A young Bolsonaro colonel has given the new Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva the opportunity to change the command of the Brazilian army, an urgent matter for the new government, after the assault on democratic institutions on January 8.
But debolsonarization will be a minefield in quarters strongly radicalized by the former president and with a military command that believes it should play a “moderating” role in Brazilian politics.
Colonel Mauro Cid, close to the then ultra-conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, was appointed commander of the Goiania battalion in May 2022, one of the forces directly linked to the presidency that was conspicuous by its absence during the assault on democratic institutions in Brasilia. When it emerged that the young officer is being investigated for managing a B box of black money with Bolsonaro’s approval, Lula asked for his dismissal last Saturday.
Incredibly, the top commander of the army, General Júlio Cesar de Arruda, refused to obey the presidential order. It is an indication of the extent to which the Brazilian armed forces – and especially the army – feel emboldened after four years in which Bolsonaro brought thousands of soldiers into his administration. Arruda even summoned the high command of the army to complain about the dismissal of Colonel Cid, which he considered ideologically motivated.
Immediately afterwards, the same 64-year-old general was dismissed and replaced by General Tomás Paiva, an “apolitical and non-partisan” military man, according to sources from the Piauí magazine. “Arruda was the most Bolsonarian among the oldest generals,” says the influential columnist Merval Pereira, in O Globo. “He defended the result at the polls, but he felt uncomfortable with the new government.”
The degree of mistrust between Lula and the leadership of the army was revealed on the same day, January 8, in Brasilia, when the new president decided not to decree a military occupation of the capital during the Bolsonaro assault because he feared that it could be “the blow that people wanted”, according to what he said the week after. He warned the armed forces that they are not “a moderating power as they think.”
Colonel Cid – the son of a beloved soldier at the top of the army and a friend of Bolsonaro – acted as Bolsonaro’s personal secretary, accompanying him everywhere. Bolsonaro even trusted him to carry his mobile phone. The colonel maintained close relations with influencers, YouTubers and other protagonists of radical Bolsonaro’s social networks, activists such as the fanatical blogger Allan dos Santos, whose tweet in favor of a military intervention was praised in the middle of last year by Colonel Cid.
This in itself seemed sufficient cause to request his dismissal. But Lula waited until it became known that the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Alexandre de Moraes, is investigating the colonel for his alleged involvement in a money laundering network. The accusation, if confirmed, will show that Bolsonaro’s corrupt activities when he was a federal deputy, denounced by Juliana Dal Piva in her book Jair’s business, may have entered the presidential palace.
Although Lula rejects the aggressive purge called for by segments of the Workers’ Party (PT), the dismissal of General Arruda is part of the restructuring of the command of the military and police divisions directly responsible for protecting the presidency. Forty soldiers from the security of the presidential residence, the Alvorada Palace, have been dismissed as well as 14 other officers of the so-called Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI).
They are all close to General Augusto Heleno, Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential candidate in the October elections. The old leadership of the GSI “has left many informants in key positions,” said an expert on military affairs from the University of Brasilia.
Mucio, who managed to win the support of other forces, the Navy and the air forces less contaminated by Bolsonarism, may be aware of the difficulty of de-bolsonarizing the barracks. It is already known that many soldiers “are in a bubble created by Bolsonarist networks” said the same expert from the University of Brasilia.
Coup currents in the armed forces remain in the military clubs and academies and in the reserves since the rupture that occurred in the army in 1977, at the height of the dictatorship, when several generals led by Sylvio Frota departed from General Ernesto Geisel’s plan to initiate a gradual democratic opening.
Bolsonaro approached these coup currents while improving salary conditions and the budget assigned to the armed forces. The result is a base loyal to the former president, at least in the military.
A measure of the fanaticism of the mid-ranking officers in the barracks was the behavior of another colonel during the assault on January 8. “General Arruda, Brazil and the army expect you to fulfill your duty not to submit to the orders of the greatest thief in the history of humanity,” Colonel José Placídio Matias dos Santos tweeted, according to an investigation by journalist Marcelo Godoy. , in the State of Sao Paulo. “Brasilia is agitated with the action and the patriots. Excellent opportunity for the armed forces to enter the game,” he announced in another.
According to Godoy, the pressure from the Bolsonaro base on the military leadership was exerted through email campaigns sent to the officers and from the camps set up in front of the barracks. “In the camps there were soldiers putting pressure on their active colleagues. They wanted a coup. Some commanders prohibited all contact between their personnel and the campers. Others did not,” says Godoy.
Now General Paiva has to undertake “the hard task of expelling politics from the barracks,” explains Mónica Gugliano, in Piauí. With the Bolsonaro networks generating permanent noise, it will not be easy.
Another factor that can complicate debolsonarization. Paiva is a close ally of the now retired and paraplegic General Eduardo Villas Boas, who, in 2018, tweeted from his wheelchair warning the Supreme Court that a decision to release Lula on habeas corpus would be wrong. seen by the armed forces.
