Bruno: Conversations with a Brazilian Drug Dealer

Description

In the 1980s a poor farmer's son from Recife, Brazil, joined the Brazilian navy and began selling cocaine. After his arrest in Rio de Janeiro he spent the next eight years in prison, where he joined the Comando Vermelho criminal faction and eventually became one of its leaders. Robert Gay tells this young man's dramatic and captivating story in Bruno. In his shockingly candid interviews with Gay, Bruno provides many insights into the criminal world in which he lived: details of day-to-day prison life; the inner workings of the Brazilian drug trade; the structure of criminal factions; and the complexities of the relationships and links between the prisons, drug trade, gangs, police, and favelas. And most stunningly, Bruno's story suggests that Brazilian mismanagement of the prison system directly led to the Comando Vermelho and other criminal factions' expansion into Rio's favelas, where their turf wars and battles with police have terrorized the city for over two decades. Robert Gay is Professor of Sociology at Connecticut College. He is the author of Lucia: Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman and Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio De Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas. Contents ......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1. Trafficking......Page 18 2. Things Come Undone......Page 40 3. The Family......Page 58 4. The Devil’s Cauldron......Page 74 5. On the Run......Page 96 6. Paradise Lost......Page 120 7. The Leader......Page 146 8. Judgment Day......Page 186 Postscript......Page 206 Timeline of Events......Page 212 Notes......Page 214 Bibliography......Page 226 Index......Page 230