This past week, the biggest and most economically critical city of all South America was beseiged by drug thugs from Brazil’s abysmal favelas. The ghetto barbarians, acting on orders from their leader, who’s somehow has a cellphone in jail, killed over 200 people, mostly cops.

Imagine if New York City lost 200 cops in a week of drug violence?

More ominous still, the violence wasn’t stopped by the cops or troops or anyone restoring order. It was stopped because the authorities made a deal with the thug called “Marcola” who had just got done killing 200 people, burning 80 buses that would otherwise take poor people to schools, and shut down the entire city. The thug dictated the terms of the city’s surrender and got away with everything.

That the economic powerhouse of all South America could be so vulnerable to control by barbarians is is very bad news for Brazil’s entire democracy.

It’s significant that the attacks on South America’s largest industrial base happened less than three weeks after it received a first blow, from Evo Morales of Bolivia, who “nationalized” Bolivia’s energy resources, turning them over to Hugo Chavez, whose Veneuzelan PdVSA oil minions are all right there now, pawing over Brazil‘s nice drilling equipment, to, uuhhh, “help.” The primary city affected was, what a coincidence, Sao Paulo. At a summit of four presidents over the “nationalization” (no one is sure at first why smilin’ Hugo Chavez belonged there), President Lula of Brazil read Chavez the riot act about interfering with Brazil’s energy supply. Chavez smiled and smiled.

And then these sudden gang attacks happened.

These gangs, contrary to public perception, are rich, not poor. They are getting money and drugs from somewhere. There’s growing evidence it’s from Chavez’s best goodtime buddies, the FARC of Colombia, which vows undying fealty to Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian project on their Web site. They also have ties to the failed gun-grabber movement, financed by the Ford Foundation, which was overwhelmingly defeated in a referendum, and by the Landless Movement, which has the warm affection, encouragement and photo-ops of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. They also work with the Basque terrorist ETA, who claim they’ve dropped their arms, but apparently just to outsource. This is scary stuff.

Luiz Alfonso Assumpcao at Swimming Against The Red Tide writes:

(T)he coordination between all these left armed groups are entirely predictable, therefore they aimed at the same goals: to spread terror and disbelief through all the country and to help a socialist revolution to come.

Yes, Latin America turned out to a kind of “Left Cemetery”: all the leftist trash buried here become alive again.

Brazil’s response has been to cut and run, to not confront the problem of a bona fide predator head on. To its credit, it’s speeding up development of its oil and gas reserves but by the time the thugs take over, it may be too late to matter. It has to face the fact that it’s got enemies who wish it ill.

It’s a sign of a power void. Brazil’s government doesn’t seem to realize that with the glory of having the continent’s most glowing center of industry there is the responsibility of protecting it. They’re about to turn their shining city on the green continent into the fallen greatness of Lagos, Nigeria, a steaming pit of misery. These Brazilian officials have shirked their responsibility and allowed thugs connected to the world’s most unsavory leftist movements on the continent launch an unprecedented attack on its biggest city to lay it low.

Negotiating with every worthless barbarian who comes their way, they recognize the worth of no one. And the odious barbarians win.

This isn’t the last of this trouble for Brazil. Gangs now call the shots in Sao Paulo, so better not make them unhappy.