What's next for Brazil as Jair Bolsonaro's
troubles deepen?
Andre
Pagliarini
The president has stacked his government with military
men. Now that blurring of institutional lines may backfire
Wed 31 Mar
2021 15.00 BST
It is not
surprising that the government of Jair Bolsonaro is in crisis. Setting aside
his ruinous response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the radically reactionary leader
of the largest country in Latin America has never displayed the ability or
desire to use political means to benefit anyone but those closest to him.
Still, the scale and rapidity of the upheaval this week has raised concerns
that Brazilians may soon confront a full-blown political meltdown on top of the
public health disaster that has been unfolding for several months.
On Monday,
Ernesto Araújo, the foreign minister, resigned. His tenure had been marked by
brash self-righteous rhetoric delivered without a glimmer of grace or
confidence. Indeed, Araújo became known for masking his palpable insecurity
with long, confusing references to Latin and Greek antiquity. Aráujo embraced
conspiracy theories and far-right ideas that endeared him to the constellation
of far-right governments that emerged around the world in recent years,
particularly the Trump administration in Washington, but failed to deliver many
tangible results for the Brazilian people (this is why two years ago I called
Araújo “the worst diplomat in the world”).
Most
tragically for the Brazilian people, Araújo’s ineptitude and instinct to
ingratiate himself with Donald Trump at all costs estranged his country from
much of the rest of the world just as a global pandemic made international
cooperation more urgent than ever. Last Wednesday, several senators begged the
foreign minister to resign, calling it a necessary precondition for Brazil to
effectively engage the global community as the novel coronavirus claims more
and more lives. When he finally threw in the towel, Araújo blamed “a false and
hypocritical narrative erected against [him] in the service of shadowy national
and foreign interests”. The response to his resignation, however, was
overwhelmingly positive.
But any
hope that the administration might correct its exasperating course was quickly
dashed by news that other cabinet members were resigning as well. Suddenly, it
seemed something larger and potentially more ominous was afoot in Brasília as
Bolsonaro shook up his administration in response to rising discontent. All
told, six cabinet members would be replaced by the end of the day, with
Fernando Azevedo e Silva, the defence minister, being the most important.
Azevedo is
a general, one of several top-level military men whom Bolsonaro has surrounded
himself with in government. Upon his departure, Azevedo thanked the president
for the chance to serve and applauded himself for having “preserved the armed
forces as state institutions”. This cryptic self-praise begs an uncomfortable
question: had someone been trying to use the military for personal ends? Why
else would Azevedo feel the need to tout its apolitical nature, which has
mostly been a given since the end of military rule in 1985?
In response
to Azevedo’s dismissal, the heads of all three branches of the armed forces
issued a joint resignation, an unprecedented development in Brazilian history.
Much remains uncertain but it seems clear that the armed forces are
increasingly conflicted about their proximity to Bolsonaro’s government and to
the president himself.
Events of
recent days have recalled a troubling history of military involvement in
Brazilian government. In 1971, seven years after a military coup ushered in a
repressive anti-communist dictatorship, political scientist Alfred C Stepan
observed that “in many developing countries not only is the military not
isolated from the tensions experienced by the general population and therefore
not able to act as an integrating force, but the military is itself an element
in the policy that may transform latent tensions into overt crises”.
The fact
that the regime was intensely political is often overlooked by nostalgic
apologists such as Bolsonaro, who see the dictatorship as exemplary rather than
as a dark chapter in the past century.
By stacking
his government with military men, Bolsonaro has made it so that political
crises are by definition military crises, and vice versa. This kind of
cross-pollination is dangerous and the military bears considerable
responsibility for allowing it to happen. If, for example, Bolsonaro clashes
with a cabinet secretary who is also a high-ranking member of the military –
his health minister, fired less than 10 days ago, was also a general – is the
public to assume that the dispute portends a deeper misalignment between the
commander in chief and the armed forces under his control?
This kind
of institutional blurring would be problematic even if the head of state were
not a far-right bigot with authoritarian inclinations who longs for the days of
military rule. By casting so many military men in governmental roles, Bolsonaro
finds himself with inordinate political power over the armed forces. In his
seminal work, Stepan also lamented a tendency by some to “underemphasise the
degree to which a military organisation is permeated and shaped by outside
political pressures”. The current military brass has insisted, explicitly and
implicitly, that it has no appetite for authoritarian adventures of the kind
Bolsonaro makes no secret of working towards.
The extent
to which the lower ranks of the armed forces would follow Bolsonaro across the
Rubicon, however, remains something of an open question. During the
dictatorship, “the troops themselves, for their part, were kept in almost
absolute political passivity”, historian Maud Chirio says in her 2018 book
Politics in Uniform: Military Officers and Dictatorship in Brazil, 1960-80. But
now there is concern support for Bolsonaro runs so deep among rank-and-file
soldiers and police – the police are militarised in Brazil – that escalating
tensions between Bolsonaro and the generals might precipitate a crisis of
authority over security forces.
Another
troubling development this week involved a police officer in the state of Bahia
who had to be shot and killed by his colleagues after threatening to open fire
on them in an apparent psychotic episode. Almost immediately, Bolsonaro
supporters in government and on social media depicted the episode as an
egregious example of government overreach, the felled officer described as a
patriotic martyr fighting back against lockdown measures imposed by the state
governor.
Governor
Rui Costa, a member of the leftwing Workers’ party, has followed international
guidelines in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. For that, the Bolsonaro
shock troops sought to promote a mutiny. That threat has been neutralised for
now, but one cannot help but wonder how much more abuse Brazilian institutions
can take.
Bolsonaro
is steeling himself for something. Whether it is politics as usual or something
worse is a question he has deliberately raised. He has done nothing to reassure
an anxious populace.
Andre
Pagliarini is a lecturer in history and Latin American studies at Dartmouth
College
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