Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has worryingly elevated the influence of the Armed Forces to power levels reminiscent of the military dictatorship.

On March 23rd 2021, amidst the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and a flurry of criticism, General Eduardo Pazuello renounced his position as the Brazilian Health Minister. He did not have much experience with health-related matters, to begin with — before his appointment, as Executive-Secretary to the then Health Minister Nelson Teich, he worked as the Commander of 12o Military Region in Amazonas, in the North of the country. This inexperience did not seem to concern president Bolsonaro when he appointed Pazuello to the Ministry after firing Nelson Teich, making him the 10th military minister in his government. That was almost half as many ministers as the country has in total.
Since Bolsonaro took power, the influence of the Armed Forces in the government has increased significantly. By 2020 6.157 members of the military were appointed to civilian roles in the national public administration, an increase of 108% relative to 2016. This scenario represents more than the proportion of Armed Forces members in high positions in the Executive power during the military dictatorship (1964 – 1985). Petrobrás, Brazil’s largest state company, is now headed by general Joaquim Silva e Luna, a former Defense minister. Moreover, the president of the Brazilian mail delivery company is also a general — Floriano Peixoto Neto, who held no prior positions at administrative ranks in public companies at all.
Nevertheless, although reaching its apex under Bolsonaro, the symbiotic relationship between the Brazilian Army and the civilian government is nothing new in Brazil. One can argue it follows an exacerbating trend in the immediate years preceding the beginning of his tenure.
Military Republic of Brazil
The Brazilian Republic was conceived from a military coup. On 15th November 1889, Marshall Deodoro da Fonseca dethroned the widely popular Emperor Pedro II and declared the end of the monarchy in Brazil. From then onwards, the country has had 10 military officers as President.
The influence of the Armed Forces over the civilian government reached its apex during the military dictatorship. After a coup removed democratically elected president Joao Goulart under accusations of communist conspiracies, five army generals succeeded each other in running the country, with members of the armed forces occupying all sectors of the State. These structural changes included newly created intelligence and repression services, such as the Army Information Centre (CIE), established in 1967 and the infamous DOI-CODI, the regime’s main organ of urban repression, established in 1970 and headed by the brother of military president Ernesto Geisel. Bolsonaro has frequently declared his admiration for the times of the military regime, claiming the mistake of the regime was “torturing, but not killing” its opponents. However, it would be wrong to assume all army officers are of the same opinion. As revealed by the Brazilian Truth and Memory Commission, over 5600 armed forcers members were purged, tortured or imprisoned for their opposition to the dictatorship.
After the re-democratisation of the country, a tired and battered military retired towards the backstage of Brazilian politics without ever totally abandoning its influence over the government. Under the Workers party government (2003 – 2016), the previously prosecuted members of the Brazilian left-wing had an amicable relationship with the army. On the one hand, strategic ministries such as the Ministry of Defense were occupied by civilians with little knowledge of the military context. Furthermore, the government established the previously mentioned Memory and Truth Commission in 2012 intending to expose human rights violations during the military regime. Both of these decisions greatly bothered the army. On the other hand, the Workers party kept the autonomy of the armed forces, its control over their own administrative and financial decisions. It also increased the number of positions in the Ministry of Defense (from 818 to 1309) as well as the Military’s overall participation in the Ministry (from 44% to 77%). One example of the prestigious role they played under the Workers Party government was its protagonism in the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004 to 2017, deploying in total 37000 officers tasked with restabilizing the country.
Finally, the Temer presidency (2016 – 2019) represented the government's highest army influence before the Bolsonaro presidency. Federal interventions to control alleged lawlessness and a refugee crisis in the Northern border were declared under his government in Rio de Janeiro (Decree 9.288/18) and Roraima (Decree 9.602/18) — the firsts since the promulgation of the 1988 Brazilian constitution. Under article 34 of the Constitution, the federal intervenor has the same powers as a state governor, and only answers to the president of the Republic. Ostensibly proclaimed to maintain law and order in the states mentioned above, the federal interventions were headed by armed forces and deployed substantial military personnel that took over functions that were usually exclusive to the state police. The path was now open for a return of military pre-eminence in the Bolsonaro government.

(Source: Jornal da Bahia). The 5 Presidents of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, which would last from 1964 to 1985 and left at least 504 civilians dead or disappeared.
What’s in it for us?
It would be cynical to affirm that the close relationship between the Brazilian military and the Bolsonaro government is derived only from economic interests. Historically, the Armed Forces have seen themselves as guardians of the Republic. The Brazilian Constitution, in its Article 142, tasked them with the protection of the country, the constitutional powers, and guaranteeing law and order. Furthermore, the military never displayed any self-criticism regarding their role in the 1964 coup and the subsequent regime. The institution’s official discourse still refers to it as the “Revolution of 64”, a symbolic counteraction against international communism, and the country is the only Latin-American nation with a broad Amnesty Law. This law guarantees that human rights violators during its dictatorship are protected from any criminal prosecution. President Bolsonaro is one of the biggest supporters of this narrative, formally celebrating the coup’s 50 years anniversary in 2019.
The increasingly large role the military has been playing in the government has manifested in their more frequent attacks on democratic institutions. On April 3rd 2018, the then Army Commander Eduardo Villas-Boas threatened to intervene against the Supreme Court during an interview with the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. The reason would be the potential concession of a Habeas Corpus to former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Similarly, on May 22nd 2020, the Minister for the Office of Institutional Security General Augusto Helleno threatened the Supreme Court in the face of a possible apprehension of Bolsonaro’s mobile during an investigation regarding the president’s political interference in the Federal Police. This escalation led 90 generals of the reserve to publish an open letter supporting Helleno’s threats. Since then, there are no signs that the military is moving away from Bolsonaro – on the contrary, they remain one of his strongest support pillars.
Nevertheless, even with these ideological inflexion points, the government has been generous with the armed forces. Between 2021 and 2020, amid the Coronavirus pandemic, the defence ministry received a significant financial boost – almost 25% of the year’s Federal budget has been allocated for its use. In addition to that, military members were the only federal employee category to receive a readjustment of their salary this year, while all other categories saw their yearly readjustments frozen by Constitutional Amendment 186/19. The government has been even more generous with officials – according to an official report by the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, over 100 generals receive a monthly wage equal to “Marshall”, a military rank that can only be officially established during wartime. This generous funding notwithstanding, the armed forces have so far lobbied for 2% of the Brazilian GDP to be allocated for their use. Right now, their share stands at 1,8%.
Where to go from here?
However, this doesn’t mean that the union between Bolsonaro and the military is without its issues. More than 52% of the population rejects the designation of armed force members to official roles. This percentage represents a majority of the Brazilian public for the first time since his election. Moreover, Bolsonaro’s interventionist style of governing can sometimes frustrate higher officers. This rift reached a breaking point on March 30 2021, when the Commanders of the Navy, Army and Air Force all quit from their positions in solidarity against the firing of then Defense Minister General Azevedo e Silva. In addition to that, Bolsonaro's pragmatic move towards appeasing the “Big Centre” – the collection of small and medium-sized parties with no explicit ideology that is vital for governability – has angered some hardliners. Finally, with polls increasingly showing a potential defeat for Bolsonaro in 2022, the military should wonder if throwing all their support behind a losing candidate might reduce their bargaining position in a future Worker’s Party government.
In the future, however, it would be important to curb the influence of the military through more stable means. A good beginning would be for whoever comes after Bolsonaro to pass legislation requiring the Minister of Defense to always be a civilian. Furthermore, limits to the proportion of active military members occupying positions in the public administration could be settled by law - or even fully prohibited. A Constitutional amendment recently proposed by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCdoB) would ban any active military members from positions in the civilian administration, federal or otherwise. While such a radical proposal would hardly be approved by a conservative Congress, it might be the first step for a more civilian-owned administration.
Another potential solution would be for the Brazilian Supreme Court to reevaluate its previous decision upholding the military dictatorship general amnesty laws. International courts such as the Inter-American Courts of Human Rights have already ruled that the existence of amnesty laws protecting human rights violators represent a continuation of said violations, specifically singling out Brazil in its decision. The Supreme Court should take advantage of a recent appeal by public prosecutor Samantha Dobrowoslki requesting the overhaul of the regulation and correct its past mistakes. By doing so, they would fulfil the requests of thousands of torture victims and their familes, while sending a clear message to the armed forces: a democratic Brazil has no tolerance for military abuses.
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