Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 55

Developments in the Hemisphere

Commanding General
of the [Brazilian]
Army Denies
Possibility of Military
Intervention

Brazil

Heloisa Cristaldo, Agência Brasil, Reporter
Editor’s Note: Until fairly recently, one of the historic recurring features
of many countries in Latin America has been the tendency for the military to seize power and establish military dictatorships during periods of
perceived instability and unrest, unfortunately often aided and abetted by
the United States for its own political purposes. However, as the various
nations have become more cosmopolitan in their global connections and
matured their democratic institutions and economies, including the values
and internal character values of the militaries themselves, military coups
have largely become a thing of the past. Irrespective, during periods of
rising domestic uncertainty in some countries, there are still voices that
emerge calling for active military intervention into the province of civilian
rule to ensure security, order, and calm. Recently, Brazil has been facing a
tumultuous political crisis as many of its democratic institutions have coalesced around an effort to impeach and remove from office President Dilma Rousseff on charges of corruption and abuse of office. One result has
been calls in some quarters of Brazilian society for the Brazilian military
to seize power and prevent civil unrest as supporters of the president from
potentially clashing with detractors demanding her removal. It is against
this background that the recent comments of the current commander of
the Brazilian Army, General Eduardo Villas Bôas, are salient. They may
be a possible metric of how the region’s militaries now perceive their role
relative to the other institutions of democratic governance as compared to
what the perceived role was in previous eras.

MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

T

he commanding general of the [Brazilian]
Army, General Eduardo Villas Bôas, today
(19 April 2016) rebutted the possibility of the
Armed Forces intervening in the country as a
result of the current political crisis. The declaration was
made during a speech about Army Day, at the private
university Centro Universitário de Brasília (UniCeub).
“The Armed Forces do not exist to watch over the
government, nor to knock down governments. We have
to contribute to the legitimacy of government, creating
the conditions in which such institutions continue working and finding ways to overcome what we are experiencing. We have seen that the [political] clashes have
been vicious, but the institutions are working”, he said.
Villas Bôas stated that the military intervention of 1964
was an error of the Armed Forces. “Brazil from the 1930’s
to 1950 was the country that grew most in the world, with
Getúlio [Vargas] and Juscelino [Kubistchek]. With the military governments of the 1970’s and 1980’s, we committed
an error. We allowed the division of the Cold War to affect
us, which resulted in our country that had come about with
a sense of progress losing cohesion”, he assessed.
The military overthrow of March 31, 1964, led Brazil
to the Republic’s longest period of interruption to demo-

53