FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Lula reacts to US terrorist designation of Brazilian gangs
"We do not accept being treated like a banana republic," said Lula on Friday. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacted with wounded pride to the US State Department's Thursday decision to designate Brazil's two largest crime syndicates — the PCC and the CV — as foreign terrorist organizations. “We do not accept being treated like kids. We do not accept being treated like a banana republic,” he told a crowd in Sergipe on Friday.
Brasília had resisted the label for more than a year, worried that conflating organized crime with ideological terrorism could give Washington a pretext for unilateral action on Brazilian soil. The designation becomes effective on Friday.
The timing made it sting all the more. The designation was announced days after…
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