What happens when drug dealers become the government? What if they’re better government than what they replaced? From Fernanco Chiocca at lewrockwell.com:
Last week, on October 28, the deadliest police operation in the history of Brazil was carried out, launched in the Alemão and Penha complexes, in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro, which left more than 121 dead, 4 of whom were police officers and the rest members of the Comando Vermelho (CV) faction. Although the CV is known for drug trafficking, the objective of this action was not the war on drugs, but to regain control of territories lost by the state to criminal organizations: “We are acting with maximum force and in an integrated manner to make it clear that the state exercises power. The true owners of these territories are the good, hardworking citizens. We will remain firm in the fight against organized crime,” said Governor Cláudio Castro.
Currently in Rio de Janeiro – and to a lesser extent in other Brazilian cities – there are geographical areas that the Brazilian state no longer controls, i.e., that the state has lost its monopoly on the use of force. These are places where the powers of the state do not have a constant presence. Often these territories have their borders physically delimited by barricades, which make it difficult for police vehicles to pass. This dispute for territory has been going on for decades and is considered a civil war or a non-international armed conflict, and it occurs because the traffickers have realized that there is a criminal organization much more profitable than theirs and they are trying to imitate it: the traffickers are trying to become a state.
When the state decided to ban the manufacture and trade of some types of drugs that many people want to buy, it didn’t prevent anyone from having access to these drugs; it just made this market available to anyone who was willing to challenge the armed thugs and the justice of the state, and in the early 1980s, the CV found out that drug trafficking was much more lucrative than robbing banks and decided to dedicate himself to this field. The authoritarian and impractical idea – not even maximum security American prisons can prevent drug use – of wanting to rule what other adults use has thrown a billionaire market into the hands of criminals. But as large as the number of consumers of cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other drugs on the prohibited list is, this number is much lower than the consumers of the internet, fuel, transportation, gas, etc. Former BOPE captain Rodrigo Pimentel explains this change:
“The CV realizes: you pay R$109 per month for internet, you have a territory of 10,000 houses, each house R$109, the CV does a quick calculation and gee, I’m going to take R$1 million a month, 12 million a year, everyone has internet, . . . This is much more than cocaine and marijuana, I’m going to take this neighborhood.”
They are good little capitalists not backed by a too big to fail printing press when you get down to it.
Free military training they are getting in the 404 and all kinds of nice weapons for sale.