The Red Ink Behind Brazil's Bloody Prison Massacre

Even by Brazilian standards, the New Year's savagery that befell the Compaj maximum security prison in Manaus, in the Amazon region -- at least 60 inmates murdered, many of them beheaded, dismembered and incinerated in a 17-hour rampage starting Jan. 1 -- was shocking.

Yet what's more striking about the riot is that it apparently had little to do with the horrific conditions that traditionally fuel prison uprisings. Although the prison was as ghastly as any in Brazil -- 1,229 inmates squeezed into cells built for 454 -- in one fundamental way its horrors suited certain inmates just fine: Repeated funding cuts have helped to create a sort of savage system of jail-yard laissez faire, the perfect ecosystem for organized crime. In many ways, what happened this weekend was just a criminal rivalry run amok.