In the case of weapons recovered and traced in Central America, more than half come from the United States. In Mexico this number rises to 70% and is around 80% in the Caribbean, according to the US arms control agency ATF, reports Reuters.
Interpol stressed that in the operationwere arrested members of the Brazilian organized crime group Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Mara Salvatrucha, originally from El Salvador.
Criminal gangs in Mexico, Central and South America are increasingly better armed and local police are often outgunned when confronted with them.
The Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, continues to control much of the human trafficking as well as the smuggling of drugs and weapons into Central America.
In the case of the PCC, born in Brazil almost 30 years ago, It is not only hegemonic in its place of origin, but also in the rest of the region.
It was created in the 90s and the power of the PCC within the prisons was already known, but it was in May 2006 when its true muscle was seen to climb as the most dominant criminal organization in this country.
When he emerged in a maximum-security prison in Sao Paulo, the PCC’s goal was to improve the poor conditions prisoners claimed to suffer.
“The creation of the PCC improved the quality of life of many prisoners, who found protection by paying a monthly fee,” Carolina Sampó, coordinator of the Center for Studies on Transnational Organized Crime, told BBC Mundo.
The group grew and, once they left the prisons, its members settled on the periphery of the most populated cities. In the case of the PCC, they did it in Sao Paulo.
The May 12, 2006, the PCC orchestrated several prison riots and attacked state police stations that left more than 30 security officers dead. In Sao Paulo, a curfew was decreed and chaos was sown. More than 500 civilians lost their lives amid clashes between police and the gang.
Then it expanded to operate internationally with the dominance of a profitable business for this type of bands: control of drug trafficking routes.
According to a report written by Sampó for the Elcano Royal Institute in 2019, the PCC has more than 29,000 members, of whom around 7,000 are incarcerated.
It has not been revealed by Interpol how many of its members were arrested in the mega-operation Trigger IX.
The authorities have related to this group with The murder ofParaguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in May 2022 when I was on my honeymoon in Colombia. Prosecutor Pecci was investigating high-profile corruption and money laundering cases in his country.
Despite the fact that several people were arrested and prosecuted for this, it has not yet been possible to identify the intellectual author of the crime.
