RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Prisoners Organise in ‘Union’

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 27 2001 (IPS) - The leaders of Brazil’s biggest prison riot ever are seeking recognition for their movement through manifestos in which they cite laws, legal doctrines and even a famous quote by legendary Argentine-Cuban guerrilla fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara – “one must grow tough without losing one’s tenderness.”

Local authorities and the press blamed the Feb 18 riots that were staged simultaneously in 29 prisons of the state of Sao Paulo on the growth of a criminal organisation, the First Commando of the Capital (PCC), and on the possibilities for coordination offered by mobile phones.

The well-written documents with which the group’s leaders have begun to seek a dialogue with public opinion and the government reflect the emergence of a social movement of prisoners, with a new kind of leadership and the knowledge base needed to defend their rights.

“We don’t want to be known as a party of crime, but as a union of the marginalised and condemned,” states the manifesto issued Sunday from the State Penitentiary, one of the three jails comprising the Carandiru Complex, which houses a total of 9,700 prisoners on the outskirts of the city of Sao Paulo.

‘Peace, Justice and Freedom’ is the slogan of the “party,” as the PCC is known. Its demands are based on the penal code and the work of respected jurists who advocate in-depth reforms of Brazil’s prison system.

The first “Manifesto to Society and to the Judicial, Legislative and Executive Branches,” released last Friday, points out that according to Brazilian law, one of the tasks of the prison system is rehabilitation, which would entail offering inmates possibilities for work and study, as well as individual, rather than group, cells.

Criminals break the law, says the document, but what about authorities who fail to comply with the penal code?

The PCC also recommends that prosecutors, judges, political leaders and journalists who have built their renown on sensationalist crime reporting read the works of respected jurists on penal questions.

The leaders of the PCC are demanding “dialogue, not negotiations,” on the argument that democracy ensures “equal dialogue for all” – including prisoners.

“Dialogue is key,” agreed parliamentarian Marcos Rolim, the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies’ Human Rights Commission, who predicted that the technique of staging simultaneous riots would spread to other states in Brazil.

In its latest manifesto, the PCC expressed support for reforms recommended by human rights defenders and experts on the penitentiary system, such as prisons designed to hold no more than 500 inmates, better training for prison employees and the effective application and enforcement of Brazil’s penal legislation.

The group’s leaders say they have organised, and “baptised” in the ceremony for new recruits, more than 12,000 inmates and 6,500 members who are not in prison.

The group emerged in the state of Sao Paulo, where 40 percent of Brazil’s total prison population of 230,000 is concentrated. Prisoners are the social base the PCC aims to represent as a sort of ‘union’, which is actually stronger – as a lobbying force in favour of rights enshrined in the country’s laws – if the families of the inmates are taken into account as well.

The movement’s struggle to get authorities to comply with the country’s laws by using mass mobilisations of inmates and their families – as in the riots, when visitors refused to leave the prisons before receiving guarantees that there would be no violent police reprisal against the inmates – and by combining illegal actions and calls for peace could be compared to the tactics used by Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST).

The MST is a nationwide movement pressing for broader, faster and more effective agrarian reform by occupying public offices and invading land that has been left idle by large landowners.

Prison authorities in Sao Paulo have been trying to break up the PCC by transferring its leaders to other facilities. But that strategy has merely helped expand the organisation, as demonstrated by the state-wide riots.

Prisons have actually contributed to the growth of organised crime in Brazil. The emergence of the so-called “Red Commando” in Rio de Janeiro, with links to the drug trade, was blamed on the fact that common criminals were mixed in with political prisoners back in the 1970s.

Several leaders with a certain level of education or intellectual attainment, who justify their option for crime, have also appeared.

The class struggle in Brazil, the inequality and social gaps widely recognised as among the worst in the world, government corruption and demands for respect for human rights are coming together in confused but increasingly articulated arguments set forth by inmates in the jails of this South American country of 168 million.

Illustrating that mix is the name of a group that stands as a rival to the PCC: the Revolutionary Brazilian Commando of Criminality.

The expansion of the drug trade, which has drawn a growing number of middle-class youngsters into the world of crime, and the rise in schooling levels among impoverished Brazilians both contribute to that trend, say experts.

The heavy concentration of prisoners in a limited number of institutions has also favoured the organisation of inmates and the emergence of leaders.

Similarly, Brazil’s largest trade union, the ‘Central Unica de Travalhadores’, was born in Sao Bernardo do Campo, near Sao Paulo – Brazil’s biggest city – in the 1970s, when the car-making industry concentrated tens of thousands of workers in a handful of factories.

It was not by chance that the state-wide riots of Feb 18 began in Carandiru, which has the largest concentration of prisoners in Brazil, and one of the largest in the world.