Primer Comando de la Capital (PCC)’s presence and action: social and political consequences

Implicancias polí­ticas y sociales

Abstract

Jorge Rafaat’s ambush and death, in June 2016, in the center of Pedro Juan Caballero city, in working day and time, and the Prosegur robbery, ten months after that event, in Ciudad del Este, highlighted the presence and performance capability of the PCC in Paraguay. Ever since then, the national security structure paid more attention to the criminal faction, nevertheless without specific strategies. Then, in June 2019, the assassination of ten members of a rival group in the penitentiary of San Pedro, shocked the country; five of them were beheaded. Against this background, the present study describes and analyses the PCC’s actions in Paraguay, together with their political and social implication, through diverse ethnographic strategies. The findings indicate that the criminal group runs since at least 2010 a sort of Project Paraguay, that seeks to enhance its transactions and profits volume. At the same time, the criminal organization increased its presence in prison facilities by recruiting new members, after taking advantage of the abuses and bad imprisonment conditions. In this way, the criminal organization currently count with members in every male prison and in some female prisons, from which they run their illegal business, and even contribute to the maintenance of the prison’s domestic order. The organization’s complexity and structure demand public intervention with a social and criminological approach, rather than just penal.