Hard lives...

...A journey into hell

The PCC now controls most of São Paulo’s prisons (other states have prison gangs as well). It has a policy of non-communication with guards, whom it calls “Germans” (meaning Nazis). Marcos Fuchs, a lawyer at Conectas, a human-rights group in São Paulo, who has been visiting prisons since 2004 says that he does not speak to inmates without a gang boss listening in. To do otherwise risks retribution, in the form of what in prison argot is called “Gatorade” (cocaine, Viagra and water) poured down a prisoner’s throat at night, in quantities large enough to induce cardiac arrest.