Rio’s ‘narco-pentecostal’ gangs use religion to dominate favelas

When Rio de Janeiro police confiscate blocks of cocaine and packages of marijuana, they may find them marked with a religious symbol: the Star of David. This is not a reference to the Jewish faith, but to the belief of some Pentecostal Christians that the return of the Jews to Israel will lead to the Second Coming of Christ.

The gang selling these brand-name drugs is the Tercer Comando Puro, one of the most powerful criminal groups in Rio, with a reputation for both making its opponents disappear and its fanatical evangelical Christianity.

They took control of a group of five favelas in the north of the city – now known as the Israel Complex – after one of their leaders had what he believed was a revelation from God, says theologian Vivian Costa, author of the book Evangelical Drug. Distributors.

She says that gangsters see themselves as “soldiers of crime,” and that Jesus is “the owner” of the territory they dominate.

Controversially, some have dubbed them “narco-pentecostals.”

One man who has experience with crime and religion (although in his case not at the same time) is Pastor Diego Nascimento, who converted to Christianity after hearing the gospel from a gun-wielding gangster.

Looking at him, it’s hard to believe that this youthful-looking 42-year-old Wesleyan Methodist minister with an easy smile and dimples was once a member of Rio’s notorious Red Command criminal gang and ran its activities in the city’s Vila Kennedy favela.

Four years in prison for drug trafficking were not enough for him to abandon crime. But when he became addicted to crack, his position in the gang plummeted.

“I lost my family. I practically lived on the street for almost a year. I even sold things from my house to buy crack,” he says.

It was at that moment, when he was at rock bottom, that a well-known drug dealer from the favela summoned him.

“He started preaching to me, saying that there was a way out, that there was a solution for me, which was to accept Jesus,” he recalls.

The young addict followed this advice and began his path to the pulpit.

Pastor Nascimento still spends time with criminals, but now it is through his work in prisons, where he helps people change their lives, like he did himself.

Despite having been converted by a gangster, he considers the idea of ​​religious criminals a contradiction.

“I don’t see them as evangelical believers,” he says.

“I see them as people who are on the wrong path and have fear of God because they know that God is the one who guards their lives.

“There is no such thing as a combination of being an evangelical and a thug. If a person accepts Jesus and follows the biblical commandments, that person cannot be a drug dealer.”

Evangelical Christianity, according to some predictions, will overtake Catholicism as Brazil’s most important religion by the end of the decade.

As it has grown, the charismatic Pentecostal movement has particularly resonated with people living in gang-ridden favelas, and now some of those gangs are drawing on elements of the faith they grew up with to wield power.

One accusation leveled against them is that they are using violence to repress Afro-Brazilian religions.

Christina Vital, a professor of sociology at Rio’s Fluminense Federal University, says Rio’s poor communities have long been living “under siege” by criminal gangs, and this is now affecting their freedom of religion.

“In the Israel Complex, you cannot see people with other religious beliefs practicing them publicly. It is not an exaggeration to speak of religious intolerance in that territory.”

Vital says Afro-Brazilian religious houses in Umbanda and Candomblé have also been closed in surrounding neighborhoods, and gangsters sometimes draw messages on the walls such as “Jesus is Lord of this place.”

Followers of Afro-Brazilian religions have long faced prejudice, and drug traffickers are not the only people who have targeted them.

But Dr. Rita Salim, who heads the Racial Crimes and Intolerance Department of the Rio police, says threats and attacks by drug gangs have a particularly powerful impact.

“These cases are more serious because they are imposed by a criminal organization, by a group and its leader, who imposes fear throughout the territory they dominate.”

It notes that an arrest warrant has been issued for the man believed to be the number one crime boss in the Israel Complex, for allegedly ordering gunmen to attack an Afro-Brazilian temple in another favela.

While accusations of religious extremism in Rio’s favelas first drew attention in the early 2000s, the problem has “increased dramatically” in recent years, according to Marcio de Jagun, Religious Diversity Coordinator for the City Council of River.

Jagun, who is a babalorixá (high priest) of the Candomblé religion, says the problem is now national and that similar attacks have been observed in other Brazilian cities.

“This is a form of neo-crusade,” he says. “The prejudice behind these attacks is both religious and ethnic, with outlaws demonizing Africa’s religions and claiming to banish evil in the name of God.”

But religion and crime have long been intertwined in Brazil, says theologian Vivian Costa. In the past, gangsters asked Afro-Brazilian deities and Catholic saints for protection.

“If we look at the birth of the Red Command, or the birth of the Third Command, Afro religions (and Catholicism) are there from the beginning. We see the presence of Saint George, the presence of (the Afro-Brazilian god) Ògún, the tattoos, the crucifixes, the candles, the offerings.

“That’s why calling it Narcopentecostalism is reducing that very historical and traditional relationship between crime and religion. I prefer to call it ‘Narcoreligiosity’.”

Whatever you call this mixture of faith and criminality, one thing seems clear: it endangers a right enshrined in Brazil’s constitution: that of religious freedom.

And it is one more way in which violent drug traffickers cause harm to the communities forced to live under their rule.