President Jair Bolsonaro has been an avid supporter of the Brazilian military throughout his career. This is not surprising, given that he is a former army captain and an apologist for the military regime that governed the country until 1985. But recent events suggest that the President’s extensive outreach to the military has become more purposeful and potentially dangerous.
The increasing militarization of Latin American democracies is not unique to Brazil, but it has been deep under Bolsonaro. In his chapter in the new volume, Militares y Gobernabilidad: como estan cambiando las relaciones civico-militares en America Latina, University of Brasília professor Antonio Jorge Ramalho notes that the return to the political participation of the Brazilian military has taken place via a number of different channels. One is “the official candidacy of retired military personnel for public office, through affiliation with political parties and participation in electoral processes, both for executive office (municipal, state and national) and for legislative positions, including the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate” (Ramalho, 309). Recent news reports suggest that the 2022 elections may have record numbers of candidates associated with the military, following a path already well established by police officers.
A second channel is the employment of military officers in traditionally civilian roles. Bolsonaro has made multiple appointments of active duty military officers, retired military officers, and reserve military officers. According to Rede Brasil Atual, a news website, the number of military officers serving in appointed civilian positions more than doubled between 2016 and 2020, from just under three thousand to more than six thousand. Recent appointments held by officers include senior posts such as the Vice-Presidency and cabinet positions in ministries as varied as Science, Technology and Innovation, Infrastructure, Institutional Security, Defense, Justice and Public Safety, and Mines and Energy.
Public policy has become more “militarized,” too: the Bolsonaro administration has injected around $5 billion into the military (by comparison to a total discretionary budget of only $19 billion), including through new commissioned positions and military housing programs. Military personnel expenditures have risen particularly sharply, by about 13%, under Bolsonaro, and the military scandalously used some of its Covid funds to buy luxury items like filet mignon for the troops. Given that most of the rest of government has been undergoing belt-tightening, including budget reductions as well as salary freezes, this new spending stands out. Most recently, Bolsonaro has sought to use recent promotions to build closer ties with the top brass.
Bolsonaro’s outreach to the military may have lasting consequence for the democratic regime. This year military leaders issued an unusually full-throated commemoration of the March 31, 1964 coup that marked the beginning of the military regime. Last week, the President’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, mocked a prominent journalist who had been tortured by the military regime, after she drew readers’ attention to Bolsonaro’s hostility toward democracy. The past three decades had seen a process of demilitarization of the bureaucracy, a recognition by both civilian and military leaders that the armed forces were better off out of politics, and a steady move to ensure greater civilian oversight of the armed forces. The speed with which Bolsonaro has moved to reverse this is remarkable, perhaps only attenuated by the seeming reluctance of most active military officers to become actively involved in electoral politics. But the pressure from Bolsonaro continues, a particularly worrisome development at a time when the words and actions of the President and his supporters raise concerns about whether or not they will respect the results of the October election.
Image: Photo by Rafaela Biazi on Unsplash
