Brazil has some really high level militia groups. The largest ones are mainly active in Amazonas.
I think it boils down to their ability to make money as well as practice their craft. Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa. They can be hired out by rival cartels fighting against each other too. They can have jobs to protect loggers from eco-terrorist or to protect swaths of forest from illegal logging.
There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US. Private security has demand but it's fairly small scale. Their isn't really the opportunity to field brigades with 1000s of well trained soldiers for regular off the books military action.
> There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US.
There's a great deal of work for private US militia's, China has a substantial contract with a subgroup spun off from the private contractor formerly known as Erik Prince's Blackwater.
TBH it's a full time investigative exercise keeping track of them all. The linked article gives a very partial overview of one arm of many and tails off after 2021.
Not sure I would classify PMC's as militias. They are operating internationally and it's more like a full time job or deployment.
There's not really much domestic demand for American PMC services. In Brazil the militias are locals that primarily have other income.
The US is paying a billion dollars to a PMC to secure the green zone in Iraq, but it's not like all those people will be militia in the US in a certain area.
However US PMC's are labelled, they are private groups, not national armies, they are as well resourced if not better than a number of national military regiments of comparable size, and the fact that they operate internationally and often for other non US nations and various transnational companies makes them of greater concern than cosplaying LARP'rs.
FWiW one general definition of militia is:
A militia is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military.
and PMC operate within and without that grey zone; a siginificant number of members are "civilians" that take on contract gigs for a period of time, then tap out to do other things.
To me the distinction is that PMC soldiers are full time. They aren't spending their days farming or being cops and lawyers or whatever. And for the most part they are officially government funded.
The militias on the other hand are more so made up of normal people moonlighting as soldiers.
> Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa.
these "militias" in Brazil are not militias by your criteria.
From my PoV the described activities carried out by paramilitary groups in Brazil are similar to the activities carried out by US PMC's, and there's as much of that kind of work available to US contractors as there is for Brazilian operatives.
I think it boils down to their ability to make money as well as practice their craft. Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa. They can be hired out by rival cartels fighting against each other too. They can have jobs to protect loggers from eco-terrorist or to protect swaths of forest from illegal logging.
There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US. Private security has demand but it's fairly small scale. Their isn't really the opportunity to field brigades with 1000s of well trained soldiers for regular off the books military action.