Comando Vermelho (CV) is a Brazilian criminal organization and former far-left prison gang engaged in arms and drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in the 1970s as Falange Vermelha ("Red Phalanx"), an alliance of ordinary convicts and leftist militants who pooled resources to finance new escape attempts and alleviated the harsh living conditions of prisoners. The Comando Vermelho earned the respect of masses of prisoners, and, in the early 1980s, the first fugitives affiliated with the gang began a series of bank and jewelry robberies. During the 1990s, Primeiro Comando da Capital split from CV, and the 2000s saw several of the Comando Vermelho's favelas be taken over by local militias and police units. In 2016, the CV and PCC ended their two decades-long alliance and went to war over territory along the Paraguayan, Bolivian, and Colombian borders. It went from owning 53% of Rio's favelas in 2005 to 38.8% by 2008, but, by 2020, it had 50,000 active combatants.
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