RIO DE JANEIRO — On a latest Sunday morning, a number of hundred shirtless males sporting camo pants tucked into military boots received collectively to run in formation down the seashore to Copacabana.
As they ran, with vacationers and Brazilians alike gawking from the sand, they yelled “Cazuca,” the identify of a younger military sergeant killed in February throughout an armed theft in western Rio.
Marcelo Soares Corrêa, a retired paratrooper and congressional candidate, led the lads — all energetic or retired members of Brazil’s armed forces — in an anti-communist call-and-response: “Our flag won’t ever be purple!”
Corrêa is certainly one of almost 100 navy veterans searching for workplace in Sunday’s nationwide elections in Brazil. Practically all of them are aligned with Jair Bolsonaro, the ultra-right wing, authoritarian presidential frontrunner well-known for a protracted historical past of sexist, racist, and homophobic remarks. And like Bolsonaro, navy candidates corresponding to Corrêa say their hardline method is required to eradicate the dual issues afflicting Brazil: rampant political corruption and violent crime.
“The one good legal is a lifeless legal,” Corrêa instructed VICE Information. “Should you let the armed forces actually get to work, they may fully get rid of the crime that has taken over the nation.”
This flip towards militarism is elevating alarms in a rustic that emerged solely 33 years in the past from a navy dictatorship infamous for torturing, disappearing, and exiling its opponents. But relatively than run away from Brazil’s ugly previous, Bolsonaro and his allies have appropriated it as a logo of higher days. On the marketing campaign path, these soldiers-turned-politicians routinely and explicitly reward the navy regime. Bolsonaro counts as a private hero Colonel Carlos Brilhante Ustra, who was discovered by Brazil’s Nationwide Reality Fee to have supervised the torture of greater than 500 individuals throughout navy rule.
Although Brazil has at all times had ultra-nationalist hardliners, what makes this yr’s election completely different is that their rhetoric has a lot broader enchantment.
“This nostalgia for navy order is a response to each political corruption and concrete violence,” stated Bryan McCann, a historian at Georgetown College. “Nevertheless it’s fully misplaced. The dictatorship was characterised by widespread corruption, and navy enforcement, the place it’s been examined inside Brazil, has not been a profitable constraint on city violence.”
To many observers, Bolsonaro’s rise, whether or not he prevails in Sunday’s election or not, represents a deeper risk to a democracy made already fragile by a corrupt political institution. Some even concern an outright navy takeover — a chance that, though unlikely, isn’t unreasonable: Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential operating mate, a retired military common named Antonio Hamilton Mourão, has on at the least two events stated {that a} coup could be the solely resolution to Brazil’s issues.
In an interview with VICE Information, Mourão insisted that he didn’t suppose a coup was essential at this second. However he didn’t discard the likelihood. “If the nation is the Titanic that’s sinking, will we, the navy, behave just like the orchestra? Will we begin enjoying and go down with the nation?” He stated. “I feel not.”
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