Atores Não-Estatais Violentos na América Latina e a governança informal: capacidades e potencialidades do Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC)

Abstract

For some years, the First Capital Command (PCC) has expanded its actions beyond the limits

of the state of São Paulo, becoming a national problem. PCC's performance as a violent non- state actor reached not only most prisons and large Brazilian cities, but also resulted in

disturbances at the borders with Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and, more recently, Venezuela. It is understood, however, that such expansion is due, among other factors, to the potentiality of the group's governance over territories criminalized by the State. Thus, this scientific initiation‟s project has as objective to analyze how Violent Non-State Actors (ANEVs) are able to develop dynamics of informal governance, based on the case study of the expansion of the First Capital Command by Latin American countries. Therefore, it was developed a collection and an analysis of information about the PCC‟s capacity of governance in three dimensions: the extent of the action, the intensity of the violence and the material and symbolic resources that the group uses. The methodological option for the development of the project was a qualitative one, through a case study based on a literature review of Peace Studies and of Non State Violent Actors and grounded on documentary research from thinktanks, research centers and press sources. The presence of the First Capital Command throughout Brazil and in much of South America, funded and motivated respectively by drug trafficking and collective symbolism, has generated intense violence. However, from the production of a sense of legitimacy, the group has also established itself as an option for those who suffer in a conjuncture of direct, structural, and cultural violence sustained daily by the state and the current economic structure. Thus, through the systematization of the information collected through the aforementioned dimensions, it was possible to analyze, from the perspective of peace theories, how the First Capital Command has produced dynamics of governance in the course of its performance.