Brazil gang attacks challenge Bolsonaro’s security strategy

The state of Ceará has been rocked by five nights of attacks including a bomb that exploded under a highway, torched buses and assaults against banks and police barracks.

Vehicles burn in the street after attacks in the city of Fortaleza, northeastern Brazil, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019. Brazil’s newly inaugurated government has ordered military police sent to Ceara state following a wave of attacks on banks, public buildings and infrastructure over the past two days, which have hit 15 cities, including the capital. (AP Photo/Alex Gomes/O Povo)

Criminal gangs on a rampage in northeast Brazil are posing an early security test for new far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, highlighting the challenge he faces in quelling drug-related violence and halting a record wave of murders in the country.

The state of Ceará has been rocked by five nights of attacks including a bomb that exploded under a highway, torched buses and assaults against banks and police barracks. Security officials believe the attacks were triggered by the new state government’s plan to undercut the power of gangs by sending prisoners to whatever jails have space to take them in, ending a longstanding practice of separating them according to gang affiliation.

The attacks, which prompted Brazil’s new Justice Minister Sergio Moro to dispatch 406 federal security agents to Ceará, followed the Jan. 1 inauguration of Bolsonaro, who has made no secret of his admiration for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964-1985.

The former army captain – who ran on a law-and-order platform – won support from Brazilians tired of the warring drug gangs that have come to terrorize large swaths of the country. His task now is to make good on promises to design a coherent federal security strategy and end the wave of violence that saddled Latin America’s largest nation with a record 63,880 murders in 2017. The murder tally last year is still unknown.