Rio’s ‘Narco-Pentecostal’ gangs use religion to dominate favelas.

When police in Rio de Janeiro seize blocks of cocaine and bundles of marijuana, they find them well-branded 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.

This branded drug-dealing gang is the Pure Third Command, one of Rio’s most powerful criminal gangs, with a reputation for both disappearing opponents and fanatical evangelical Christianity.

He 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 to be a revelation from God, theologian Vivian Costa. says the author of the book Evangelical Drug Dealers

Gangsters see themselves as “soldiers of crime,” she says, and Jesus as “masters” of the territory they dominate.

Controversially, some have labeled them “Narco-Pentecostals.”

One person who has experience with crime and religion — though, in his case, not at the same time — is priest Diego Nascimento, who became a Christian after hearing the gospel from a gun-wielding gangster.

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

Four years in prison for drug trafficking was not enough to turn him away from crime. But when he became addicted to crack cocaine, his status in the gang declined.

“I lost my family. I was practically on the street for about a year. I went so far as to sell things from my house to buy crack,” he says.

It was at this point, when he was at rock bottom, that a well-known drug dealer in the favela sought him out.

“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 devotee accepted this advice and began his journey towards 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, just as he did himself.

Despite being converted by a gangster, he finds the idea of ​​religious criminals a contradiction in terms.

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

“I see them as people who are going astray and fear God because they know that God is the protector of their lives.

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

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

As it has grown, the charismatic Pentecostal movement has particularly resonated with people who live in gang-ridden favelas, and some of these groups are now drawing on elements of the faith that Together they grew to wield power.

One charge against them is that they are using violence to suppress Afro-Brazilian beliefs.

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

“In the Israel complex, people with other religious beliefs cannot be seen publicly practicing them. It is not an exaggeration to speak of religious intolerance in this area.”

Afro-Brazilian Umbanda and Candomblé religious houses have also been shuttered in nearby neighborhoods, sometimes with gangsters scrawling messages on walls such as “Jesus is Lord of this place,” Vitale says.

Adherents of Afro-Brazilian faiths have long faced prejudice, and drug dealers are not the only people who have targeted them.

But Dr Rita Salim, who heads the Rio Police Department’s Racial and Intolerance Crimes, says threats and attacks by narco-gangs have a particularly powerful effect.

“These cases are more serious because they are imposed by a criminal organization, a group and its leader, which imposes fear on the entire area it dominates.”

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

While allegations of religious extremism in Rio’s favelas first gained attention in the early 2000s, the problem has “increased dramatically” in recent years, according to Marcio de Jagan, coordinator of religious diversity at Rio’s city hall. “It happened.

Jagan, who is a babalurexa (high priest) of the Candomblé religion, says the problem is now a national one, with similar attacks seen in other Brazilian cities.

“It’s a form of neo-crusade,” he says. “The bigotry behind these attacks is both religious and ethnic, with illegals demonizing religions from Africa and claiming to eradicate evil in the name of God.”

Religious expert Vivian Costa says that religion and crime have long been intertwined in Brazil. In the past, gangsters sought protection from Afro-Brazilian gods and Catholic saints.

“If we look at the birth of the Red Command, or the birth of the Third Command, African religions. [and Catholicism] They have been there since the beginning. We see the presence of St. George, the presence of [the Afro-Brazilian god] Oguns, tattoos, crucifixes, candles, offerings.

“That’s why to call it narco-Pentecostalism is to diminish the relationship that is historical and traditional between crime and religion. I prefer to call it ‘narco-religion’.”

Whatever one calls this combination of faith and crime, one thing seems clear: it threatens a right enshrined in Brazil’s constitution: religious freedom.

And this is yet another way in which violent drug traffickers harm the communities forced to live under their rule.