Marcola´s Interview to the Brazilian Newspaper O Globo (2006) 5/23/2006 Josino Moraes Latin America Economic Researcher www.josino.net email: josinomoraes@hotmail.com Notes: Marcola is the first nationwide criminal leader of note in Brazil. Perhaps, the most important in Latin America. PCC stands for Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Command of Capital.  Here, capital means the city of Sâo Paulo. CV stands for Comando Vermelho - Red Command. 1.Are you from the PCC? More than that. I am a sign of new times. I was poor and invisible… During decades you never looked at me… And formerly it was easy to solve the problem of poorness. The diagnosis was “obvious”: rural migration, unevenness of income, a few slums (favelas), thinning peripheries ... It is the solution that was never coming. What did they do? Nothing at all. Did the federal government sometime allocate an allowance for us?  We have just appeared in the news during humble up downs on the hill or on romantic songs about the “beauty of the hills at dawn”…. those things . Now, we are rich because of the multinational drug corporation. And you are very, very afraid. We are the late beginning of your social conscience. Got it? I am cultured. I read Dante in the jail. 2- But… the solution would be Solution?....There´s no solution at all, buddy. The idea itself of solution is already a mistake. Have you ever looked at the size of the 560 slums in Rio de Janeiro? Have you ever flown in helicopter over the periphery of São Paulo? What solution? The solution would only come up with many billion dollars spent with a high-level ruler, an immense political will, economic growth, revolution in the education, general urbanization... and should everything  be almost under the baton of an enlighten tyranny, that should jump over the secular bureaucratic paralysis, which was passing over the accomplice legislative (or you think that 287 leeches are going to act? If they let it be, they are going to steal up even the PCC....) and even the court, which obstructs punishments. There would have to be a radical reform of the penal process of the country, there would have to be communication and intelligence between municipal, state, and federal police officers (we do conference calls among prisons ...). And all that would cost some billion dollars and would implicate on a deep psychosocial change on the political structure of the country. In other words: it is impossible. There is no solution. 3- Are you afraid of dying? It is you who are afraid of dying, not me. As a matter of fact, here in jail you cannot come in and kill me ... but I can order to kill you out there.... We are human bombs. In the slum there are a hundred thousand human bombs... We are in the centre of the insoluble itself, really... You are the good and I am the evil and, in between, the frontier of death, the only frontier. We are already another species; we are already other animals different from you. Death for you is a Christian drama on a bed, a heart attack... Death for us is the daily meat laid down in a ditch... Didn’t you intellectuals used to talk about class struggle, about "be marginal (from law), be hero"? So it is; we arrived, here we are! He, he... You’ve never expected for these new warriors of cocaine, have you? I am intelligent. I read. I read 3.000 books and I read Dante ... but my soldiers are all strange anomalies of the twisted development of this country. There is no more proletariat or unhappy ones, neither exploited ones. There is a third kind growing up outside, cultivated in the mud, educating on the absolute illiteracy, graduating in the jails, like a monster Alien hidden in the cracks of the city. A new language has already grown up. - Don't you hear the wiretaps made "with the permission of the Justice"? Maybe so. It is another language. We are facing a kind of post-misery. That's it. The post-misery generates a new culture of killing, aided by modern technology, satellites, cellular phones, internet, modern weapons. It is the shit with chips, with megabytes. My commanded ones are a mutation of the social being; they are funguses of a great dirty mistake. 4- What changed at the periphery of town? Money. Nowadays, we have it. Do you think that someone with US$ 40 million like Beira-Mar is not in charge? With 40 million the prison is a hotel, an office... Which police officer would go to burn up such a gold mine, got it? We are a modern rich corporation. If an official hesitates, he is fired and thrown out in the "microwave" ... he, he... You´re the broken state, managed by incompetents. We have fast methods of management. You´re slow and bureaucratic. We fight in our territory. You fight in a strange field. We don´t fear the death. You are quite scared. We´re well armed. You combat with blunderbuss. We are in the attack. You, in the defense. You have mania for humanism. We are cruel, merciless. You transform us into superstars of  crime. We see you as clowns. We´re helped by the people of slums, by fear or love. You´re hated. You´re regional, provincial. Our guns and products come from outside the country, we are global. We don´t forget you. You´re our customers. You forget us as soon as the outbreak of violence passes. 5- But, what should we do? I’ll give you a tip, even against myself. Catch the barons of cocaine! They have congressmen, senators, generals, they even have an ex-president of Paraguay in the business of cocaine and arms. But who is going to do that? The army? It has no money. It has no money even for feeding their recruits... The country is broken, financing a failed State at interests of 20% a year, and Lula is still increasing the public expenses, employing 40,000 swindlers. Is the army going to fight against the PCC and the CV? I´m reading Klausewitz - On the War. There´s no prospect of success. We are devouring ants hidden in the breaches. We even have antitank rockets! Perhaps, we´ll get some stingers. To destroy us you would have to launch an atomic bomb over the slums. As a matter of fact, we´re able to get one of these “dirty bombs”? What you say? A radioactive Ipanema? (Ipanema, in Rio de Janeiro, is the most famous beach in Brazil). 6- But, there will be no solution? You will only get some success if you stop defending “normality”. There isn’t any normality at all. You have to recognize your own incompetence. But I´ll be frank: we´re all in the center of the insoluble. The difference is that we live from it, while you… have no way out, just the shit. And, we are already living off it. Look at me, pal! There´s no solution! Do you know why? Because you don´t even understand the extension of the problem. As divine Dante wrote : "Lasciate ogna speranza, voi che entrate!" (Lose all your hopes, you who enter here. We are all in hell). Final Notes: •        Data from São Paulo City Hall indicate 1,565 slums in 2007 (Folha de São Paulo   – 7/14/2008 – C3), 3 times, thus, the number said by Marcola ! •        The 287 leeches to whom Marcola refers, I presume that they are from Brazilian National Congress so his data is very, very underestimated.