisons, studies show.

Led by Marcos Herbas Camacho, alias “Marcola” and imprisoned since 1999, the PCC expanded its drug trafficking operations by controlling international routes from Paraguay, Bolivia and other countries region of.

At the same time, he expanded his earnings with other crimes, such as bank robberies or the sale of stolen phones.

This year, a UN report cited reports of PCC infiltration of illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon and Comando Vermelho, another powerful Brazilian narco group born in a prison in Rio de Janeiro.

“Even within prison, groups such as the PCC have not completely restricted their communication with what is happening on the street. If we talk about prisoners with more power and central position in the organization, they certainly have the ability to maintain influence, profit (and) the organization of the company,” says Betina Barros, a sociologist and researcher at the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, to BBC World.

In fact, the PCC is an emblematic example of what is happening on a different scale in other parts of the region.

“The effect is paradoxical”

Instead of checking the interior of the Tocorón prison, Venezuelan authorities handed over responsibility to the prisoners themselves.

In 2014, for example, it arose next to a nightclub, a casino and a zoo in that penitentiary in the center-north of the country. the Tren de Aragua, another transnational crime in Latin America.

In addition to drug trafficking, this gang, which has nearly 3,000 members, is credited with a wide range of crimes: from extortion and kidnapping to human trafficking or contract killers (as well as illegal gold mining such as the PCC, with which it has ties). according to the Brazilian authorities).

The most visible figure of the Aragua train, Héctor Rusthenford “Niño” Guerrero, “is protected in Tocorón and controls the entire operation from there,” said Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist and researcher who has written a book about the gang. conversation in May.

The lack of control over overcrowded prisons is also evident in Ecuador, where the government last week declared a state of emergency in a prison system that has been the scene of a series of massacres since 2020 that left more than 450 dead.

Behind the Ecuadorian prison violence, experts see a gang war which has also spilled into the streets, where murders, shootings and attacks have been committed as the country has become a regional drug distribution hub.

“I would say that Ecuador is a narco state run by organized crime from prisons,” said Carla Álvarez, a teacher and security researcher, in an interview days ago.

Without going to the extreme, other countries in the region have seen the challenge of drug trafficking behind bars increase.

Several people have been arrested in Argentina accused of transporting kilograms of cocaine led by imprisoned leaders of “Los Monos”, a narco gang from the city of Rosario, and recently revealed that a former airline pilot who once supplied the group had an active network of drug distribution and money laundering out of Ezeiza Prison.

In Mexico, where drug lords like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán kept their massive illegal business in maximum security prisons, millions of extortion phone calls are estimated to be made from prisons each year.

Some Latin American rulers have openly admitted that mafia dominate their prisons.

“We have started activities so that prisons are no longer schools of crime and break the cycle with organized crime,” said José Manuel Zelaya, Secretary of State for National Defense of Honduras, weeks ago.

In addition to planning to build a prison for some 2,000 gang leaders in a Caribbean archipelago, the Honduran government has taken extreme measures to fight crime, including curfews, states of emergency in much of the country and the militarization of overcrowded prisons after several massacres.

This “strong hand” strategy appears to be copied from that of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to reduce the massive gang power inside and outside his country’s prisons, including the inauguration of a mega prison for suspected gang members this year.

With the homicide rate falling in El Salvador, Bukele enjoys great popularity on a domestic level and has been cited by certain politicians in the region as an example to follow.

But some warn that this country is paying too high a price to restore public safety, with the erosion of civil liberties, abuses by security forces and concentration of power in the president.

Others recall that bets to punish often boomerang in Latin America.

“In contexts of high victimization, people want a strong hand. It is completely understood: he wants to take to the streets without fear,” says Fondevila.

“But the response to put anyone in jail for anything in the region has gone all wrong and the effect is paradoxical: we put people in jail to be calm and these people return to society from prison with increasingly serious and complex crimes”.