Fracture in the PCC: the largest criminal gang in South America splits in two

First Capital Command (PCC), the most powerful criminal gang in South America, born in Brazil, It is experiencing a historical fracture among its senior leaders that threatens to transform the streets of São Paulo into a violent witch hunt.

Born in prisons 30 years ago and today dedicated to drug trafficking, mainly cocaine, the PCC is facing an unprecedented internal conflict within its leadership that could undermine its national and regional hegemony.

Never before has the top leader of the faction, Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola‘, currently imprisoned in a maximum security prison, had been questioned by the other leaders of the organization, according to official sources told EFE.

The suspicion is already circulating among Brazilian authorities that Marcola’s dissidents have founded a separate gang, which would be called First Pure Command, although some specialists see this possibility as distant.

The great fear is that this struggle for power will open a bloody war in the streets and prisons of the state of São Paulo, its headquarters, where it is estimated that the PCC has 10,000 members, 2,000 of them at large.

At least two recent murders are already under investigation and “some missing” linked to the fight, prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, who has been pursuing the gang for more than 20 years from the São Paulo Public Ministry, told EFE.

The origin of divorce

The fracture was something sought by the Prosecutor’s Office since, in 2019, they decided to transfer and separate 22 leaders of the first and second echelon. Several of them were members of the so-called Final Tuning, a kind of council of wise men of the PCC, its highest decision-making body.

In permanent isolation, communication worsened and suspicions between them were unleashed after the assassination of several leaders in recent years, deaths that “created a certain internal lack of love,” says Gakiya.

Distrust exploded when statements by Marcola to a prison official, in which he called his number two, Roberto Soriano, alias ‘Tiriça’, a “psychopath”, were used to sentence the latter to 31 years in prison for ordering the death of A psychologist.

“In the world of crime there is no such type of dialogue, aware that it is being recorded. “He ended up handing over a colleague,” Gakiya analyzes.

It was the last straw. Next to Tiriça, disappointed with Marcola, were two other historical bosses of the PCC: Abel Pacheco de Andrade, ‘Vida Loka’, and Wanderson Nilton de Paula Lima, ‘Andinho’.

These three have threatened to kill Marcola, who, as the official supreme leader of the PCC, responded by issuing an execution order for his now enemies for “traitors”.

The gap is increasing, since at least two other important ringleaders, José Müller Júnior, known as ‘Granada’, and Reinaldo Teixeira dos Santos, alias ‘Funchal’, have also sided with Tiriça, with a vengeful profile, according to investigators.

It can only be one

“There are two groups and one of them will prevail. “The PCC will never be the same again.”says Gakiya, who reveals that relatives of some members of the gang have gone to the police station in search of protection for fear of being killed by the rival party.

In his opinion, the PCC, with branches in practically all South American countries, especially in Bolivia and Paraguay, will emerge “weakened.”

Although for Bruno Paes, researcher at the Violence Studies Center at the University of São Paulo (USP), “the names are no longer so important” because “the structure remains.”

“Marcola is a very strong figure, his myth continues, but the PCC has learned to create a bureaucratic structure outside and inside prisons so as not to depend on the endorsement of leaders in isolation,” he tells EFE.

Gakiya also does not believe that it will affect the international operation excessively, since its sophisticated drug trafficking networks, in alliance with the Italian ‘Ndrangheta and criminals “Albanians, Serbs” and from African countries, to export drugs to Europe are very oiled. “One enters and another leaves,” summarizes.

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