Havocscope is a web project that monitors everything published about the black market and other contraventions. Drug, animal or organ traffic, illegal logging and child prostitution, music piracy – you name it. Of course, considering the secret nature of these businesses, you have to take these numbers with a grain of salt, but it is still enlightening to compare their financial power and health to those of mainstream economy.
According to the website, Brazilian black market value is estimated in 17 billion dollars (they offer a table that details how they reached this number).
Here are some basic information, linked to the original sources:
- According to the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs, there are between 900,000 to 1,000,000 users of illegal drugs in the country. The source is an article published a few days ago by the Malaysian National News Agency:
According to a report published this week by the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime (UNODC) on cocaine trafficking, Brazil is currently the third largest intermediate for cocaine seized in Europe, just after Venezuela and Ecuador…Brazil’s role on drug trafficking to Europe has increased in terms of seizures, which registered 25 cases in 2005 and 260 cases in 2009, said the report.
Figures showed that Brazil, besides its growing role in the international drug trafficking, also witnessed growing consumption. In 2004, the Brazilian police seized eight tons of cocaine, while the tonnage surged to 24 in 2009, according to the UNODC, adding that one third of the cocaine consumed in Latin America were passed or consumed in Brazil.
The UNODC estimated that there are 900,000 to one million drug consumers in Brazil, the third largest number in the western hemisphere next only to the U.S and Mexico.
- More than 1,150 activist have been killed in Brazil in a 20 year time span for protesting illegal logging, according to the watchdog group Catholic Land Pastoral. Ranchers, loggers and farmers are believed to have hired hitmen in order to continue their unauthorized logging activities.
Havocscope quotes a late May Associated Press article:
At least three rural activists have been killed in the region in less than a week: Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria, in the state of Para, and Adelino Ramos in the state of Rondonia. A fourth person who may have witnessed the murders in Para was also killed…The watchdog group has a 125-name-long list of activists whose lives are in danger because of their stance against loggers are common in the environmentally important region.
- Illegal logging and deforestation in Brazil caused 1,848 sq km of rainforest to be destroyed in 2010, up from 1,455 sq km in 2009. According to a May 20 The Guardian article:
Satellite data painted an even more disturbing picture of deforestation in March and April this year when nearly 593 sq km of forest were lost – an increase of over 470% compared with the same period in 2010.
Officials said the most dramatic situation was in the soy-growing state of Mato Grosso, where farmers are said to be using tractors and giant chains to rip up vast tracts of native forest.
Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, this week vowed to launch 200 operations in the region by the end of the year, with support from armed federal police operatives. Illegal cattle and timber would be seized, it said.
This week’s announcement comes after successive years in which Amazon deforestation fell dramatically. Last December [environment minister Izabella] Teixeira publicly celebrated reaching “the lowest level of deforestation in the history of Amazonia”.
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Brazil is the largest drug consumer in South America, with an estimated 900,000 cocaine users in the country. The Havocspoce source is the 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report-Brazil,” United States Department of State, published in March 2011. It says, among other things, that
Angola is a transit point for cocaine from Brazil intended for onward shipment to Nigeria or Europe. This trafficking route is characterized by low-level drug “mules” trafficking small quantities of cocaine that is produced in South America. Most cocaine enters by commercial air flights on routes from Brazil. A small amount stays in Luanda, but most is sent from the same airport to destinations in Europe.
Brazil is increasingly a consumer nation and is a potential source of precursor chemicals for cocaine processing.
Paraguay remains Brazil’s main supplier of marijuana although some marijuana is grown in the northeast for local consumption. Cocaine products enter Brazil via land, river, and small aircraft from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia enroute to Africa and Europe, with some destined for the United States.
Generally, cocaine and crack of Bolivian origin entering Brazil are distributed and consumed domestically while the higher-quality Colombian and Peruvian cocaine transits Brazil enroute to other transshipment zones or markets, such as northwest Africa and Europe, and, to a lesser degree, to the United States. Brazil’s international airports remain common departure points for couriers carrying drugs on or in their body, in their luggage, or via air cargo. Brazil’s seaports are among the busiest in the hemisphere and drug shipment via containers and sea vessels is common. The northeast coast of Brazil is the closest transatlantic shipping point to West Africa, less than 1,700 nautical miles. The Brazilian Federal Police (DPF) notes that criminal organizations often utilize the same route in reverse to traffic ecstasy and amphetamines back to Brazil.
The DPF estimates that up to 1 percent of Brazil’s population may use cocaine or crack and that 2.6 percent uses marijuana.
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Arms trafficking in Brazil leads to 7.6 million black market guns circulating. Curiously the source is a December article at the Hindustan Times, quoting the Xinhua Chinese newsagency, that quotes the then Justice minister, Luiz Paulo Barreto.
Brazilian citizens currently own 14 million guns – 7.6 million of which are illegal – according to a report presented by Justice Minister Luiz Paulo Barreto. Brazil, according to current data, has suffered the largest number of gun homicides in the world.
The study titled “Map of Illicit Arms Trafficking in Brazil” was conducted in association with Viva Rio, a Rio de Janeiro-based organization which aims to reduce armed violence in the country, Xinhuareported.
The study identified 140 entry points for weapons on Brazilian borders.
“But the number of guns entering from land borders is negligible compared to the number of guns manufactured in the country, bought legally, but which then end up in the illegal market,” said Antonio Rangel Bandeira, lead researcher for Viva Rio.
One of the causes for the rampant spread of arms in illegal markets is that policemen, firefighters and military personnel are allowed to acquire three guns annually at factory price. However, they often end up reselling those arms to supplement their income.
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The child prostitution industry in Brazil is filled with 250,000 children, according to UNICEF. Havocscope quotes a July 30 2010 BBC article, he creepy “Brazil’s sex tourism boom”.
The country’s erotic reputation has long been attracting an unwanted type of tourist. Every week specialist holiday operators bring in thousands of European singles on charted flights looking for cheap sex. Now Brazil is overtaking Thailand as the world’s most popular sex-tourist destination. (…)
Recife’s red-light area is now crammed with cars slowly crawling past groups of girls parading their bodies.
One of them, Pia, is dressed in a cropped pink top and mini skirt. The 13-year-old agrees to speak to me about her life as a child prostitute. She explains that she works from the same street corner every night until dawn to fund her and her mother’s crack cocaine habit.
“I usually have more than 10 clients per night,” she boasts. “They pay 10 reais (£3.50, $5.50)) each – enough for a rock of crack.”
- In 2009, the country’s music piracy losses reached 147 million – Havocscope is quoting the “IIPA 2010 “Special 301 Recommendations,” International Intellectual Property Alliance, February 18, 2010.
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