2002 The University of North Carolina Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smallman, Shawn C.
Fear and memory in the Brazilian army and society, 18891954 / Shawn C. Smallman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8078-2691-x (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8078-5359-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. BrazilHistory1889 2. Brazil. Exrcito
Political activity. 3. Civil-military relationsBrazil
History. 4. Sociology, MilitaryBrazil. I. Title.
F2537 .S65 2002 |
981.064dc | 2001052576 |
cloth 06 05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1
paper 06 05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Emilia Viotti da Costa. No advisor ever gave more freely of her time and energy. I also owe a great debt to my other advisors at Yale, Gil Joseph and Daniel James. Frank McCann kindly answered a letter from a graduate student who needed to understand the Brazilian archival system. Jos Murilo de Carvalho gave graciously of his time to discuss the historiography and current trends in the armed forces. Maria Ceclia Spina Forjaz helped to introduce me to Fundaao Getlio Vargas. The late Gerson Moura explained the issues involved in the petroleum debate.
I wish to thank the staffs of the Clube Militar, Biblioteca Nacional, Servio de Documentao Nacional da Marinha, Instituto Historico e Cultural da Aeronautica, and the Arquivo Nacional. Without the aid of Professor Ivan Rodrigues de Faria and the staff at the Arquivo do Exrcito, this book could never have been written. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the staff of the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentao Contempornea do Brasil (Fundao Getlio Vargas), where Marie Ignez Niedu tracked down countless items over many months. The staff at the U.S. National Archive were patient and helpful. This project was made possible with grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Henry Hart Rice advanced research fellowship given by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. I also received travel money from Portland State University. Most of all I wish to thank the Smith Richardson Foundation, which funded the one-year sabbatical that enabled me to complete this manuscript.
I owe thanks to many soldiers, but I would like to make special mention of Colonel Asdrubel Esteves, for both his aid and his humor. My friends Jacques Buxbaum and Milton helped me through a thousand crises. Paulo Henrique Machado took me to Petrpolis when the heat became unbearable. Luis Vitor Tavares shared many lunches with me at La Mole. Jean Marcel Fontes de Alencar shared Mercado Sao Jos, the apartment, and the ghost. Daryle Williams gave good advice, improved my Portuguese, mixed good drinks, and made Brazil fun.
Henrik Kraay, Michelle Gamburd, and Friedrich Schuler read sections of the manuscript. I also wish to give particular thanks to Frederick Nunn, who has served as a mentor to guide this project to completion.
Finally, I wish to thank my parents Lee and Phyllis, as well as my sister Ellen. Most of all, I wish to thank Margaret Everett, who could be trapped in a Volkswagen bug floating down the street and still make our time together fun.
FEAR & MEMORY in the Brazilian Army and Society, 18891954
Introduction
This book explores the informal structures of power that shaped civil-military relations in Brazil from 1889 to 1954, and provided the foundations for authoritarian rule after 1964. It also considers the militarys construction of historical memory as part of an official history of nation building and nationality that has shaped both popular and scholarly memory. This work challenges conventional Brazilian history, collective memory, and, most fundamentally, the Brazilian militarys account of its own experience and its role in national development. In so doing, it undermines the armed forces narrative of unity and examines the internal conflicts that military versions of Brazilian history have chosen to forget.
Between 1964 and 1973 a wave of military coups swept across Latin America. They differed from previous military interventions in that armed forces not only chose to retain power, but also to transform their societies. In nations like Argentina the armed forces did not limit their ambitions to altering the national economy, political system, and social structure. They wished to change even the way people thought.and individual actors, but also to the long-term trends that shaped the militarys behavior once the coup took place.
The Brazilian militarys decision to retain power and to impose a particular political program resulted from its historical experience. Structures that supported authoritarianism in Brazil did not suddenly appear during the coup but rather evolved over decades. By carefully examining factional conflicts within the Brazilian military until 1954, this book emphasizes the major changes that reshaped the institution long before the coups took place and that the military has since sought to conceal.
Brazils Importance and History
While Spanish America fractured into many republics after independence, Portuguese-speaking Brazil remained intact. Brazils current position as the most powerful nation in Latin America is due partially to its common language as well as its size, population, military, and economy. The fifth largest nation in the world, it occupies nearly half of South America, an area larger than Europe, and it borders all South American nations except Chile and Ecuador. According to the 2000 census Brazil has over 169 million people; the Brazilian state of So Paulo alone has nearly twice the population of Guatemala. In terms of both manpower and expenditure, Brazil has the largest armed forces in South America, with four times the enlistment of the Argentine military. The Brazilian economythe ninth largest in the worldis much larger than Russias. In 1996 the gross domestic product (GDP) of Brazil was larger than that of all Spanish South America combined. The Brazilian economy acts as the financial linchpin for the rest of Latin America.
Until recently, historians have generally argued that Brazils political history has been characterized by greater political stability than many of its neighbors. It is true that Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in 1822 without war, largely because the monarchs son, Pedro I, became the new emperor. But this political continuity did not stop Brazil from experiencing a series of uprisings, rebellions, and racially inspired revolts at the local and regional level throughout the nineteenth century, as recent scholarship has emphasized. The government suppressed many of these uprisings with great brutality. Still, at the national level the figure of the emperor provided a sense of continuity and stability lacking in Spanish America, until a military coup ended imperial government in 1889. Between the foundation of the republic and the 1964 coup, Brazil ostensibly remained a democracy for all but nine years (the Estado Novo or New State, 193745).
