Behind Paraty’s Postcard: How Rio’s Comando Vermelho Colonized a UNESCO World Heritage Town

The vultures circling Praça da Paz on a rainy January afternoon were the only visitors. The square — home to Paraty’s first skate ramp, a playground, and a fenced football pitch — sits thirteen minutes on foot from the colonial cobblestones that earned this coastal town its UNESCO World Heritage designation in 2019, yet it might as well be on another continent. This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Brazil affairs and Latin American financial news.

On either side of the square, the caiçara neighborhoods of Ilha das Cobras and Mangueira have been under gang control for over a decade.

When Rio de Janeiro launched its Pacifying Police Units in the capital’s favelas around 2010, displaced traffickers fanned out along the coast.

The Comando Vermelho planted its flag in Ilha das Cobras; the rival Terceiro Comando Puro seized Mangueira. Turf wars killed dozens of teenagers caught in between.

By 2021, the Comando Vermelho had eliminated its competitors, consolidating control over both communities and triggering waves of forced evictions.

One resident, identified by O Globo only as Alice, described being given 24 hours to abandon the house her family had spent a lifetime building. She estimates she lost at least 20 childhood friends — all between 13 and 18 — to the violence.

The faction has since expanded well beyond residential turf. Police report at least six active investigations into territorial exploitation across Paraty-Mirim, Ponta Negra, Praia de Cajaíba, and other remote coves.

The charges range from extorting boatmen who ferry tourists to the Praia do Sono — forcing a R$50 fare up to R$65 — to collecting commissions on real estate transactions and shaking down excursion companies at the town’s main pier.

In the hippie-inflected village of Trindade, alone, anonymous tip-line complaints about drug trafficking leapt from two in 2022 to 45 in 2025.

A major police operation on February 4 killed Pablo Miguel Rodrigues Pereira, alias “Bigode,” identified as the Comando Vermelho’s top commander for the entire Costa Verde region spanning Angra dos Reis and Paraty.

Three associates were arrested and weapons seized. Yet investigators caution that the gang’s entrenchment is structural, not personal — it mirrors the capital’s model of taxing every economic activity within dominated territory, from bus routes to parking lots.

The crisis also reveals a yawning institutional vacuum. Paraty has no resident judge. Its military police unit requested a motorboat after officers had to trek five hours on foot through jungle to reach a suspect in Ponta Negra — who escaped into the forest.

ICMBio, the federal agency responsible for the Serra da Bocaina national park surrounding Trindade, has been largely absent.

At a packed town-hall session on January 19, the mayor lamented these gaps while a police commander announced 90 reinforcements arriving in March.

For Alice, the security debate misses a deeper question about who Paraty actually belongs to. A two-bedroom rental in the town now costs over R$2,000 a month — nearly impossible on a minimum wage.

The caiçara communities that staff the restaurants, crew the boats, and clean the colonial-era guesthouses live, as she puts it, on the other side: invisible to the tourists and forgotten by the state.

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