The Shield of the Americas, an alliance of Latin American governments aligned with Washington, issued a joint declaration on Tuesday (22) adopting the US decision to designate Brazil's First Capital Command (PCC) and Red Command (CV) as terrorist organizations. The statement was released in the afternoon, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, shortly after speeches by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Donald Trump. Brazil, which is not part of the bloc, was caught off guard: according to Folha de S.Paulo, Brazilian diplomats did not know the document was coming, and the government is still reviewing its content.
The bloc gathers 15 countries led by the United States, including Latin American and Caribbean nations run by right-wing and center-right governments, with organized crime as its focus, BBC News Brasil reports. The declaration calls for a meeting of ministers from member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) and lists measures such as asset freezes, visa restrictions and criminal liability for anyone providing material support to the groups. Beyond the PCC and the CV, Brazil's two largest criminal factions, more than two dozen organizations from the region were named, including Ecuador's Los Lobos.
What it means for Brazil
For Brasília, the neighbors' move widens a pressure that already existed. In May, the Trump administration designated the PCC and the Red Command as terrorist organizations, against the Lula government's position and in response to a request from Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, a presidential candidate. Behind the scenes, one wing of the government, speaking on condition of anonymity to Folha, said it was not surprised and sees limited collateral effects: it points to Argentine President Javier Milei, who had long described such groups as narco-terrorists, and calls the signatories subservient to Washington. The real concern, this wing adds, is the use of force in the region, which does not depend on the new document.
The tone of Trump's speech to the General Assembly feeds that reading. The US president defended the terrorist designations for Latin American factions, named Mexico's drug cartels and Venezuela's Tren de Aragua, and threatened to use American military power in the hemisphere, referring to the operation that captured then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
"To the victor go the spoils. You have heard that our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer allow threats to the Americas to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. If necessary, we will use all of our unmatched military power to secure the vital interests of the United States," Trump said, according to BBC News Brasil.
Weeks before the vote
Lula answered from the same stage, telling the General Assembly that "Brazil does not fit in anyone's backyard". One presidential aide, speaking on background to the BBC, played down Trump's references to Latin America and said there was no message aimed directly at Brazil: in this view, the American only repeated his usual rhetoric on the Shield of the Americas. The friction, however, predates the declaration. In June, in a speech to the US Congress, Marco Rubio placed Brazil in a group of countries not "friendly" to the United States, alongside Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The declaration lands weeks before Brazil's presidential election, at a moment of tension between Brasília and Washington. For Carol Pedroso, who teaches international relations at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), Trump's focus on organized crime puts Brazil in the spotlight, and the issue could be mobilized in the final stretch of the campaign. "The message to Latin America inevitably applies to us as well, after the classification of the CV and PCC as narco-terrorist organizations," she said. Folha also notes that the episode cuts against Lula's early-term talk of regional leadership, in a period when left-wing governments have grown isolated in the region. Public safety, the newspaper adds, sits at the center of the campaign debate.