By GUILHERME RODRIGUES*

The coup d'état appears to the military forces as just another of their attributions, given an alleged situation of permanent “disorder” in which Brazilian society finds itself

There is a very precise statement made by Heráclito Sobra Pinto regarding the Brazilian military in which the jurist says: “Having proclaimed the Republic, [the military] considered themselves the owners of the Republic, and never accepted not being the owners of the Republic.” The statement, popularized today by the podcast Fear and loathing in Brasilia, could not be more accurate with regard to the alleged role that the armed forces have attributed to themselves since the coup d'état that inaugurated the Republic in 1889.

This was, however, only the first of many attempted coups, some of which were in fact successful, after all, such a practice seems to be the modus operandi that such an armed faction of Brazilian politics has used for about the last 150 years – it is almost farcical to follow this story in books and theses that discuss the military in Brazil. This, however, is not so comical if we remember the indescribable level of violence that was carried out in such activities, in addition to, of course, the daily military practice that is, in short, violent.

When dealing with the military in Brazil, it would be appropriate to reiterate this fact at all times, that is, that their guardianship in the State has always been carried out with great coercion, at all imaginable levels. And, so aligned with the history of the Republic, it would also be appropriate to remember how their thinking is organically aligned with a certain positivist vein, which became famous among Brazilian intellectuals in the second half of the 19th century – not for nothing is the motto inscribed on the flag of the Republic: “order and progress”.

This tradition frowned upon any and all marks that could be associated with the country's past, in an incessant search to erase and forget the deeply rooted traces of colonial times — even though it is well known that such marks not only persist to this day, but actually form the depth and surface of the social fabric. The positivists' efforts to modernize led to the famous demolition of the city of Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the last century, destroying places such as the first Jesuit school of Manoel da Nóbrega (which was located on the now defunct Morro do Castelo) and Machado de Assis' house on the old Rua do Cosme Velho.

But that's not all: whitening policies, along with vagrancy laws, were all tied to this positivist imaginary of modernization, which carried the military "order" against traditions understood as savage, primitive, barbaric - which, in truth, were fundamentally associated with the ways of life of the most vulnerable layers of the population, such as former slaves and indigenous people.^[I]

The use of brutal force to coerce the masses is linked to eugenicist discourse and the ideological structures of this positivism; and the institution of the armed forces, completely immersed in this formation, not only adheres to this thought but also gives substance to the order necessary for its realization, namely, the erasure through disappearance, murder, torture, exile, and the hiding of people and entire traditions. The coup d'état appears to the military forces as just another of their attributions, given a supposed situation of permanent “disorder” in which Brazilian society finds itself, due to the ostentatious presence of groups that tarnish a supposed national unity that never existed; the military apparatus uses its armed force, then, to force down people's throats an order in the name of progress that advances over people, histories, homes, and entire cities.

Of the countless examples that can be raised, I would like to recall here the case of Canudos, for the pedagogical force that the destruction of the Bahia camp in 1897 has in illustrating such attribution of the military; and, curiously, he is a man with a positivist background, in a book with a positivist structure and argument that will suggest a profound critique not only of the military in the midst of the First Republic, in the heat of the moment, but of the very idea of ​​progress, civilization and modernity from which his own work draws – Euclides da Cunha.

This is not to say that the argument, structure and vocabulary ofthe sertões do not be positivist; and that all this is based on the principle that the backwoodsmen would be people “destined to soon disappear in the face of the growing demands of civilization”^[ii], but it is remarkable to see how there is a tension of these same concepts internally within the work, which dialectically makes it a text of the best nature – after all, in many moments this same civilization appears ironized and containing its own negative, barbarism.

In this sense, the work describes the destruction of the village with a very refined irony, which often escapes the unsuspecting reader. From the beginning, one can perceive something like this: “When it became urgent to pacify the backlands of Canudos, the government of Bahia was struggling with other insurrections.”^[iii] Remember that none of the advances of civilization in the backlands were peaceful, which had already been pointed out in the book at other times. Such statements may take the reader by surprise, as such irony is devoid of the famous humor for which Machado de Assis and Drummond would become known: all that remains in Cunha is the brutality of the unveiling of the violence of the pacification of the Canudos hinterland.

The work will, as is known, dismantle how the argument of the government of the Republic against Canudos – which was fighting against a monarchist insurrection – was false. The chapter in which the fourth expedition to Canudos is narrated in the third part of the book unravels at its beginning how the men of the capital constructed such a false argument, reinforced by the major newspapers of the time, such as The News Gazette e The State of S. Paul, reminding us how mainstream journalistic discourse works in favor of the apparatus of repression and violence, using absurd inventions to the taste of what is now called “fake news” in WhatsApp groups; in the words of the book: “The same tune in everything. In everything the obsession of the monarchical scarecrow, transforming into a legion – a mysterious cohort marching silently in the shadows – half a dozen stragglers, idealists and stubborn.”^[iv]

In view of the defeat of the military Moreira César, the fourth expedition was organized around a discourse that sought to falsely affirm a monarchist revolt, also pointing to a supposed subhuman inferiority of the backlands people. What draws the author's attention, however, is another fact: “Rua do Ouvidor was worth a detour through the caatingas. The rush of the backlands entered civilization with a rush. And the war of Canudos was, so to speak, only symptomatic. The evil was greater. It had not been confined to a corner of Bahia. It had spread. It broke out in the capitals of the coast. The man of the backlands, leathered and rough, had partners who were perhaps more dangerous.”^[v]

The writer realizes how what is now distinguished as savagery is within what is called civilization. The condition of the civilized city is, in truth, not very different from the backlands of Canudos; and, in the end, Euclides da Cunha even goes so far as to argue for a rationality of its own in the resistance of the backlands, which is even obvious: “These, at least, were logical. Isolated in space and time, the gunman, an ethnic anachronism, could only do what he did – beat, beat terribly the nationality that, after rejecting him for about three centuries, sought to take him to the dazzlements of our age within a square of bayonets, showing him the brilliance of civilization through the flash of discharges.”^[vi]

This is, after all, the face of civilization: a devastating armed force that destroyed Canudos, that brutally murdered its inhabitants; something that began with a dispute over ways of life; language, desire and work. In this sense, the patriots decided to act, and, in Cunha's words, “this was what action was – to unite battalions.”^[vii]

The Brazilian army, therefore, leads the criminal massacre of Canudos (which is exactly what the book calls it – a crime), using the most brutal subterfuges to kill and destroy the camp. Considering themselves the owners of the Republic, the military, seeking proof that the insurrection and disorder had ended, at the end of the campaign, exhumed the corpse of Antônio Conselheiro and took the famous photo of the prophet that we know today; but, not satisfied, they cut off his head, which they carried on a parade in Rio de Janeiro.

At the end of his account, the work presents a tone of haunting in light of the violence that the military expedition in the name of civilization, order and progress signified. The advance of civilization appeared as an armed assault against a population whose history was already one of exile, abandonment and violence. The military action was, in a way, to destroy the stain of this stain, the mark of its own violent past; and what draws Cunha’s attention is how such a campaign was carried out by “sons of the same soil”, different from the sertanejos because they acted as “unconscious mercenaries” who lived in the capital under the ideology of European progress.

In light of such an eloquent example, it would be worth remembering that the military has never been held accountable for its successive acts of violence against its own population. To paraphrase Julio Strassera in his final speech at the trial that convicted the Argentine military leaders of the last dictatorship, our opportunity is now. However, it is not a matter of merely convicting four-star generals, but of forcing this institution to reestablish itself: to remove its entire command, its schools, its courts, its special pensions – to remind them of their status as public servants to be treated with the same status as everyone else; to force them to study with us and receive an education at a school like any other.

More than that, they should be judged by the common justice system, as in Argentina – we are not at war so that there can be a military tribunal. Only then will it be possible to say that there is some justice, memory and mourning for all those who died due to the uncalled for order to use bayonets.

* Guilherme Rodrigues He holds a PhD in Literary Theory from Unicamp's IEL.

Notes

^[I] In this sense, it is worth checking out the recent work of Guilherme Prado Roitberg, who has been researching eugenics in Brazil since the 1920th century, its application in the modernizing apparatus of the State and its functioning in Brazilian society, mainly between the 1930s and XNUMXs.

^[ii] CUNHA, Euclides da. The backlands: (Canudos Campaign). 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2009, p. 65.

^[iii] CUNHA, ibid. p. 331.

^[iv] CUNHA, ibid. pp. 499-500.

^[v] CUNHA, ibid. p. 501.

^[vi] CUNHA, ibid. p. 502.

^[vii] CUNHA, ibid. p. 503.

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