Laura Gamba
29 May 2026•Update: 29 May 2026
Blasting what he called foreign meddling in Brazil’s domestic affairs, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued a rebuke to Washington on Friday, declaring his country will not be treated "like children" after the US unilaterally designated two Brazilian "criminal gangs" as terrorist organizations just hours after his chief political rival visited Washington.
"We won’t accept being treated like children. We won’t accept being treated as if we were some second-rate country," Lula stated during a speech inaugurating a fertilizer plant in the northeastern municipality of Laranjeiras.
The diplomatic row erupted after the Trump administration officially labeled the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho (CV) as terrorist entities. The move followed a high-profile visit to Washington by Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and Lula's chief opponent in the upcoming October presidential election, who was received by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Coinciding with Lula's speech, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official diplomatic note warning that Brazil will not tolerate arbitrary external measures under the guise of security cooperation.
Brazil warned that the Trump administration’s unilateral labels could actively derail intelligence-sharing pipelines.
"Unilateral, unnegotiated measures weaken the fight against criminals (...) they reduce the capacity for information exchange between police forces and generate actions that endanger the lives of innocent people. National sovereignty is non-negotiable," the statement said. "Those who define how crime is classified and combated within Brazil are Brazilians, utilizing their own institutions, their own laws, and their own security forces."
Lula accused his opponent Bolsonaro of treason for seeking American intervention in Brazil's domestic security matters.
"The safety of our people is too important to be politically manipulated by traitors who try to confuse these issues," Lula said. "It is deplorable that, once again, members of the Bolsonaro family are traveling to the United States to advocate for foreign intervention... by false patriots with ties to organized crime who are asking foreign authorities to interfere in Brazilian affairs."
Lula conceded that the PCC and CV "are indeed terrorists" to the millions of Brazilians living in vulnerable urban peripheries, whom they subjugate through brutal territorial violence, but he insisted that Brazil possesses the legal framework, sovereign resources, and police capacity to dismantle these syndicates without external dictates.
Lula stated that if Washington genuinely wanted to help Brazil combat transnational crime, it should “start by extraditing the leaders of Brazilian gangs comfortably living in Miami.”
