[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

Yes. Abin it's basically our civilian intelligence service.
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag%C3%...elig%C3%AAncia


I dont think so, but I'm not sure.


This seems to be the standard, for me.


I believe that such cases are not the norm. There are tender notices for Abin's vacancies, as I said above.

Ok, so real ABIN personnel, whether analysts, administrative staff or the rare case officers, are college graduates hired through competive examinations.

The way I imagine 'Comando da Santa Cruz' operatives is that teams are composed of six people. Four will be trained commandos of some sort, drawn from the Special Operation Forces of Brazil's armed forces and the special tactical teams of the various police forces. These will be men who already have knowledge of the supernatural and experience fighting it when they are recruited.

These former commandos or tactical team members will technically not be federal employees or officially associated with ABIN in any way, they'll be employed by some private security company for cover and act as contractors. In fact, however, they will serve as full-time members of the paramilitary 'Comando da Santa Cruz' and spend their time when not on operations in training at secret facilities in remote locations.

The fifth member of each team will be an educated officer with in-depth knowledge of the supernatural. They might be former investigators from the Policia Federal, transfers from military intelligence or ABIN personnel, but in preparation for their new role, they will have received extensive instruction from Vatican experts in the occult. All will be college educated and a significant majority will have a graduate degree in a subject useful for occultists.

One member of each team will be an expert in tradecraft and have knowledge of the languages, cultures and local situation in the operational area. This position is the one most likely to be filled with a career ABIN officer and it is possible that there might be more than one local expert working with each team, so that they might deploy every time with someone specialized in the local area and with access to local intelligence sources.

Originally Posted by D10

In terms of training, all that it seems would be different would be area knowledge. Perhaps theres one specialized training unit for each theater that brings relevant MH units up to speed, this way you can have less teams but more flexibility in where they will be placed

Also, I think the divisions of operational areas might go along language lines.

I'm imagining 10-12 six men teams, each of which has one slot for a local expert and the assignment of a local expert might rotate by deployment, so that ideally, the CSC teams might deploy with an expert in the local language and culture.

Note that in intelligence work, local knowledge needs to be a lot more in-depth than just knowing 'Spanish' in a Latin American posting. If possible, the case officer should speak the local dialect, be able to pass for a native and have a local cover ID. They should also have useful social networks in the area and know the ground like a local.

In GURPS terms, the local expert doesn't just need a macroscope Cultural Familiarity and Language, they also need Accent Perks, smaller scale cultural familiarity to be able to use Acting to impersonate a local, Area Knowledge and Allies, Contacts or Friends in the area to represent a network of agents.

Given only ten teams, that means that each will cover multiple nations, let alone multiple cities or areas. That means that the ideal situation will rarely pertain. Still, I want to allocate the operational areas by dialect and cultural zones in the Caribbean and Latin America, so that case officers will be as at home as possible in their area of responsibility as possible.

I don't think that speaking Rioplatense Spanish and having lived in Argentina is all that much help to a case officer assigned to a team with responsibility for the Spanish-speaking areas of the Caribbean. Not to mention that in occult intelligence, the local myths, legends and superstitions are vital operational intelligence.

So, how should I divide Latin America and the Caribbean into ten zones of responsibility on the grounds of geographic convenience, languages, cultural zones, similarity in religion and folklore and any other factors that might matter?

Originally Posted by D10

Up until very recently, anti americanism was widespread in Brazil. The view of argentina as rival was shattered in the falklands war, when we realized that it is much more likely that conflict with 1st world nations would be a cause for concern than conflict with our neighboors.

In this sense, chile was a rival due to its perceived american subservience. Due to the very widespread belief that many of our problems are caused by american interference.

As an outsider, that seems really odd to me. I just... don't notice the United States being all that preoccupied with Brazil. I'd wager that a pretty overwhelming majority of Americans had no specific opinions on Brazil in a foreign policy context and most people associated it simply with tourism, beaches, carnival, beautiful people and beautiful football. Maybe, after City of God and Tropa de Elite, more people were aware there was also a problem with violent crime, at least in Rio.

But as far as I can tell, few Americans that aren't actually diplomats assigned to the US Embassy in Brazil have much in the way of opinions on Brazil's foreign policy.

Is the perception of active American interference in Brazil based on something real?

Originally Posted by D10

Stereotypes apart, I honestly think it is more likely for there to be cooperation than rivalry at present, but if you really want to push for a rivalry, I think argentina would be the best candidate.

Well, given that the network of men in Brazil who coordinate the response to the supernatural are technically breaking the law by acting as a Deep State within Brazil and keeping the true state of affairs secret from their elected government, I believe it would take a great deal of trust in their counterparts in other nations to foster any kind of cooperation.

From the perspective of a coterie of Brazilian generals, colonels, police chiefs and intelligence professionals around 2009-2012 (when the various Brazilian efforts were becoming aware of one another and forming a somewhat cohesive network of cooperation), if they don't trust their own governments to respond appropriately to the threat, how can they trust Argentina's SIDE or Venezuela's SEBIN?

After all, the occult-savvy Brazilians know that the forces of evil can influence and manipulate men, all the more easily if they dabble in the occult. And they'd be mindful that there exist monsters able to infiltrate human society wearing the guise of men, encantado hybrids from beneath the sea, vampires and werewolves. They must fear that anyone not closely monitored and vetted might be influenced by dark spirits or even not human at all. So, trusting outsiders is extremely difficult, especially if they, like some operatives of SIDE and SEBIN seem to have been, are all too willing to use the supernatural in their own favour.

Originally Posted by D10

I think the biggest rift inside our intel community right now is, should we move closer to the US (bolsonaro camp) or keep trying to oppose it and get closer to Russia and China (basically our policy from 2000 to 2015ish)

In the setting, among those who know what is going on, no issue is more important than the threat of the supernatural. China, Russia and the US, however, seem to be governed by those who do not know.

Of course, the nightmare scenario that keeps occult-savvy intelligence analysts up at night is the infiltration of dark forces into the political elites of the world's powerful countries. How many US politicians, Russian oligarches or Chinese apparatchiks are secretly influenced by dark spirits or may actually be something other than human?

Originally Posted by D10

The current foreign minister, ernesto araujo is very anti globalist and pro christianity and hes been suffering a lot of pushback from the more anti american and secular factions due to him wanting to get closer to the trump administration and openly praising christianity.

Huh.

I wouldn't have thought Brazil was so very secular that praising the majority religion openly led to major pushback. I understand it, in that Icelandic politicians who publicly mention their religion, if any, would be considered slightly weird*, but from what I've seen in the news, the Americas in general seem to have a lot more tolerance for politicians who speak about religion.

And from a fairness point of view, it doesn't seem that objectionable that someone praises a religion, whatever it is, as long as they don't denigrate other religions or speak out against those who do not practice any.

*In the same way as someone in politics who spoke about their sexual relations with their significant other in public would be, i.e. it's not weird to have private lives, it's weird to bring them up at work in front of everyone.