Lula says Brazil will not be treated like ‘tinpot country’ after US designates gangs as terrorists

Marco Rubio wrote that the groups were ‘two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil’. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Pool/Samuel Corum - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen Marco Rubio wrote that the groups were ‘two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil’. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Pool/Samuel Corum - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock Lula says Brazil will not be treated like ‘tinpot country’ after US designates gangs as terrorists Marco Rubio made announcement after meeting president’s far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro Brazil will not be treated as a “tinpot country,” the country’s president, Luiz Inácio da Silva, said on Friday after the United States designated Brazil’s two largest criminal gangs, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command, as foreign terrorist organisations. The announcement, made by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, on Thursday, is being widely seen in Brazil as a setback for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president who had strongly opposed the designation – and a boost for Lula’s main challenger in October’s presidential election, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Chosen to run in place of his father, Jair Bolsonaro – the former president who is barred from running because he is in house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup – Flávio spent this week in the US, where he met with Donald Trump and Rubio . Lula said he was “very saddened” by the news that “the United States secretary, from North America, a certain Marco Rubio, said that our criminals here are terrorists and that Americans can intervene”, he said during a speech at an event in the state of Sergipe. “We do not accept being treated like little boys. We do not accept being treated as if we were some tinpot country,” he added. In a statement , he also called the Bolsonaro family “traitors” and “false patriots”. “It is deplorable that members of the Bolsonaro family once again travel to the United States to advocate foreign intervention in Brazil, as they did over the tariffs, which caused so much damage to our country,” wrote the president. Flávio Bolsonaro was at his lowest point in the campaign, after revelations that he had been caught on tape asking a banker accused of corruption for $26.8m (£20m) to fund a film about his father caused a significant drop in his poll numbers. Announcing the designation, Rubio wrote that the groups were “two of the most violent criminal organizations in Brazil. Their reach extends throughout our region and into our country”. How a Brazilian prison gang became an international criminal leviathan Read more Both groups emerged inside Brazilian prisons, originally as a response to torture and abuse. They are now among the largest criminal organisations in Latin America, exporting cocaine produced in neighbouring Colombia, Peru and Bolivia primarily to the US and Europe, while expanding into other parts of the world. The Red Command is the older of the two, emerging in the 1970s fro