Authorities in Rio de Janeiro have been fighting the rise of evangelical drug gangs in the Brazilian slums known as Favelas. One of the largest groups, Pure Third Command, controls one of the favelas in the north of the city, now known as the Israel Complex. They are infamous for marking bundles of drugs with the six-pointed star of David. Not because the group is Jewish, but because Pentecostal Christians believe that the return of Jews to Israel will lead to the Second Coming of Christ.
Pure Third Command is infamous for both killing their opponents and their fanatical faith. They rose to prominence after one of their leaders experienced a ‘divine revelation.’ Theologian Vivian Costa, says that the gangsters see themselves as “soldiers of crime”, with Jesus as “the owner” of the territory they control. Some have started calling this gang “Narco-Pentecostals”.
Pastor Diego Nascimento, became a Christian after living a life of crime. He was addicted to crack cocaine and a member of Rio’s notorious Red Command crime gang. “I lost my family. I practically lived on the street for almost a year. I went so far as to sell things from my house to buy crack,” he explains. However, when he was at rock bottom, another gangster began preaching to him. “He started preaching to me, saying there was a way out, that there was a solution for me, which was to accept Jesus,” he remembers.
He gave up his life of crime and became a minister. However he has complicated feelings about Pure Third Command.” I don’t see them as evangelical believers,” he stated. “I see them as people who are going down the wrong path and have a fear of God because they know that God is the one who guards their lives… There is no such thing as combining the two, being an evangelical and a thug. If a person accepts Jesus and follows the Biblical commandments, that person cannot be a drug dealer.”
Christina Vital, says Rio’s slums are “under siege” from criminal gangs, and this is now affecting their freedom of religion. The sociology professor at Rio’s Fluminense Federal University, says “In the Israel Complex, people with other religious beliefs cannot be seen to practice them publicly. It’s not an exaggeration to speak of religious intolerance in that territory.”
Gangsters will write innocuous seeming messages like “Jesus is the Lord of this place” as a way to mark gang territory. Dr Rita Salim, who heads the Rio Police Department for Racial and Intolerance Crimes, says “These cases are more serious because they are imposed by a criminal organization, by a group and its leader, who imposes fear on the whole territory it dominates.”
Marcio de Jagun, a high priest of the Candomblé religion, says “This is a form of neo-Crusade,” he says. “The prejudice behind these attacks is both religious and ethnic, with outlaws demonizing religions from Africa and claiming to banish evil in the name of God.” She notes that Narcos has sent gunmen to halt services at an Afro-Brazilian temple in another favela.
Vivian Costa says that cartels used to mix Christianity with other local sects. “If we look at the birth of the Red Command, or the birth of the Third Command, Afro religions [and Catholicism] have been there since their beginning. We see the presence of Saint George, the presence of [the Afro-Brazilian god] Ògún, the tattoos, the crucifixes, the candles, the offerings.” She’s invented a new term for this: “That is why to call it Narco-Pentecostalism is to reduce that relationship that is so historic and traditional between crime and religion. I prefer to call it ‘Narco-Religiosity’.”