Claims emerged in the Brazilian press over the weekend that Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa – a notorious gang boss known as Peixão (Big Fish) – had determined that three places of worship should shut down in and around the agglomeration of favelas that he controls in northern Rio.
Since Peixão – whose nickname comes from the ichthys “Jesus” fish – took power in 2016 of five favelas that have become known as the Complexo de Israel, an allusion to the evangelical belief that the return of Jews to the Holy Land is a step towards the second coming of Christ and Armageddon.
A neon Star of David has been erected at the top of the complex and at night can be seen for miles around – an unmissable symbol of Peixão’s force and his faith. The roofs of the favelas’ redbrick houses are dotted with blue and white Israel flags demarcating the territory the gangster controls. When police raided one of his hideouts in 2021 they found a swimming pool framed by a mural of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem and the words: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
In the past, Peixão’s troops have been accused of ransacking Afro-Brazilian temples and banning Afro-Brazilian celebrations in the Complex of Israel, where more than 100,000 people live. But this week’s reports were the first relating to Catholic places of worship.
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[T]he civil police’s anti-intolerance and racism unit is reportedly investigating. On Monday morning, military police launched an operation to remove barricades blocking roads leading into Peixão’s domain, where Bible-themed murals carry quotations from Psalms. The government said police had been deployed to prevent “instability in the region and ensure that churches can operate and that residents are safe”.
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Experts say the backdrop to the rise of narco-pentecostalism is the breakneck spread of evangelical churches through Brazil in the almost four decades since 37-year-old Peixão was born in Rio’s dilapidated northern suburbs.
Since then, Brazil’s evangelical community has exploded, from less than 7% of the population in 1980 to 22% in 2010 and about 30% today. The Catholic congregation, meanwhile, has shrunk dramatically. In 1991, 83% of Brazilians identified as Catholic, compared with about 50% today.
The evangelical revolution has been particularly fervid in Rio, especially in deprived suburbs and favelas where preachers provide crucial support to downtrodden residents whose relatives face unemployment, alcoholism and drug addiction.
But a byproduct has been the disturbing melding of Christian extremism and members of the drug factions who govern many such communities. Some observers credit preachers with reducing levels of violence by embracing Rio’s drug lords and trying to convince them to spill less blood.
But others fear they have radicalized highly dangerous outlaws such as Peixão – a fugitive who is reportedly wanted for crimes including trafficking, murder and concealment of a human corpse – with dire consequences for religious freedom.
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