Associated Press
Criminal gangs are operating in over a third of municipalities in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest driving a boom in violence, according to a report published Wednesday by a prominent nonprofit organization. Gangs were present this year in 260 of 772 municipalities in the region, compared with 178 in 2023, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. The entrenchment of “mafia-like” organizations — particularly the Red Command and First Capital Command (PCC) — “greatly aggravate the situation in the Legal Amazon, which is now seen as a very strategic territory for transnational trafficking, with the circulation of different illicit goods,” the report said.