‘Não é só a economia, estúpido’

Uma abordagem analítica do PCC através do Eixo Prisional-Construtivo-Ideológico

Abstract

The objective of this text is to present an analysis of the criminal network
formed by membership in the PCC, understanding the mechanisms
through which it is constructed, expanded, and strengthened; to describe
the resources that flow among the actors that are part of it, outlining the
acquisition of social capital by its members and its operationalization; to
verify whether and to what extent there is any specificity with regard to
membership in the PCC that can explain the extension, density, regularity,
stability, and complexity of the network that is formed around and from the
“PCC’s brothers”. We consider that the criminal network formed around
the PCC is composed of two fundamental cores: one in which economic
flows predominate, formed through illicit markets, especially drug
trafficking, and which has a strategic and fundamental locus of anchorage
in the border territory, which we call here the Border-CommercialEconomic Axis (FCE Axis); The second core involves the production and reproduction of networks through prisons, where the connectors of these
ties assume a strongly ideological dimension in which the amalgam that
links individuals to each other is directly related to shared values, beliefs,
practices and experiences, the experience of incarceration in particular,
and depends on strong ties based on trust, loyalty and the centrality of
belonging to the collective, which we call here the Prison-ConstructiveIdeological Axis (PCI Axis). The border and the prison would constitute
two points of dense concentration of networks in which the resources
that allow the establishment of connections between these nodes are,
respectively, economic and ideological. These are complementary axes in
the formation of the actions of prison-criminal networks such as the PCC,
which are currently leading actors in criminal dynamics in Brazil. However,
in this text, we will focus our analysis solely on the Prison-ConstructiveIdeological Axis, analyzing mechanisms, procedures, practices, and norms
that we consider essential to understanding the actions of this group and
the phenomenon in its most general form that currently characterizes the
configuration of crime in Brazil. Understanding the dynamics of the PrisonConstructive-Ideological Axis allows us to outline singularities of the PCC that can help explain its growth, resilience, relative cohesion, and stability
in these thirty years of existence, as well as the important position it has
assumed in the criminal market. The argument that will be presented here is that the link with prison represents, at the same time, the power and the
limit of the expansion of the PCC and the economic expansion achieved
in the last decade, paradoxically, strains social relations and the balance
that underlies the existence of the PCC and that involves the precarious
balance between personal interests and collective interests, economic and
ideological elements, strong internal ties and weak external ties.