In designating Brazil’s two largest criminal organisations, Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), as “terrorist” groups, the United States has asserted its own definition of Brazil’s security threats, with consequences that reach far beyond law enforcement. The move is being presented by both the US and the Brazilian far right as a “necessary response” to the “growing transnational reach of organised crime”, but, in reality, it says far more about politics than security.

The designation reflects a dangerous convergence between Washington’s longstanding interventionist instincts in Latin America, echoing memories from the US-sponsored dictatorship that lasted from 1964 until 1985, and the interests of Brazil’s far right.

PCC and CV are indeed responsible for violence on a massive scale. They are among the most powerful criminal networks in Latin America and pose a genuine threat to public security in Brazil and beyond. But violence, however extreme, does not in itself make an organisation “terrorist”. Although the term is contested, terrorism is generally understood to involve violence pursued for political or ideological ends.

PCC and CV may corrupt institutions, influence politicians, control territory or confront the state when it serves their interests, but their primary purpose is criminal power and profit, not political transformation. Politics is a means of protecting and expanding their operations, not the reason those organisations exist.

The more broadly governments apply the terrorism label, the more it risks obscuring the nature of the security threat itself, while giving states greater scope to use such designations for political ends. That makes the question of why Washington chose to act now particularly important.

Neither PCC nor CV is a newly discovered threat. The PCC has existed since the early 1990s; the CV is even older, and both organisations and the harm they cause have been known to Brasilia and Washington alike for decades.

So why did the US decide in 2026 that these long-established organised crime networks should now be designated “terrorist” groups?

The answer appears to lie less in any new assessment of the........

© Al Jazeera