During World War II, 25,000 Brazilian soldiers served in Brazil’s Expeditionary Force (Força Expedicionária Brasìleira), which fought the German army in Italy. Despite initial setbacks and frustrations, Brazilian troops did achieve some successes, although the greatest impact of the expeditionary force (FEB) was probably not in Europe but back in Brazil, where it became a symbol of national pride.1 During the war, the paradox of a dictatorship sending troops to fight for democracy inspired those Brazilian civilians who opposed authoritarian rule.2 Historians have also generally agreed that while in Italy febianos (members of the FEB) learned democratic ideals from United States soldiers and that this experience led them to oppose the dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas.3 Scholars have also suggested that upon returning to Brazil after the war the FEB introduced pro-United States views into the army, which placed the febianos in opposition to the ideas of their nationalist colleagues.4 Thus the FEB has been invoked to explain not only Vargas’s overthrow in 1945, but also the collapse of democracy in 1964, and even the ensuing character of military rule.5 Yet this version of the FEB’s history has obscured a more complex and disturbing story. In fact, febianos risked their careers and their lives to oppose the ideals later attributed to them. In this respect, the history of the FEB illustrates the challenges scholars face in studying military history, and civil-military relations, in South America.
The Military’s Influence over Historical Memory
Latin American militaries have long possessed allies in civilian society; they have had regulations to discipline retired officers and authority over military archives. National armed forces have used these resources to shape the public memory of their history. Army leaders have controlled outsiders’ access to their archives and granted interviews to historians as part of an effort to create an “impartial” account of their past. Through these means, army leaders have sought to promote an official history that emphasizes military unity. In this narrative, all institutional changes are explained by referring only to common, public experiences that have been sanctioned by the army hierarchy. Officers have spoken at length about new schools, famous officers, ideological trends, and foreign missions. These accounts have excluded the hidden experiences—the factional struggles, the civilian allies, and the violent abuses—that also shaped army politics. Many scholars (including Frederick Nunn, Louis A. Pérez Jr., Robert Potash, Alain Rouquié, and Alfred Stepan) have examined these topics.6 Yet scholarship on the FEB suggests that national militaries still have had some success in promoting their “official history.”7
The Brazilian army has proudly celebrated all aspects of its wartime experience. Officers have authored many works on the FEB that emphasize both the expedition’s military successes and its friendship with the United States.8 In countless interviews and publications, officers have argued that this bond led the FEB to adopt democratic and liberal ideals.9 Scholars have generally agreed with this depiction, one which has been succinctly captured by Alfred Stepan in his classic work, The Military in Politics.
The value placed on interdependence in foreign policy, the fear of excessive nationalism, the relatively strong belief that Brazil could profit through a close relationship with the United States, the deep distrust of emotional appeals, the idea that capitalism could create a physically powerful nation, the belief that democracy was a more ‘civilized’ style of politics—these were attitudes that were specifically strengthened or largely created by officer participation in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) in Italy during World War Two.10
Yet this historical account ignores a profound division within the FEB. The officers who later acted as FEB spokesmen formed part of a small minority of high commanders who did indeed favor liberal policies. But their sympathies were defined by their position in the hierarchy, not by their experience in Italy.
In fact, most febianos rejected the liberal position of these isolated commanders (as can be seen by the actions of veterans organizations, the participation of FEB officers in nationalist movements, the arrest of febianos for their opposition to internationalist army leaders, and the alliances that febianos formed with civilians) and instead adopted a nationalist and anti-United States position.11 As a result, in the postwar period the Brazilian army was riven by a bitter ideological struggle between the army hierarchy and the veterans. This conflict profoundly affected the character of civil-military alliances, military factions, and army doctrine. The hierarchy used all its power to smash the FEB’s organized influence. Ironically, the victorious hierarchy then attributed its views to the very soldiers it repressed.
The Creation of the FEB
To understand the FEB’s postwar involvement in the army and politics, one must first consider the organization’s wartime roots. The army hierarchy was ambivalent to the FEB from its inception. Powerful leaders within the army (such as General Pedro Aurélio de Góes Monteiro, General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, General Canrobert Pereira da Costa, General Euclydes Zenóbio da Costa, and General Angelo Mendes de Moraes) opposed Brazil’s World War II alliance with the United States and England, countries they considered imperialist powers that threatened Brazilian sovereignty.12 When Dutra and his family learned that Paris had fallen to the Germans, they cheered.13 In 1940 members of Dutra’s staff took the position that a German victory over Britain would benefit Brazil, and both Dutra and Góes Monteiro backed an anti-British press campaign.14 As late as 1940, the Brazilian armed forces were still receiving armament (such as antiaircraft batteries) from Germany.15 As General Nelson de Mello stated many years later: “The hierarchy of the army was Germanophile. There is no debating this.”16 And up through 1941, Dutra continued to warn Vargas against granting the United States bases in northeast Brazil: “They want, under the facade of alliance, domination.”17
President Vargas, however, believed that he could exchange Brazilian troops for United States developmental aid and was adamant that Brazil had to join the conflict on the Allied side.18 His will overcame opposition from both the Brazilian public and the British government.19 More importantly, in 1942 Vargas compelled a reluctant army to agree to send forces to Europe and thereby gain prestige for the nation and capital for development. By this time, as Frank McCann has argued, Dutra and Góes Monteiro realized that Germany would lose the war and wanted to favor the winning side as well as to acquire arms from the United States.20 Nonetheless, Minister of War Dutra had to organize the FEB with little support from the General Staff (Estado-Maior do Exército), whose commander, General Góes Monteiro, remained staunchly opposed to creating this force. Dutra himself showed limited enthusiasm for the project and even delayed creating the FEB, perhaps hoping that the war would end before Brazilian soldiers could depart. As late as the end of 1943, it appeared that Brazilian troops never would serve overseas.21
Besides the hostility of these high-level commanders, there were other factors that led to the long delay in creating the FEB. Both Vargas and the army were worried about the political implications of this new organization, and many officers did not wish to join this new force.22 As in every war, however, there were some officers (such as Brigadier General Oswaldo Cordeiro de Farias, who became commander of the FEB’s artillery) who volunteered in the hope of furthering their ambitions.23 Accordingly, Dutra and Góes Monteiro carefully scrutinized all officers selected to ensure that no Communists joined the expedition and that no rivals would profit from a commission within this glamorous new force.24
The potential benefit of participation in the FEB was such that despite his initial opposition to its creation, Dutra eventually campaigned to enhance and ensure his authority by personally leading the FEB. His fellow officers, however, tried to persuade him that Vargas was plotting to remove him from the country.25 This argument may have swayed Dutra to remain in Brazil, but the fact that the FEB was to be smaller than initially planned (having only one reenforced infantry division, rather than three) probably was a more important consideration. In August 1943, Dutra agreed to appoint General João Batista Mascarenhas de Moraes to lead the FEB. Mascarenhas was selected because he was Vargas’s friend, a competent officer, and a terrible politician. Given his lack of political ambition and charisma, neither the president nor military leaders feared his future influence.26 Nevertheless, Dutra left little to chance and acted carefully to curtail Mascarenhas’s power; for example, he ensured that Mascarenhas did not select the men he took with him. Dutra exercised that power, and he chose men for their loyalty to himself and the government, not their ability. The chief of Vargas’s coterie of military advisors later alleged that the most capable officers never joined the FEB.27 This assertion was probably unjust, but it points to the importance placed on political loyalty in selecting the troops that would go to Europe. Ricardo Bonalume Neto has argued that Vargas’s government forced some opponents into the FEB.28 Yet the president also kept military opponents from leaving the country to prevent them from gaining prestige in combat. These political machinations, and the conflicting interests of the men responsible for creating the FEB, shaped the FEB’s character and contributed to the tension that later developed between the ideals its soldiers professed and the policies its commanders advocated.29
The FEB’s Experience in Italy and Its Return to Brazil
On July 2, 1944, the FEB finally set sail for Italy. Alfred Stepan and Frank McCann have argued that during the fighting, contact between Brazilian soldiers and their United States counterparts imbued febianos with a sense of gratitude to the United States, a distrust of nationalism, and an admiration for democracy, and that these ideals led returning soldiers to oppose Vargas’s authoritarian regime.30 There is some truth to this portrayal, in that the experience of war strengthened the ties among the few anti-Vargas officers in the high command.31 These individuals, however, did not represent the thought of the FEB as a whole. Regular contact between the United States and Brazilian armies took place only at the highest levels and Mascarenhas succeeded in limiting the number of American officers communicating with his men.32 Moreover, not many Brazilian commanders spoke English; nor did members of the two armies engage in ideological discussion. Given the language barrier and infrequent contacts, most officers, let alone soldiers, remained isolated from their United States counterparts.33 United States officers found that Brazilian troops did not meet their expectations, and they voiced their opinions.34 Some febianos (including Colonel Floriano de Lima Brayner, chief of the FEB’s General Staff) resented their dependency on the United States.35 At times, there was a sense of animosity between American and Brazilian officers, fed by many small insults to Brazilian pride.36 As one FEB commander stated (Colonel Nelson de Mello, who during the war headed the Sixth Infantry Regiment from Caçapava, São Paulo), the Americans had little influence upon the febianos at all.37
Instead, the febianos were shielded from any information that could undermine their loyalty to Vargas’s regime. General Mascarenhas strove to keep his troops from participating in any political activity or discussion.38 Indeed, all but a few high commanders remained ignorant of political events in Brazil, let alone the ideals of American democracy. Many febianos even had to rely on German propaganda broadcasts to learn of events at home.39 As a result, the FEB remained isolated from a growing political current in Brazil, where democratic rhetoric was undermining Vargas’s authority. In Brazil, FEB victories became the excuse for rallies, where civilians denounced their authoritarian government.40 But there has been a tendency to conflate the rhetoric surrounding the FEB with the thought of its members.41 The junior officers and soldiers of the FEB never held the prodemocratic views that historians have ascribed to them and that might have led them to challenge the Vargas regime. Instead, they remained politically disengaged.
Vargas did not fear the FEB when it returned to Brazil. Alzira Vargas, the president’s daughter, has claimed that accounts depicting the FEB as part of a “wave of democracy” were nonsense. Instead, the return of the FEB bolstered Vargas’s popularity; he even viewed the force as a means to prop up his regime.42 From July to October 1945, there was immense excitement as thousands of Brazilians turned out to greet the returning troops. As General Góes Monteiro noted, Vargas made a point of welcoming all the febianos in mass parades designed to build support for his regime. Vargas’s military allies seized upon these rallies to make pro-Vargas statements that frightened their fellow officers. According to Nero Moura, a pro-Vargas officer who served in the Brazilian air force in Italy, army leaders such as Dutra and Góes Monteiro feared that Vargas might use the FEB to retain power. For this reason, Moura argued, these leaders disbanded the FEB.43
Dutra and Góes Monteiro were not alone in their concern about the FEB’s loyalties and Vargas’s efforts to retain power. The army’s highest ranking commanders, such as General Cristovão de Castro Barcelos and General Heitor Augusto Borges, also worried that Vargas might try to interfere in or delay the presidential election while he built up a new constituency.44 At the time, Vargas sought to remain in power by reaching out to unions, and even to the Communists. Vargas legalized the Communist party, released its prisoners, and allied himself with its leader, Luís Carlos Prestes. In return, the Communists supported maintaining Vargas in power—and postponing elections—until a constituent assembly could be convened. The army, which collectively and officially remembered a terrifying Communist rebellion in 1935, was horrified.45
In particular, many commanders (such as General Góes Monteiro and General Valentim Benício da Silva) worried about Communist infiltration of the armed forces.46 This concern shaped how senior commanders viewed the FEB. Despite his careful efforts, Dutra had failed to create a staunchly anticommunist military force. Communists had joined the FEB to fight against the Soviet Union’s enemies.47 In Italy the febianos had begun a fund-raising campaign to aid the daughter of the imprisoned Communist leader Prestes.48 Upon their return, a minority of febianos also threw their support to the Communist party. According to a secret report prepared by the Brazilian Ministry of War, the Communists were enjoying great success in recruiting FEB officers to their cause. The report argued that the FEB should be disbanded as rapidly as possible: “And the more rapidly the demobilization is made, the more efficient will be the results obtained by this fitting and opportune recommendation.”49 The report also warned that the Communists were receiving armament from returning soldiers. The FEB’s leaders did what they could to stop the loss of this weaponry, with little success: “We know that wherever [Communist] meetings take place there is a hidden armament acquired from veterans. To prevent this arms trade FEB officers decided to inspect the luggage [of returning veterans]. But even so, many arms have entered [Brazil] hidden in vehicles, the equipment of particular army units, etc., and by this means the Communists have even acquired the small machine guns of the S.S.”50
As Vargas struggled to retain power, Góes Monteiro anguished over the political crisis; he told his fellow generals that he first realized the seriousness of the situation when he gave a speech to returning febianos.51 He was so concerned that he feared Brazil was headed toward civil war.52 Many generals—such as Renato Paquet, Cristovào Barcelos, and Angelo Mendes de Moráis — declared that they could not let the army be divided by conflict.53
As minister of war, Eurico Gaspar Dutra had done everything he could to neutralize the FEB as a political force. Even before the FEB returned from Italy, Dutra had decided to disband it. In part, he acted for personal reasons. In April 1945, Dutra had announced his campaign for the presidency. To succeed, Dutra realized that he needed to defeat not only Vargas, but also another challenger, Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. Key to Dutra’s hopes for victory was his influence over the military. Yet Dutra realized that the FEB was unlikely to back the man who had first opposed the FEB’s creation, and then its departure for Europe. Moreover, Gomes was a hero of the Brazilian air force, an officer who had visited his men in North Africa during the war and had supported the creation of the FEB. For these reasons, on June 6, 1945, Dutra demobilized the FEB, well before the first troopships arrived back in Rio de Janeiro. He also outlawed “[the formation] of veterans groups, commenting on the campaign, or even reading the poetry the men had written.”54 Veterans were viewed with such distrust that war service was often more of a liability than an asset.55 Given the political crisis then gripping Brazil, army commanders did not protest the disbanding of the FEB despite powerful military reasons to maintain it as a fighting force.56
Because of all this it would be inaccurate to say that the FEB returned with democratic ideals that undermined the Estado Novo. Instead, the same leaders who had created Vargas’s regime decided to destroy it in 1945. During the plotting against Vargas, generals Dutra and Góes Monteiro kept FEB commander Mascarenhas de Moraes from returning to Brazil. They feared his authority and the men he had commanded. These leaders first carefully neutralized the FEB’s power, before they overthrew President Vargas on October 29, 1945.57
The Army’s Changing Role
The FEB’s ideals did not encourage the army to rethink its mission in the postwar era, although both officers and historians have made this argument.58 It is true that in 1945 Dutra and Góes Monteiro chose to change the military’s role from one of promoting state-led development to one of participating in hemispheric defense. Yet this shift took place because of geopolitical changes buffeting Brazil, not because of the FEB. Between August and October 1945, Brazil’s most powerful generals held 11 secret meetings to discuss the army’s role.59 At these forums, General Newton Cavalcanti proposed that the army be restructured in accord with Brazil’s new international obligations. Instead of trying to make Brazil economically self-reliant, he wished to integrate Brazil into the world economic and political system. His argument was supported by Góes Monteiro, who argued that the army had to play a role in hemispheric defense and international peacekeeping.60
Senior generals (Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Góes Monteiro, Newton Cavalcanti, and Canrobert Pereira da Costa) proved receptive to arguments that the army should reevaluate its old role in promoting the state-led development of key industries. The army’s experience in developing the steel and petroleum industries had convinced some commanders that Brazil needed outside aid to expand its economy. Moreover, the military’s old fears of imperialism waned with the defeat of fascism and the bankruptcy of Britain. During World War II the army had also learned that an alliance with the United States brought significant economic rewards. The new minister of war, Góes Monteiro, believed that the United States would continue to need a partnership with Brazil as it had during the war, and that this would enable Brazil to acquire arms and much-needed capital.61 Góes Monteiro stressed the importance of the May 1942 accord between Brazil and the United States. This pact, he stated, ensured that if world peace was again threatened, the United States “would have to solicit our military cooperation and we, in turn, would have to ask them [to help with] our preparation.”62 The newfound economic and political power of the United States forced the army’s leaders to reevaluate Brazil’s military interests.63
Changes within Brazil also encouraged these commanders to rethink the army’s role, especially as economic nationalism acquired new meaning. Although the army had adopted nationalist rhetoric as a means to exclude “politics” from economic decision making, by war’s end civilian leaders were using this discourse to rally the masses.64 For example, Vargas seized upon this rhetoric to draw the unions to his cause. Instead of remaining a tool of the elites, this nationalistic discourse became a means to foster the popular mobilization that army leaders like Góes Monteiro distrusted. Dutra and other leaders found the ideals of economic liberalism attractive as they debated whether to ally themselves with the United States for continental defense. The febianos had little impact on this decision.
The Division of the Army
Demobilized at the end of World War II and marginalized from decisions taken by the Brazilian army hierarchy, the FEB acquired importance only when Minister of War Canrobert Pereira da Costa strove to impose the new vision of economic liberalism and a defensive alliance with the United States on the postwar army. Many FEB officers were appalled by the hierarchy’s plans. Their rebellion divided the army into two wings. The faction that supported the hierarchy, known as “the internationalists,” admired the United States, opposed communism, welcomed foreign capital, and distrusted economic nationalism. Their views were countered within the army by “the nationalists,” who favored neutrality, distrusted the United States, and rejected foreign investment in favor of state-led development. The struggle between these two factions came to a head in 1947 over the question of petroleum development, a key issue for both sides. The hierarchy believed that United States aid would enable Brazil to develop more rapidly. Moreover, the General Staff believed that Brazil had a duty to ensure the West’s fuel supply in the case of a Soviet attack. This obligation entailed the acceptance of foreign investment, a concession to internationalism supported even by the head of the National Petroleum Council, General João Carlos Barreto.65 Nationalists (such as General Newton Estillac Leal, General Renato Paquet, and Colonel Artur Carnauba) feared that these investments would give foreign corporations control over Brazil’s fuel supply. They believed that only the state ought to develop the nation’s petroleum resources and industry.66 When the army hierarchy used General Juarez Távora as its spokesman to advocate liberalizing Brazil’s petroleum legislation in accord with its vision of the army’s new role, the battle lines were drawn.67
Officers who opposed this change began a public campaign to nationalize petroleum development. They founded a lobbying organization (the Centro de Estudos e Defesa do Petróleo), organized rallies, and forged alliances with sympathetic civilians. General Júlio Caetano Horta Barbosa, who had controlled petroleum development during the Estado Novo, became a public figure in this campaign. Officers in the Military Club sent out 30,000 copies of his speeches “to the executive and the federal legislature, state and municipal authorities, leaders in the armed forces, the means of mass communication (radio stations, newspapers, and magazines), unions, educators, libraries, etc.”68 As a result, nationalist officers were able to attract widespread support from civilian society.
Within the army, a key factor in the nationalists’ strength was the whole-hearted allegiance most febianos gave the nationalist cause. Scholars such as Peter Seaborn Smith, Antonio Carlos Peixoto, and Alfred Stepan have argued that the FEB backed the internationalists, basing their arguments on statements by a few high-ranking febianos, whose loyalties belonged to the army high command.69 Most veterans, however, rejected these self-appointed spokesmen. For example, the FEB’s infantry commander in Italy, General Euclydes Zenóbio da Costa, was a well-known conservative. He associated all nationalist movements, including the petroleum campaign, with communism.70 Years later, when President Vargas considered selecting Zenóbio to be his minister of war, the febianos protested. On behalf of all febianos, one of the FEB’s elected representatives, the vice president of the Conselho Nacional das Associaçôes dos ex-Combatentes, wrote President Vargas that any “other commander will always be a better choice than General Zenóbio da Costa.”71 The FEB rank and file repudiated any “leader” who adopted internationalist views. This would become clear in 1950, when the febianos rejected Cordeiro de Farias to head a social organization called the Military Club.
In contrast to the position of its high-ranking, self-styled leaders, the FEB’s elected officials played an important part in the nationalist petroleum campaign. The president of the veterans association went to São Paulo on October 2, 1948, to participate in a rally organized by the Centro de Estudos e Defesa do Petróleo and attended by nearly 40,000 people.72 The febianos voted to have the head of this center, General Horta Barbosa, take an honorary position in their veterans organization.73 When Marshal Estevão Leitão de Carvalho ran for Congress (unsuccessfully) on a platform that advocated the nationalization of the petroleum industry, his backers made a special point of appealing to the febianos for support.74 The actions of the FEB as a whole, rather than the views of particular commanders, indicated the FEB’s true sympathies. Nonetheless, there was a division between a small minority of FEB commanders and the mass of its officers and men. This discord fueled the lengthy factional conflict that raged between 1947 and 1952. In this contest, commanders such as Canrobert Pereira da Costa found a few high-ranking febianos who were willing to repress the very men they had once commanded.
The Military Club
In late 1948, when they realized that public sentiment and military opposition doomed their plans to liberalize petroleum legislation, Dutra and Canrobert Pereira de Costa became infuriated. The nationalists’ campaign had proved effective. Yet their victory did not end the conflict. Instead, the struggle shifted away from the public arena, as both factions sought to impose their vision upon the army. The focus of this contest became the Military Club, a social organization that was unique in that it contained an elected directorate within an undemocratic institution. Although it existed outside the army’s official structure, it had great influence within the institution. With its journal, conferences, and prestige, the club offered officers a forum from which to promote their political views. During the petroleum campaign, nationalist officers had controlled the club, which helped their efforts to rally the public. In reaction, the army hierarchy nominated General Oswaldo Cordeiro de Farias to run for the club’s presidency in the 1950 elections. Although a former elected leader of the FEB, General Cordeiro de Farias belonged to the internationalist faction.75 His opponent was General Newton Estillac Leal, a nationalist officer with anti-United States and leftist views.76
Because civilians came to view it as a military referendum on the upcoming presidential election, the Military Club campaign quickly acquired the character of a national event.77 Vargas hoped to return to the presidency in 1951, despite opposition from senior army leaders such as General Euclidee Figueiredo.78 Many generals tied to Eurico Gaspar Dutra were plotting to prevent Vargas’s return.79 To succeed, Vargas needed strong support from nationalist officers. Accordingly, Vargas was delighted by Estillac’s electoral victory on May 17, 1950. The results showed that the nationalist faction, which backed Vargas, had widespread support within the military. Vargas needed the loyalty of these nationalist officers, such as Newton Estillac Leal, to ensure his return to power, which occurred with his election to the presidency in late 1950.80 Although the internationalists controlled the General Staff, the great majority of commanding officers would not follow their lead. In regard to the liberal officers of the General Staff, Emani Amaral Peixoto has noted that “in the army they are called ‘officers of the bureau,’ they have positions in the most important ministries, on the General Staff, in government positions, but they don’t have much contact with the troops. For this reason they weren’t able [to impede Vargas’s inauguration], because the officers who were in command of the regions were almost all on the same [nationalist] side. The [generals of the General Staff] had command of the highest level, of the positions of eminence within the army, but they didn’t have effective command of the troops.”81 In the end, even conservative generals such as Newton Cavalcanti and Alvaro Fiúza de Castro argued that Vargas’s victory had to be honored.82
Even so, internationalist officers remained bitter over their defeat, which they, along with their conservative allies, blamed on the febianos. In his newspaper column, journalist Carlos Lacerda stated that the FEB’s return had initiated communist infiltration of the army. He claimed that the FEB’s seizure of the Military Club represented the completion of this process. In conflating nationalism with communism, Lacerda articulated a viewpoint shared by the conservative elites with whom the internationalists had allied. And Lacerda’s protests suggested the extent to which war veterans supported the nationalists. Ironically, it was the war veterans who had ensured the defeat of a FEB commander, Cordeiro de Farias. Clearly, their ideological devotion to the nationalist cause had outweighed any personal allegiance to this febiano.83 Indeed, the febianos had labored to secure Vargas’s ultimate victory in the October 1950 elections.84
The internationalist faction might have tolerated the FEB’s successes, if the FEB had not opposed the internationalists’ efforts to change the army’s role. But the febianos challenged this economically liberal bloc at every opportunity. Many officers (such as Minister of War Canrobert Pereira da Costa, General Juarez Távora, and General Oswaldo Cordeiro de Farias) were particularly angry that after taking control of the Military Club nationalist officers used its journal, the Revista do Clube Militar, to publish anti-United States articles.85 The journal challenged the doctrine of continental defense that the internationalists favored. One article even criticized the United States’ involvement in the Korean War as an act of aggression against an innocent nation. In response, Canrobert da Costa punished the club’s directory. Many of the club’s leaders (such as Major Tácito Livio de Freitas, a febiano) were transferred to remote outposts. In speaking of this attack on the nationalist leadership, one contemporary observer noted that “they were ‘decapitated.’ They were liquidated, removed from the Military Club. They were sent to places far away. Tácito was a major, if I am not mistaken, and at this time he was sent to Maranhão. Others went to Mato Grosso, Goiás, and I don’t know where else. They were scattered. It was the diaspora of the nationalist officers. This is the truth.”86 As a result, these officers were no longer able to participate in the Military Club’s activities and their careers were permanently damaged.
Some of these men, such as Captain Joaquim Pessoa Miranda de Andrade, a febiano who ran the club’s recreational department, and Major Humberto Freire de Andrade, who headed the club’s journal, would be arrested in 1952 for “subversive” activities. Yet Canrobert Pereira da Costa’s actions could neither prevent Vargas’s inauguration nor win back control of the Military Club. To defeat its opponents, internationalist officers would have to overcome the nationalists’ organized support, particularly among the febianos. Accordingly, the internationalist faction viewed the 1952 elections in the Military Club as an opportunity for a showdown with their enemies.
This election proved to be a turning point in the conflict. Both factions created powerful political parties to conduct their campaigns within the army.87 These parties raised funds, lobbied civilians, published propaganda, collected intelligence, and conducted polls. Ernâni do Amaral Peixoto described these parties as complex organizations, with a sophisticated infrastructure of support staff and offices.88 Five years after the onset of the petroleum campaign, army factions had been transformed into entirely new structures that would endure long after the elections. For both sides the campaign had become a referendum on their vision not only of the army, but also of Brazil’s position in the world.
In this struggle, the nationalist faction enjoyed the sympathies of many officers and the dedicated support of the febianos. The internationalist faction tended to have the support of more senior officers (such as General Canrobert Pereira da Costa, the former minister of war; General Euclides Zenóbio da Costa, a future minister of war; General Alvaro Fiúza da Castro, chief of the General Staff from 1948 to 1955; General Cordeiro de Farias, commander of the Escola Superior da Guerra; and General Alcides Etchegoyen, commander of the nucleus of the Armored Division, Rio de Janeiro) who controlled the official lines of power within the army.89 To escape military discipline, many nationalist officers had also retired to the reserve to carry out their campaign, a move that only weakened their position.90
Equally important, in March 1952 the internationalists founded a political party called the Democratic Crusade, which served to rally internationalist officers. The organization had General Etchegoyen as its president and General Nelson de Mello as its vice president. Both men had been chief of police in the Federal District during the Estado Novo, which gave them experience tracking political activists and dissident leaders. These generals conflated nationalism with communism and believed that they had to act quickly to save the military institutions. Their views were captured in the comments of General Mello in describing General Newton Estillac Leal, the head of the nationalist cause: “He was a very advanced socialist who had sympathy for Communists and hatred for those who were not Communist. He was not a Communist himself, but everything he wrote, Brezhnev signed.”91
The internationalists quickly set up a complex organization, which included a formal hierarchy, civilian liaisons, and a fund-raising department. The organization drew on the advice and expertise of the conservative civilian party, the União Democrática Nacional (UDN). The air force, traditionally a conservative service, lent the Democratic Crusade planes and pilots to ferry its members and take propaganda to the interior. Most importantly, the organization succeeded in raising vast amounts of money:
With the campaign, the Crusade reorganized itself, it strengthened itself, and it obtained money. That’s no joke. To send someone to Rio Grande do Sul to carry out the campaign, money is necessary.... We ordered agents to every part of Brazil’s interior, to all the garrisons. Cordeiro didn’t conduct this campaign. It was carried out only in Rio de Janeiro. But after the [1950] defeat everyone [joined together to] create a great force. My God in Heaven! They went to all the garrisons, they obtained people from the air force with planes . . . [and] money.92
The money of the elites, the authority of senior officers, and the aid of the air force all served to create an impressive electoral machine.
This well-funded organization tracked the activities of nationalist officers. The internationalists then unleashed a campaign of terror against the nationalist party. In particular, the Democratic Crusade targeted nationalist commanders who worked in the election campaign as liaisons to the enlisted ranks or civilian organizations:
In March 1952, on the eve of the election—the election is in May—an anticommunist trial was unleashed in the armed forces. It was tremendous! Including barbaric tortures! You couldn’t imagine! Between officers and civilians, more than a thousand people were arrested. They were arrested and placed on trial, accused of being Communists. . .. This was all undertaken with two objectives in mind: to get the Communists and to influence the election. The political world accepted this as a cleaning out of the armed forces.93
The enlisted ranks lost their political voice in this wave of repression.94 But officers were not immune from arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and mistreatment. Everywhere from the sophisticated cities on the coast, to the most remote garrisons in the Amazon, soldiers were swept up in the campaign and the terror that followed.
Given that the internationalists believed that the election would be decided outside the capital, they extended repression throughout Brazil. Through April and May, the papers recorded a steady string of arrests that targeted nationalist campaign workers who labored in the interior.95 At his military trial, air force major Sebastião Dantas Loureiro testified about his own experience. He had traveled to garrisons in Brazil’s interior on behalf of the nationalists’ election slate. This work was risky. In Fortaleza the officers who made up the Estillac-Horta Barbosa election commission were all imprisoned. On April 7, 1952, Loureiro was also arrested, after spending two days campaigning in Juiz de Fora. Dozens of ballots he had brought back from that city—all favoring the nationalist slate—were seized by the military police and not returned. Loureiro was held incommunicado, like many others: “All the officers that were traveling as part of the Estillac-Horta Barbosa electoral campaign were imprisoned and placed on trial.”96 Loureiro believed that all these arrests, like his own, were motivated by fear of the nationalists’ impending victory.97
As became clear after the election, many of the soldiers arrested were febianos who had thrown their support to the nationalist cause. Nationalist officers claimed that some of these men were tortured as part of their opponents’ effort to create an atmosphere of terror in the barracks. Rumors of these events reached the national press at the time, and continued to surface for years.98 A curious public avidly read a book on this topic: “Thousands of volumes of the book Depoimentos esclarecedores sôbre os processes dos militares, which is a collection of documents about the tortures to which the imprisoned were subjected, reached the hands of the Brazilian people.”99 According to Loureiro, the presence of certain officers at interrogations served to warn prisoners to expect to be tortured.100 Loureiro claimed to have witnessed how one man, air force sergeant Hélio Spinola, was kept locked in a toilet stall for an entire month, while these two men, Loureiro and Spinola, were held under barbarous conditions by the Second Infantry Regiment. Loureiro also stated that other prisoners were brutally tortured until they succumbed to mental illness or died.101 One imprisoned soldier lost 15 kilos during 26 days of imprisonment.102
Numerous congressmen protested the mistreatment of prisoners.103 Congressman Euzébio Rocha claimed that during the military inquiry the police created a climate of violence as they tried to force prisoners to sign forged confessions.104 This allegation was confirmed by some of the imprisoned officers.105 Nationalist officers alleged that their civilian allies were also arrested and tortured.106 Yet the public feared Communist infiltration of the army so strongly that they tolerated the internationalists’ reign of terror.107 In the days before the election, the nationalist party found that its political organization had collapsed. As a direct result of its repressive tactics, the Democratic Crusade won the election of May 21, 1952. With this victory, they finally had a free hand to repress not only nationalist officers, but the febianos as well.
Imprisoned War Heroes
The Democratic Crusade wanted to eliminate not only all trace of opposition, but also all memory of the struggle.108 After the election, internationalist officers launched another campaign of mass arrests that lasted until November 1952. This effort was led by the “secret services of the armed forces, and by the Division of the Political Police of the Federal Department of Public Security.”109 In addition, those officers who had already been arrested during the campaign for control of the Military Club continued to be held incommunicado.110 Major Júlio Sérgio de Oliveira was held this way for over 50 days, although such imprisonment was illegal according to the military’s own laws. No exceptions were made nor privileges granted. Even General Edgard de Oliveira was unable to see his son, an imprisoned captain, when he came to Rio de Janeiro.111 Many of these arrests seemed to be politically motivated. For example, one of the men arrested was Major Humberto Freire de Andrade, the former editor of the Revista do Clube Militar, which had published articles that infuriated internationalist officers such as Canrobert Pereira da Costa.112 This new wave of repression led to protests in the press. The journalist Rafael Correa de Oliveira denounced that officers were being arrested merely because they supported Estillac’s faction in the Military Club or the nationalist vision of petroleum development.113
Public protest was also inevitable, as many of the arrested men were not only former members of the FEB, but even decorated war heroes. This fact guaranteed press attention when wives and mothers began to come forward in June 1952 to complain that their husbands and sons had been held incommunicado for between 60 and 80 days. They were able to employ powerful symbolic resources to draw press attention to the plight of family members. The figures of the grieving mother and faithful wife were common in Brazil’s paternalistic culture. The relatives of prisoners also used nationalist rhetoric to argue that their family members had been arrested not for betraying Brazil, but for defending the nation’s sovereignty. Over and over again, the imprisoned soldiers’ wives argued that their husband’s participation in the FEB was the best evidence of their integrity.114
Beginning in June 1952, the press was filled with descriptions of the brutal treatment that former war heroes were receiving. The prisoners included Major Leandro José de Figuerdo Júnior, who had seen combat in Italy; Captain Joaquim Miranda Pessoa de Andrade, whose unit had helped to take Monte Castello; and Major Fortunato Câmara de Oliveira, who was a great hero of the air force. Their presence among the prisoners ensured a public outcry, particularly by veterans.115 Wives and mothers sought to use these soldiers’ status as veterans to defend them from harm. The prisoners’ spouses described in gripping detail how their husbands were being held in cells without light, by guards with fixed bayonets, and with little chance to see their families. They also proclaimed their pride in their husbands, whom they believed were martyrs to Brazil’s economic independence. Captain Joaquim Miranda de Andrade had volunteered to go to Italy, where he saw combat in the Seventh “Sampaio” Infantry Regiment. A true nationalist, his only crime had been to defend, like many other officers, Brazil’s natural riches during the election campaign in the Military Club. Daisy Costa Pessoa de Andrade spoke with outrage of the conditions in which her husband was being held, adding that: “The defense that I make of my husband certainly expresses the sentiments of the mothers and wives of almost one hundred imprisoned soldiers.”116 In similar terms, Maria Lourdes M. Figuerdo protested the imprisonment of her husband, Major Leandro José de Figueirdo Junior, who served in the Fourth Infantry Regiment in São Paulo: “The patriotic conduct of my spouse is manifested by the vows with which he sought to join the FEB and the gallantry with which he struggled in Italy, by the passion with which he defended our petroleum, by the enthusiasm with which he supported patriots such as Artur Bernardes in the defense of our Amazon region. But none of this serves to protect him from arbitrariness and violence.”117
Because the FEB remained a powerful symbol of national pride, the imprisonment of its members created a situation dangerous to the army hierarchy. Yet the head of the General Staff, General Fiúza de Castro, could not free the febianos because they might use their prestige to advance the nationalist cause. For this reason, internationalist officers, such as Colonel Amauri Kruel, used threats and intimidation against members of the military judiciary to ensure that the febianos and other nationalists would remain imprisoned. For example, in July 1952 Amador Cisneiros de Amaral, one of the prosecutors trying the military prisoners, protested that nationalist prisoners were being held incommunicado illegally; the law permitted them to be held in this state for only three days. This infuriated Colonel Kruel (a febiano himself who had led the Second Intelligence Section in Italy), who headed the inquiry that had arrested many of these men. He declared the prosecutor to be a Communist and had him arrested. From prison, Cisneiros sent military judge Adalberto Barreto a letter complaining of Kruel’s actions. Cisneiros was freed, and in September 1952 a court order restored him to military duty.118 Nonetheless, similar pressure from internationalist officers ensured that the cases against nationalist officers would drag on for years. In July 1952, many of these officers were finally absolved.119 But their careers had been ruined and they returned to an army under tight internationalist control. No longer was the nationalist party and its allies among the febianos a major force in the Brazilian army.
The Portrayal of the FEB
This struggle against the FEB and its allies profoundly changed the Brazilian army and its ties to society. It also helped to define a particular vision of the army’s role, which the army hierarchy then imposed upon the institution. Interestingly, the army’s leadership labored with considerable success to attribute this ideological change to the FEB. For example, in 1949 the army hierarchy created a new military school called the Escola Superior da Guerra (ESG), which indoctrinated officers into a pro-United States and anticommunist doctrine called the National Security Ideology, or Ideologia da segurança nacional. The school clearly reflected the General Staff’s concerns during its struggle against the nationalist febianos. For example, ESG instructors condemned “false” nationalism as a threat to hemispheric loyalty. Yet the hierarchy appointed a former febiano, General Cordeiro de Farias, to head this new school. This commander was the same leader whom the febianos helped defeat when he later ran for the presidency of the Military Club in 1950. Cordeiro de Farias took great pride in emphasizing that his school reflected the views of the FEB.120
Army leaders clearly knew the history of factional struggle that shaped military ideology. Yet they wished to conceal the FEB’s struggle against the changes they desired. The FEB continued to represent a powerful symbol of national pride. It was for this reason that the bodies of Brazilian soldiers killed in Europe had been exhumed and returned to their homeland, while the army constructed a monument to their memory in Rio de Janeiro. The army wished to incorporate this wartime experience into its “official history.” A strange inversion, therefore, took place in which the army explained changes in military thought by referring to the FEB and to its impact on the Escola Superior da Guerra. A key part of this process was the work of commanders such as Cordeiro de Farias, whose loyalty to the hierarchy outweighed their ties to fellow veterans. In the end, highly placed leaders of the FEB, such as General Euclides Zenóbio da Costa and Colonel Amauri Kruel, helped to smash the political influence of the officers and men they had once led.121 But they may have had even greater success in shaping the future portrayal of the FEB. Scholars have depicted the FEB as a body that not only brought pro-United States sentiments to the army, but that also encouraged the military to overthrow civilian rule in 1964. Alfred Stepan has even stated that the initial ideals of Brazil’s authoritarian government originated with the FEB.122 In this respect, the army hierarchy did not complete its victory with the 1952 election campaign. The final triumph came years later, when officers, such as Cordeiro de Farias, appropriated all that the FEB symbolized to bolster the hierarchy’s views.
Conclusion
The FEB is not unique in the way its memory was distorted for political ends. All historians worry about the extent to which personal or institutional interests have shaped the narrative they wish to recount. Nonetheless, the FEB’s history illustrates that Latin American armies have succeeded in shaping historical memory. This “official history” has hindered our ability to understand important institutional changes in national militaries. Yet new sources are now available that provide scholars of Latin America with a unique opportunity to create a different perspective of the military. In particular, these documents illuminate the struggles through which army factions created and manipulated doctrine. It is critical to examine these conflicts to understand how Latin American armies influenced civilian affairs after World War II.
Throughout Latin America, profound changes took place within national militaries long before a wave of coups drew attention to these institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet past approaches to studying military institutions have sometimes obscured both the character and the cause of these trends. The historiography has tended to emphasize “formal structures,” such as schools and foreign missions. Yet many of the profound changes that took place within the national armies of Latin America after World War II occurred in the informal structures of power. Military parties formed and promoted their own programs for government. Factions of officers cultivated alliances with business elites. Patterns of corruption altered civil-military ties. Organizations of intelligence and terror emerged during bitter factional conflicts. The military’s vision of its role cannot be understood apart from this history of struggle. Moreover, these informal structures acquired critical importance when broad changes in Latin American politics and society undermined democratic government. In Brazil, they shaped the military’s perception of its role in politics after the coup and provided the framework for military government. Sadly, these networks, alliances, and organizations have often remained hidden because the military has so profoundly shaped the depiction of its own history. With democratization, the military’s control over private archives, public libraries, and individual memory has been shattered or weakened throughout Latin America. Historians need to take advantage of this moment to create a more complete picture of military politics, based on the history of conflict and dissent that national armies in the region have wished to conceal.123 This process will also shed new light on the actual role that some “formal structures” played. The FEB’s greatest defeats did not take place on the battlefields of Italy. By recounting the history of similar groups we can build on earlier scholarship to reclaim the memory of the past from those who dominated it.
I wish to thank the anonymous HAHR referees whose thoughtful comments greatly improved this article. I especially want to express my gratitude to Margaret Everett and Emilia Viotti da Costa, whose advice, ideas, and support made this work possible. My research in Brazil was funded by a Henry Hart Rice Advanced Research Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship for Dissertation Research granted through the Yale Center for Security Studies.
Abbreviations have been used for the Arquivo Góes Monteiro in the Arquivo do Exército, Rio de Janeiro (AE/AGM); and the United States National Archives (US/NA). Located in the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentaçâo de História Contemporânea do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (CPDOC/FGV) are the following archives: archive of Cordeiro de Farias (CF); archive of Nero Moura (NM); and the archive of Getúlio Vargas (GV). All oral history interviews are also held by the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentaçâo de História Contemporánea do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro.
For differing views of the FEB’s wartime performance, see William Waack, As duas faces da glória: a FEB vista pelos seus aliados e inimigos (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Nova Fronteira, 1985); and Frank McCann, “The Força Expedicionária Brasileira in the Italian Campaign, 1944-1945,” Army History: The Professional Bulletin of Army History (Washington, D.C.) 26 (spring 1993): 1-11.
Antonio Carlos Peixoto states that the focus of opposition to Vargas’s regime came from FEB officers; see Antonio Carlos Peixoto, “Le clube militar et les affrontements au sein des forces armées,” in Les partis militaires au Brésil, ed. Alain Rouquié (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1980), 75. Joel Silveira argues that the FEB fought two enemies, both the German army in Italy and Vargas’s regime in Brazil; see Joel Silveira, As duas guerras da FEB (Rio de Janeiro: Idade Nova, 1965), 29. Ricardo Bonalume Neto asserts that the FEB supported democratic ideals, a position that caused Vargas to fear this force; see Ricardo Bonalume Neto, A nassa segunda guerra: os brasileiros em combate, 1942-1945 (Rio de Janeiro: Expressão e Cultura, 1995), 14-15, 217. For an extended discussion of the FEB’s thought, see Alfred C. Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), 239, 242-47.
For the perception of this paradox in Brazil, see Juarez Távora, Uma vida e muitas lutas: memórias, vol 2: A caminhada no altiplano (Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca do Exército, 1976), 177; Nelson Wemeck Sodré, A história militar do Brasil, 3d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilizaçâo Brasileira, 1979), 285; and Frank D. McCann Jr., The Brazilian-American Alliance, 2937-1945 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974), 403-4. McCann’s well-researched and thoughtful work is essential reading for anyone interested in the FEB.
McCann states that the febianos were “confirmed internationalists . . . [who] would struggle against what they considered the exaggerated nationalism of their army colleagues.” McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 442. McCann also describes the FEB as a politically engaged force: “Today, we find the Brazilian army having completed the cycle of its history that began when the FEB came marching home in 1945. Then, its officers saw that to convert their army into a modern one, they would first have to change Brazil. Now, with the country growing rapidly, the military are turning their attention to their own institution.” Frank D. McCann Jr., “The Brazilian Army and the Problem of Mission, 1939-1964,” Journal of Latin American Studies 12 (1980): 126.
Umberto Peregrino Seabra Fagundes argues that the FEB played an important role in overthrowing Vargas and that the organization was imbued with democratic ideals; see Lourenço Dantas Mota, coord., A história vivida, 3 vols. (São Paulo: O Estado de S. Paulo, 1981-82), 2:105-7. Marcio Moreira Alves suggests that although the febianos believed in the infallibility of North American democracy, it was the 1964 coup that consumated their acension to power; see his introduction in Silveira, Duas guerras, 5-6; see also Silveira’s comments, ibid., 11, 32. Stepan maintains that the experience of the FEB shaped the military government after the 1964 coup: “During the war, Brazil sent a combat division, the Força Expedicionária Brasileira (FEB), to fight in Italy as allies of the United States. My extensive interviews with many of the key leaders of the 1964 military government in Brazil indicate that some of the distinctive characteristics of the Castello Branco government—its pro-Americanism, its favorable attitude toward foreign capital, its distaste for ‘excessive nationalism’—had their roots in this experience”; see Alfred C. Stepan, “The New Professionalism,” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1976), 255.
Frederick M. Nunn, The Military in Chilean History: Essays on Civil-Military Relations, 1810-1973 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1976); Louis A. Pérez Jr., Army Politics in Cuba, 1898-1958 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1976); Robert A. Potash, The Army and Politics in Argentina, voi. 2: 1928-1945: Yrigoyen to Perón (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1969); Alfred C. Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988); and Rouquié, Les partis militares au Brésil.
There have been critical examinations of the FEB by such scholars as William Waack, Duas faces. Even these works, however, focus on the FEB’s wartime performance, rather than the FEB’s postwar role.
For an excellent annotated bibliography of the literature on tire FEB, see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 497-500. See also Neto’s discussion of the historiography in Neto, Nassa segunda guara, 10-16.
For comments by officers and their support by scholars, see Stepan, Military in Politics, 242-46; Peixoto, “Clube militar,” 75-78; and Neto, Nassa segunda guerra, 217.
Stepan, Military in Politics, 239, 242.
The FEB itself was divided between different branches of the army, as well as between frontline troops and those in the rear. While it is difficult to judge how these differences shaped the future political behavior of febianos, in light of the number of FEB war heroes arrested in 1952 (such as Major Leandro José de Figueiredo Junior and Captain Joaquim Miranda Pessoa de Andrade) it would appear that FEB combat veterans were particularly staunch nationalists; see Sodré, História militar, 335-38 nn. 466, 467, 468. Members of the Brazilian air force who served in Italy also seem to have supported the nationalist cause upon their return. For example, in 1952 Major Fortunato Câmara de Oliveira, who flew combat missions in Italy, was arrested for supporting the nationalist cause; see the letter of N. Pithan e Silva to NeroMoura, 19 July 1952, NM 51.05.16m, folder 1, doc. 4. For further evidence of links between febianos and air force veterans, see the letter of Danton Coelho to Getúlio Vargas, with the request of N. Pithan e Silva, 21 Jan. 1952, NM 51.05.16m, folder 1, doc. 3a. Major Nero Moura was trained in Orlando, Florida, and led the First Aviation Group in Italy, where he flew 62 air missions against the enemy. In January 1951 he became Vargas’s minister of the air force and remained a strong spokesman for the nationalist cause. See, for example, his speech to the president and high military leaders in 1951; NM 51.05.16 m, folder 1, doc. 11.
See Nelson de Mello, interview, CPDOC/FGV-História Oral, 1982, 239-40, 244; McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 117; and Neto, Nossa segunda guerra, 31.
McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 256.
Ibid., 188, 240.
Neto, Nossa segunda guerra, 38. The British navy seized the arms but ultimately released them after American intervention. For Dutra’s thoughts on Germany as an arms supplier, see his letter to President Vargas dated 29 Aug. 1940, in Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Marechal Eurico Gaspar Dutra: dever da verdade, eds. Mauro Renault Leite and Luiz Gonzaga Novelli Junior (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Nova Fronteira, 1983), 403. For more on Brazilian arms purchases from Germany, see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 111-12, 241.
Mello, interview, 239.
Dutra, Dever da verdade, 422, 471.
For Vargas’s reasons for creating the FEB, see Gerson Moura, Sucessos e ilusões: relações intemacionais do Brasil durante e após a segunda guen’a mundial (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. da Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1991), 6, 15-20.
Although most Brazilians favored the Allies, they did not necessarily want to send their young men to fight overseas. For popular reluctance to sending troops to fight in Europe, see Mello, interview, 246-47; for Britain’s opposition to Brazil’s participation in the war, see Ernâni Amaral Peixoto, interview, CPDOC/FGV-História Oral, 1985, 394-95; and Moura, Successos e Husões, 37. Britain believed that the resources devoted to equipping a Brazilian force would be better spent on United States troops.
McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 117.
Góes Monteiro’s opposed creating the FEB and Dutra slowed its preparations; see Aspásio Camargo and Walder de Góes, Meio sécula de combate: diálogo com Cordeiro de Farias (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Nova Fronteira, 1981), 168, 309, 347-48. Within Brazil the delays were generally blamed on the influence of Nazi fifth columnists. From this perspective, the mere fact that the FEB departed for Europe at all was seen as a victory by many Brazilians; McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 118.
Neto, Nossa segunda guerra, 129-30.
See E. Peixoto, interview, 392.
For how Góes Monteiro and Dutra rigorously weeded out Communists from the FEB, see Mello, interview, 243.
See Alzira Vargas do Amaral Peixoto, interview, CPDOC/FGV-SERCOM/Petrobrás, 1981, 80.
For the reasons behind Mascarenhas’s selection to lead the FEB, see A. Vargas, interview, 80-81; Lourival Coutinho, O General Góes depãe, 3d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Editora Coelho Branco, 1956), 390-91; and Camargo and Góes, Meio sécula, 361. Mascarenhas de Moraes had been a cadet with Vargas in 1901; see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 426.
Camargo and Góes, Meio século, 326, 356.
Neto, Nassa segunda guerra, 129.
Alzira Vargas argued that her father did not interfere in the selection of the febianos, A. Vargas, interview, 81. Butjuraci Magalhães claimed to have seen written proof that Vargas prevented his departure with the FEB; Juraci Magalhäes, interview, CPDOC/FGV-História Oral, 1981, 197, 205. Unlike the officers, the enlisted ranks were not carefully vetted. Indeed, most of them did not volunteer, but were forcibly recruited; see Silveira, Duas guerras, 13.
McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 120; and Stepan, Military in Politics, 87.
These anti-Vargas officers included commanders such as Colonel Nelson de Mello, Brigadier General Euclydes Zenóbio da Costa, Lieutenant Colonel Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, Brigadier General Oswaldo Cordeiro de Farias, and Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. For contacts among anti-Vargas officers, see Oswaldo Cordeiro de Farias’s war diary in his archive, CF 43.09.20 tv, 2-4A.
Ibid., 154.
For the communication difficulties between the United States and Brazilian soldiers, see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 406, 425.
Waack, Duas faces, 117.
Floriano de Lima Brayner, A verdade sobre a FEB: memórias de um chefe de estadomaior na campanha da Itália, 1943-1945 (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira, 1968). Neto commented on Brayner’s bitterness: “Resentment towards the Americans is a constant in the book”; Neto, Nossa segunda guerra, 36. Brayner also had personal reasons to be disgrunded; see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 499.
Waack, Duasfaces, 152.
Mello, interview, 275. For biographical information on this commander, see Israel Beloch and Alzira Alves de Abreu, coords., Dicionário histórico-biográfico brasileiro, 1930-1983, 4 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Forense-Universitária, 1984), 3:2191-94.
João Baptista Mascarenhas de Moraes, The Brazilian Expeditionary Force by Its Commander (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 230-31.
For the fact that the FEB was ignorant of political trends in Brazil, see Mello, interview, 275-77; Camargo and Góes, Meio século, 358; and Joel Silveira, Histórias de pracinha: aito meses com a FEB (Rio de Janeiro: Ediçães de Ouro, 1967), 47. Silveira, Duas guerras, 61-62, notes that the troops sometimes had to rely on German propaganda broadcasts to learn of events at home.
McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 462.
For an example of the press coverage surrounding the FEB, see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 461-62. McCann argues that the FEB overwhelmingly opposed Vargas; ibid., 468. Nonetheless, he also notes that Vargas seemed to enjoy the victory parades that showed his popularity. Vargas even talked of taking the leader of the FEB into his cabinet; see ibid., 466.
A. Vargas, interview, 82-83, 85, 90, asserts that the FEB was not anti-Vargas and that its return in fact bolstered Vargas’s popularity.
The FEB’s return created immense excitement in Brazil; Mascarenhas de Moraes, Brazilian Expeditionary Force, xx, 227. For Vargas’s use of parades greeting the FEB to gain support for his government, see Coutinho, General Góes, 420—39; for an example of a pro-Vargas officer disturbing his comrades with his statements at a rally for the FEB, see Távora, Caminhada no altiplano, 192-93. Nero Moura asserted that army leaders feared that Vargas might use the FEB to retain power and that for this reason they disbanded the FEB; see Moura’s comments in Valentina da Rocha Lima, coord., Getúlio: uma história oral (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Record, 1986), 217. Beloch and Abreu, Dicionário histórico-biográfico, 4:2311-13, offer a biographical sketch of Nero Moura.
See the minutes of the meeting of the army’s senior generals, 28 Sept. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, pp. 12, 15.
For the political situation at the time, see John D. French, “The Populist Gamble of Getúlio Vargas in 1945: Political and Ideological Transitions in Brazil,” in Latin America in the 1940s: War and Postwar Transitions, ed. David Rock (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), 141-65; A. Vargas, interview, 86, notes Prestes’s support ofVargas; see also Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964: An Experiment in Democracy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), 61-62. For the military’s concerns about Communist support of Vargas, see Távora, Caminhada no altiplano, 192.
See the minutes of the seventh meeting of high army generals, 28 Sept. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, p. 13.
Neto, Nassa segunda guerra, 129.
The febianos raised 10,000 cruzeiros to aid Luís Carlos Prestes’s daughter; see Silveira, Histórias, 280.
. “Secret, Secretario Geral do Ministério da Guerra, Gabinete S.S.I., Relatório no. 18,” Sept. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, p. 3.
For the Communists’ support among the returning febianos, including the transfer of weaponry, see ibid., 4.
Góes Monteiro’s anguish was reflected in his difficulty sleeping, mentioned in the minutes of the ninth meeting of the generals, 11 Oct. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, p. 3
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 6.
See McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 440. The FEB viewed Dutra as an enemy and opposed his presidential ambitions; see Silveira, Duas guetras, 11-12, 31-32. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 59–60, provides more on Eduardo Gomes’s candidacy. On 6 July 1945, Dutra ordered the FEB reincorporated into the First Military Region; Mascarenhas de Moraes, Brazilian Expeditionary Force, 225-26. The first troops did not even return from Brazil until 18 July 1945; Silveira, Duas guerras, 23. Later efforts by febianos to organize politically were ruthlessly repressed by the government. For example, the government quickly closed the “Associaçâo dos Ex-Combatentes da F.E.B.,” a veterans club that returning soldiers created in the state of Pará; see Sodré, História militar, 296.
Waack, Duas faces, 216.
McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 120, discusses the powerful military reasons to keep the FEB as a united force; McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 426, also notes the army’s fears of the FEB, even during the war.
The Vargas regime was destroyed by the same men who made it; see José Murilo de Carvalho, “The Armed Forces and Politics in Brazil, 1930-1945,” HAHR 62 (1982): 222. Dutra’s role in overthrowing Vargas is treated in Osvaldo Trigueiro do Vale, O General Dutra e a redemocratização de 45 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1978). Silveira, Duas guerras, 29-30, argues that the FEB favored the overthrow of Vargas, whereas Idálio Sardenburg states that Vargas would have been overthrown with or without the FEB; see his comments in Mota, História vivida, 362; Alzira Amaral Peixoto’s comments in Lima, Getúlio: uma história oral (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1986), 221; and Magalhães, interview, 245-46. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 48-53, however, offers a description of Vargas’s overthrow that does not stress the role of the FEB. For information on the role of the army hierarchy in keeping General Mascarenhas de Moraes away from Rio de Janeiro so that it could carry out the coup, see McCann, Brazilian-American Alliance, 470.
Stepan, Military in Politics, 244-45, notes the arguments of Brazilian officers that their wartime experience changed how they viewed their role, while Eliézer Rizzo de Oliveira, As forças armadas e ideologia no Brasil, 1694-1969 (Petrópolis, Brazil: Ed. Vozes, 1976), 15-22, presents the scholarly belief that the FEB profoundly influenced the Brazilian army’s perception of its role.
The minutes of these secret meetings of the army high command are found in AE/AGM, box 11.
The minutes of the tenth meeting of the generals, 18 Oct. 1945, are in AGM/AE, box 11, pp. 3, 7.
For why the army turned to the United States, see Luciano Martins, Pouvoir et développement économique (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1976), 310-23; for how the war conditioned governmental and military expectations for the United States-Brazil relationship, see John Wirth, The Politics of Brazilian Development, 1930-1954 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1970), 158; for more on why the army rethought its role at war’s end, see Shawn Smallman, “The Parting of the Waters: The Brazilian Army and Society, 1889-1954,” (PhD. diss., Yale Univ., 1995), 110-16.
See the minutes of the tenth meeting of the generals, 18 Oct. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, p. 7.
See Góes Monteiro’s comments at the first meeting of the generals, 10 Aug. 1945, AE/AGM, box 11, pp. 3, 9.
Nationalist rhetoric was originally used in Brazil as a means to critique labor unrest; see Steven Curtis Topik, “Economic Nationalism and the State in an Underdeveloped Country” (PhD. diss., Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1978), 298-300.
O Jornal de Debates, 30 July 1948, p.1.
For Paul Manor’s description of the two factions, see Paul Manor, “Factions et idéologie dans l’armée brésilienne: ‘nationalistes’ et ‘libéraux,’ 1946-1951,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne Contemporaine 25 (1978): 561-62; for Peixoto’s description of these factions, see Peixoto, “Clube militar,” 73-80; see also Smallman, “Parting of the Waters” 197-98 nn.18, 19. There is a rich literature on the development of the petroleum industry and the conflicts this created in Brazil. For some helpful works, see Gerson Moura, A campanha do petróleo (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1986); Peter Seaborn Smith, Oil and Politics in Modem Brazil (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976), 59-89; Mário Victor, A batalha do petróleo brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1970); Wirth, Politics of Brazilian Development, 158-204; Getúlio Pereira Carvalho, “Petrobrás: A Case Study of Nationalism and Institution Building in Brazil” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Connecticut, 1976); and Gabriel Cohn, Petróleo e naáonalismo (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1968).
General Juarez Távora was subchief of the combined General Staff. He was invited to speak at the Military Club in 1948 to articulate the views of the army high command. He remained an active spokesperson after this experience, and constantly stressed that he represented the viewpoint of the military hierarchy: “During the elaboration of the proposed petroleum statute I spoke out on this point with the support of the General Staffs of the army, the air force, and, in general, [of the armed forces]”; Estados Unidos do Brasil, Congresso Nacional, Câmara dos Deputados, Documentos parlamentares-petróleo, 12 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Departamento dos Serviços de Taquigrafia, Directoría de Documentação e Publicidade, 1956-59), 5:207; see also Távora’s 1948 speeches in the Military Club, in Cámara dos Deputados, Documentos parlamentares-petróleo, 2:324-86.
Moura, Campanha, 62.
See Peixoto, “Clube militar,” 89; Smith, Oil and Politics, 58; and Stepan, Military in Politics, 242-46, 249.
In September 1948 police attacked a Rio de Janeiro rally in support of the petroleum initiative and injured many participants. General Zenóbio da Costa went to the hospital that night and passed an actor lying injured in bed. When the actor tried to explain that he had only been trying to listen to an officers’ speech, the general beat his chest and cried: “I am General Zenóbio, commander of the First Region; Colonel Carnaùba is a Communist,” Jornal de Debates (Rio de Janeiro) 8 Oct. 1948, p. 5.
See the letter of Danton Coelho and N. Pithan E. Silva to Getúlio Vargas, 21 Jan. 1951, NM 51.05.16m, folder 1, doc. 3a. Angry at the government’s treatment of returning veterans, N. Pithan e Silva worked to found the first veterans association (Associação dos ex-combatentes) in the Federal District shortly after the end of the war. He then went on to found the first branch of this organization in Rio Grande do Sul, which he was twice elected to head; he was also twice elected vice president of the national council; ibid.
The president of the veterans association attended the rally; see Maria Augusta Tibiriçá Miranda, O petróleo é nosso: a luta contra o ‘entreguismo’pelo monopólio estatal (Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1983), 149.
Emancipação (Rio de Janeiro), 26 May 1950, p. 1.
Estevão Leitão de Carvalho, Memórias de um general reformado (Rio de Janeiro: Impr. do Exército, 1967), 130-32.
Francisco Teixeira described the heirarchy’s decision to advance a candidate from the internationalist faction: “Naturally, given the importance of the campaign ‘The Petroleum is Ours,’ the military hierarchy, as we will call it, alerted itself to the importance of the Military Club, which for years had been unimportant. Then the hierarchy launched a candidate who carried weight in the army; this was Cordeiro de Farias.” See Teixeira’s comments in Lima, Getúlio: uma história oral, 223-24; as well as those of Cordeiro de Farias, ibid., 224. For Farias’s role in representing the army hierarchy, see Sodré, História militar, 305; Paul Manor described Farias as the head of the “liberal” faction; Manor, “Factions et idéologie,” 569.
João Neves da Fontoura to Getúlio Vargas, Mar. 1950, GV 50.05.00/13. For a magnificent description of Estillac, see Nelson Werneck Sodré, Do Estado Novo à ditadura militar: memórias de um soldado, 2d ed. (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1988), 61-63; for more information on Estillac, see a biographical sketch written by an anonymous United States military attaché on 9 Feb. 1951, US/NA, Record Group 319, entry 57, box 41. Smallman, “Parting of the Waters,” 219-25, discusses both the struggle between these two men, as well as the real friendship that had existed between them.
The best single source for the history of the struggle within the Military Club is Sodré, Estado Novo, see also Sodré, História militar. Peixoto, “Clube militar,” 65-69, offers a more theoretical discussion of the Military Club’s role; for its history during this period, see ibid., 81-88. Peixoto suggests that the conflict emerged in 1950 because both factions needed a forum for their debate; ibid., 67. For Rouquié’s statement that the Military Club elections were nearly as important as those for the presidency, see Alain Rouquié “Les processus politiques dans les partis militaires au Brésil,” in Rouquié, Les partis militaires au Brésil, 13. Sodré contradicts him on this point, asserting that the Estado Novo had nearly destroyed the Military Club by this time; see Nelson Werneck Sodré, interview, CPDOC/FGV-SERCOM/Petrobrás, 1988, 15.
See the letter of Caio Miranda to Getúlio Vargas, Nov. 1950, GV 50.10.18/1.
See E. Peixoto, interview, 791, for a description of a meeting between General Zenóbio da Costa and Dutra.
Nationalist officers rejoiced in the political implications of their victory. Shortly after the election, General Estillac met an internationalist officer, General Canrobert Pereira da Costa, to whom he said: “For four years now I’ve been the one who has been taking Dutra’s bitter medicine; it seems that now you’ll be the one who’ll be taking it from Getúlio”; see joão Neves da Fontoura to Getúlio Vargas, May 1950, GV 50.05.00/13.
E. Peixoto, interview, 794.
See Caio Miranda’s reports to Getúlio Vargas, Nov. 1950, GV 50.10.18/1.
For Lacerda’s arguments that communist febianos had seized the Military Club, see Tribuna da Imprensa (Rio de Janeiro) 21 Sept. 21, p. 4.
See the letter of Danton Coelho and N. Pithan e Silva to Getúlio Vargas, 21 Jan. 1951, NM 51.05.16m, folder i, doc. 3a.
See Beloch and Abreu, Dicionário histórico-biográfico, 2:1011.
See Henrique Miranda, interview, CPDOC/FGV-História Oral, 1992, 63. Miranda was a political activist who worked closely with nationalist officers during the petroleum campaign. Sodré believed that General Canrobert ordered these transfers because he wanted to prevent Vargas’s inauguration and to accomplish this he first needed to eliminate nationalist officers; see Sodré, Estado Novo, 59. For the article on the Korean War that sparked the controversy, see Colonel X, “Cronica internacional: consideraçôes sôbre a guerra a Coréia,” Revista do clube militar, 107 (July 1950): 75-80. Sodré, Estado Novo, 23-24, reprinted sections of the article; for a history of the conflict caused by this article, see Manor, “Factions et idéologie.”
For the manner in which military factions could resemble political parties, see Rouquié, “Processus politiques,” 9-17.
See E. Peixoto, interview, 655; for more information on the 1952 election campaign, see Smallman, “Parting of the Waters,” 293-310.
For a biography of Canrobert Pereira da Costa, see Beloch and Abreu, Dicionário histórico-biográfico, 2:964-68; for Zenóbio da Costa, see ibid., 2:988-92; for Fiúza de Castro, ibid., 1:727-28; for Cordeiro de Farias, ibid., 2:1232-38; and for Alcides Etchegoyen, ibid., 2:1207-8.
See Mello, interview, 319-20. A cartoon in the Military Club’s journal reveals how retired officers perceived themselves to be in a vulnerable position. It showed a man walking down the street with his back to two armed thieves, one of whom is saying to the other: “Attack! He is an officer in the reserve ... he can’t use his weapons.” Revista do clube militar, 117 (November/December 1951): 55.
Mello, interview, 309.
Ibid., 310. For details on the support the party received from the air force, see ibid., 311 ; for the support that the conservative civilian party, União Democrática Nacional (UDN), lent to the Democratic Crusade, see E. Peixoto, interview, 656.
See Francisco Teixeira’s comments in Lima, Getúlio: uma história oral, 230. Teixeira was an air force officer who strongly supported Vargas’s 1950 election campaign.
The president and directory of the Casa do Sargento, a social organization for the enlisted ranks, were all arrested in Mar. 1952; see United States Ambassador Herschel V. Johnson to Secretary of State, Mar. 24, 1952, US/NA, Record Group 59, 732.55/3-2452; see also Maria Augusta Tibiriçà, interview, CPDOC/FGV-SERCOM/Petrobrás, 1988, 89. For more information on conferences held by nationalist officers at the Casa do Sargento, see Emancipação, Nov. 1951, p. 2; and Emancipaçâo, Mar. 1952, p. 2. The international press depicted these arrests as an attack on a well-organized Communist conspiracy; see New York Times, 22 Mar. 1952, p. 4; 23 Mar. 1952, p. 24.
For the arrest of many members of the Military Club, see M. Miranda, interview, 94. Miranda was a political activist prominent in many nationalist causes such as the petroleum campaign. The military hierarchy targeted those officers who had been designated to bring the ballots to the capital from the interior; see Sodré, História militar, 334-38. Many of the officers who were arrested had worked distributing a nationalist magazine called Emancipação, as the political activist Henrique Miranda noted; see H. Miranda, interview, 62.
Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro), 2 July 1955, sec. 1, p.7.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid; see Depoimentos esclarecedores sobre os processes dos militares, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: n. p., 1953). This anonymous work is unusual in that it provides the names of the officers who allegedly tortured the prisoners, and describes the tortures in graphic detail. Like many other works that displeased the military, this book vanished from libraries throughout Brazil during the period of military rule, although it is cited by Sodré, História militar, 331-33 nn. 464, 465, 342-43 nn. 471, 472.
Correio da Manhã, 2 July 1955, sec. 1, p. 7.
Specifically, Loureiro referred to the sailor Clarindo Pereira do Sena, who died in the custody of the Second Infantry Regiment, and to air force sergeant Tertuliano Borges, who suffered from mental illness after his imprisonment; see ibid. His account is supported by other sources, including Depoimentos esclarecedores, 1:5-13, 21-25, cited in Sodré, História militar, 331-33 nn. 464, 465.
Ultima Hora (Rio de Janeiro), 5 July 1954, p.7.
In particular, the deputies Campos Vergal, Euzébio Rocha, and Antunes Oliveira, as well as the senators Domingos Velasco and Atilio Vivacqua protested the prisoners’ treatment; see Correio da Manhã, 2 July 1955, sec. 1, p. 7.
Ultima Hora, 5 July 1954, p. 7.
See the description of Major João Telles de Menezes’s experience in Depoimentos esclarecedores, 1:5-13, 21-25, cited in Sodré, História militar, 342 n. 471.
For example, Cicero Santana worked distributing the nationalist magazine Emancipação. He was arrested and severely beaten by the military police of the Seventh Military Region; Emancipação, May 1952, p. 3.
The minister of war, General Ciro de Espírito Santo Cardoso, issued a warning about Communist activity in the armed forces on 8 May 1952. This declaration was international news; New York Times, 9 May 1952, p. 3.
The day after his election, Etchegoyen met with reporters in his apartment. Before taking questions, Etchegoyen warned the journalists, “I am ready to answer only the questions that are about what took place after the elections. I’ve forgotten everything that took place before the vote. I have a poor memory . . .” O Cruzeiro (Rio de Janeiro), 7 June 1952, p. 108.
The Portuguese name for this police service was the Divisão da Polícia Política do Departamento Federal de Segurança Pública. For more information on this effort, led by the commander of the First Military Region, see Correio da Manhã, 1 July 1952, p. 4.
For more information on the arrest of nationalist officers, see Sodré, Estado novo, 113-17.
The fact that these men were held incommunicado illegally generated intense protests in Congress. See the comments of Orlando Dantas in Estados Unidos do Brasil, Congresso Nacional, Câmara dos Deputados, Anais da âmara dos deputados (sessions of 19-24 June 1952) (Rio de Janeiro: Serviço Gráfico do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 1953) 14:368-69.
Congressman Euzébio Rocha represented some of the imprisoned men. See his comments on Major Humberto Freire de Andrade’s trial; Ultima Hora, 5 July 1954, p. 7.
Diário de Notícias (Rio de Janeiro), 14 June 1952, p. 5. Retired generai Leônidas Cardoso wrote the journalist to make it clear that officers were arrested for supporting the nationalist faction during the struggle to control the Military Club.
A commission of six wives and mothers went to the newspaper O Mundo (Rio de Janeiro) to speak of the difficulties they had faced; see O Mundo, 17 June 1952, p. I. For letters the wives and mothers wrote about the prisoners, see Diário de Notícias, 6 June 1952, p. 5; Emancipação, June 1952, p. 10; Diário de Notícias, 14 June 1952, p. 5; see also Sodré, Estado Novo, 113. The issue was even discussed in Congress; Anais da Cámara dos Deputados, sessions of June 19-24, 1952, vol. 14:368-71.
See Sodré, História militar, 335-38 nn. 466-68; the president of the veterans association in Rio Grande do Sul, N. Pithan e Silva, appealed to the minister of the air force, Nero Moura, to take into accoxxnt Major Fortunato Camara’s war record; see N. Pithan E. Silva to Nero Moura, 19 July 1952, NM 51.05.16m, folder 1, doc. 4.
See Daisy Costa Pessoa de Andrade’s statements in Diário de Notícias, 12 June 1952, p. 5; for transcriptions of letters written by the wives of imprisoned febianos, see Sodré, Estado novo, 113.
Diário de Notícias, 6 June 1952, sec. 1, p. 5.
Correio daManbã, 3 July 1952, p. 5; Nevi York Times, 13 July 1952, p.1; 13 Sept. 1952 p. 2; O Cruzeiro, 23 August 1952, pp. 36-42. For more information on the pressures prosecutors underwent, see Correlo da Manhã, 2 July 1955, sec. 1, p. 7.
Ultima Hora, 5 July 1954, p. 7.
See Cordeiro de Farias’s comments in Joseph Comblin, A ideologia da segurança nacional: o poder militar na America Latina, 2d ed., trans. A. Veiga Filho (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira, 1977), 155.
For Zenóbio da Costa’s role in leading the military inquiries, see Sodré, Estado novo, 112. In 1944 Colonel Amauri Kreul had served as part of the Special General Staff, which planned the departure of the first wave of troops to Europe. He also served in Italy as head of the Second Intelligence Section. Yet in 1952 he used all his authority against the imprisoned febianos, New York Times, 13 July 1952, p. 1; Cotreio da Manbã, 3 July 1952, p. 5; O Cruzeiro, 23 Aug. 1952, pp. 36-42; New York Times, 13 Sept. 1952, p. 2
For Stepan’s argument that the FEB brought pro-United States and economically liberal views to the army, see Stepan, Military in Politics, 242-44; for the fact that the FEB’s ideas were embodied in the teaching of ESG, see ibid., 245–46; Peixoto, “Giube militar,” 75-78; Silveira, Duasguerras, 25; and McCann, “Brazilian Army,” 123; for the argument that the FEB’s experience profoundly shaped the first military government after 1964, see Stepan, “New Professionalism,” 255. The above authors’ arguments are extensively critiqued in Smallman, “Parting of the Waters,” 198-210.
Many scholars have already taken advantage of new opportunities. Stepan, for example, has traced the complex relationship between the army hierarchy and military intelligence during the waning years of authoritarian rule in a brilliant study of the institution’s internal conflicts; see Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics.