Sortition Law

Brazilian soldiers in Rio Grande do Sul before being sent to the Paraguayan War in 1865

The Brazilian Army traces the beginnings of the current compulsory military service to laws created in the hereditary captaincies in the 16th century, but what existed in Colonial Brazil was a mixture of impressment and the feudal militia system.[1][2][3] In the beginning, in addition to troops coming from Portugal, settlers were expected to organize their own defenses. In addition to the first-line paid troops, in which Brazilians and Portuguese served, there was a second line of milícias, armed on their own and summoned in certain situations, and a third line of ordenanças, with the rest of the inhabitants capable of wielding weapons. Milícias and ordenanças were replaced by the National Guard after Brazil's independence.[4] Service in the National Guard was mandatory among citizens, that is, those who voted and had possessions, and it represented the upper class, unlike the army, where service was not mandatory.[5]

Soldiers were incorporated by volunteering and, as it was insufficient to fill the ranks, by forced recruitment.[6] The "human hunt" was a violent process, feared by the population, capable of putting workers on the run and damaging local economies; even so, it captured few recruits. The state had a weak bureaucracy and recruitment was under the influence of local elites, with little control by the army. In elections, recruitment was a tool against political opponents. Military service was considered a punishment, with harsh discipline and low pay, and soldiers were considered the "scum of society". Still, a precarious social balance kept recruitment under limits. Legal exemptions and a network of patronage protection isolated the so called "honorable poor", workers protected by local bosses. Service burden fell to the unproductive portion of society that "deserved punishment" in popular morality. As violent and inefficient as it was, the arrangement was accepted enough that the first attempt to replace it with conscription, in 1874, was defeated by popular resistance from the so-called "list rippers".[7][8][9]

At the beginning of the First Brazilian Republic, the recruitment pattern of the Brazilian Empire remained. Every soldier was theoretically a "volunteer", but it was common for local state police to arrest the "scum of society" on the streets, who were then sent to the army and navy barracks.[10] The Criminal Code of 1890 punished "vagrancy", "capoeiragem" (the practice of capoeira) and "begging" with imprisonment for a few days, in which prisoners committed themselves to some occupation, such as a military career. In the Brazilian Navy, in addition to the forced recruitment and enlistment of volunteers, there were the Schools for Apprentice-Sailors.[11] According to officer Estevão Leitão de Carvalho, in 1913 the army's main sources of recruitment were refugees from droughts in Northeastern Brazil, criminals and the unemployed or unfit for work, an "inverted selection".[12] Soldiers were frowned upon, and violence and drunkenness were routine in the barracks.[10] The treatment and hygiene were abysmal.[12] Officers maintained discipline by corporal punishment.[10] In the navy, this resulted in the Revolt of the Lash in 1910.[13]

The European model: mobilization of reserve forces through rail networks

The legal frameworks for recruitment were the Regime of Ordinances of 1570, the Royal Charter of 1764 and the Instructions of 10 July 1822.[14] Officers had wanted recruitment reform since the 1840s,[15] and legislators had rhetoric against the system, but there was no reform until the 1870s.[16] A first lottery law proposal was introduced in 1827. In 1834–1835, the lottery proposal was amended to become just a set of bonuses for those who volunteered.[17] Recruitment reform proposals were aborted in 1831, 1839, 1845, 1850, 1858, 1863, and 1866. Partial reforms took place in 1842, 1845, 1847, and 1850, without addressing forced recruitment.[18]

Forced recruitment was far from the European ideal to which the Brazilian elites aspired.[19] Mandatory military service had been a pillar of European armies since the French Revolution,[20] and inspired by it, the 1824 Brazilian Constitution charged everyone with the defense of the state.[5] After the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) European countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom, adopted the model of general conscription, service for 1–3 years and a reserve for wartime mobilization, inspired by Prussia, whose conscription system was considered essential to its victory. Nation-states carried out structural reforms, each increasingly controlling their populations. Their armies grew in the "armed peace" of the following decades, based on increasing literacy, industrialization and railroad networks. Mandatory military service would also be a way of instilling the idea of the nation, a "school of nationality" for men of all social backgrounds,[21][22] making them docile and faithful citizens of the civic religion of patriotism.[23]

Brazil, on the other hand, had a pre-industrial economy and society, with an almost non-existent state for the majority of the population, but the young officialdom demanded change.[21] There was no reserve force, and it was difficult to quickly expand the army in time of need.[24] Soldier shortages were a chronic problem,[25] and officers wanted better-quality manpower.[26] The Paraguayan War evidenced the exhaustion of the model. The much greater demand for soldiers during the war overwhelmed the social arrangement of recruitment, and the conduct of the war was delayed due to the inefficiency of mobilization.[27][28]

Reform of the military service was discussed again from 1866 onwards.[29] The consensus was to end forced recruitment. In its place, Europe offered three models: in the United Kingdom, volunteering for ten years, supplemented by militias, in Prussia, conscription of all eligible men for a short time, followed by enlistment in a reserve, and in France, the draft of some men for seven years of service. Parliamentarians did not accept what they called "conscription", the recruitment of entire classes, as in Prussia.[30][31] Some in the Liberal Party defended volunteering, while others in the Conservative Party, associated with part of the high officialdom, wanted the French model.[32] The lottery won and was made law in 1874. It was more reminiscent of the French laws of 1818 and 1832, with extensive exemptions, than the universal military service implemented in France after its defeat against Prussia.[33]

The new legislation was Law No. 2,556 of 26 September 1874 and Decree 5,881 of 17 February 1875.[34] It was one of several modernizing reforms passed by the Rio Branco Cabinet.[35] If volunteers were lacking, the first lottery would call up free men aged 19 to 30 for six years of service. Subsequent lotteries, held annually, would choose between 19-year-old men.[33][36] The rich would have the personal or pecuniary substitution (in peacetime) and the exemptions as ways to avoid service. Still, the number of exemptions declined. To make service more attractive, discipline and hierarchical distinctions were softened. Seen by reformers as an institutional advance, the law was supposed to distribute the military burden more rationally and equitably through a blind lottery.[37][38] It would end the abuses of forced recruitment, increase the quality of recruits, make military service an honorable duty, and implement a modern reserve system.[39]

To the surprise of its creators, there was opposition from almost all social classes. The equality of the lottery was not seen as fair by the workers benefiting from the protection of patrons, and those who carried out the lottery were not trusted. If, for the poor, the law tightened the burden, for landowners it intensified competition with the military for access to workers. In 1875, when work on the enlistment was due to begin, it was interrupted by crowds of "list rippers" in ten provinces in Southeastern and Northeastern Brazil. The revolt had a peasant character, despite being supported by local elites, and outstanding female participation, with women defending their husbands and families; the new law did not include the traditional exemption for married men. The state backed off, postponing the lottery indefinitely, and the status quo of forced recruitment was maintained.[8][40][41]

Hermes da Fonseca (in the center) with academic volunteers in 1908. They cheered the law of the lottery

The military ideology after the Proclamation of the Brazilian Republic in 1889 was of the army as the "armed people".[42] The 1891 Brazilian Constitution provided that soldiers in the army and navy would be volunteers, or, failing that, drawn by lottery.[43] Thus, mandatory military service was determined, but its application had not been regulated.[44] The High Command saw compulsory military service as indispensable, and each year Ministry of War reports emphasized its need.[42] It would appear among the military reforms discussed at the beginning of the century by groups of officers such as the Young Turks and carried out in the administrations of war ministers such as Hermes da Fonseca (1906–1909). Reforms were made possible by the internal consolidation of the republic, poor performance in campaigns such as the War of Canudos, and international tensions. In addition to the Acre Issue, there was the rivalry with Argentina,[45] whose relations with Brazil had deteriorated since 1904. The two countries were in a naval arms race and militarist rhetoric was disseminated in their presses. The possibility of war was taken seriously in 1908.[46]

In 1906, federal deputy Alcindo Guanabara presented a new draft law on the lottery. Some parliamentarians questioned its constitutionality, but 15 months later, on 4 January 1908, it was approved.[47] Enlistment boards in the municipalities would annually census all men aged 20 to 28 years. The lotteries would be held annually.[48] Annual batches of recruits would be turned into soldiers and sent to the reserve.[49] The permanent elements of the army would be empowered to instruct this continuous flow, preparing the nation for future wars.[50]

Illustration in O Malho magazine about the proliferation of shooting clubs

Hermes da Fonseca's reforms revolved around mandatory military service.[51] It was needed for the new divisional organization that was intended to be created. The military districts into which Brazil's territory was divided were replaced by thirteen permanent inspection regions, responsible for filling the ranks. Both districts and regions would correspond to army divisions.[52] Only in the "Hermes Reform", in 1908, did the army start to have large permanent units, such as brigades; its structure until then was rudimentary.[53]

The so-called linhas de tiro (shooting ranges), precursors of the Tiros de Guerra, publicized the project and helped propel its approval. Considered more pleasant than the barracks by civilians, they would be a reserve for the army,[54] where youths would receive paramilitary training in weapons and discipline. It was an alternative to military service, taking place in organizations other than traditional ones.[55] In 1906, existing shooting range institutions were merged into the Brazilian Shooting Confederation.[56] The shooting ranges were elitist, and shooters from the Tiros de Guerra, volunteer participants in army maneuvers and students from schools with military training were exempt from the lottery. The Tiros de Guerra were thus a way for the middle and upper classes not to serve in the army. The union of ten shooting clubs of the Federal District in 1908 constituted the first organized reserve of the army.[57] 300 maneuver volunteers were incorporated, some from high society. In the same year, a first civilian college adopted military instruction.[58] Interest in a reserve was also one of the reasons for the army's efforts to control the Public Forces (state-controlled military forces) and the National Guard.[59][60]

Attack on the enlistment papers by women in the interior of Minas Gerais, O Malho[lower-alpha 1]

Government pressure and enthusiastic support from the middle class allowed the law to be approved.[54] The urban middle class, which made up the officer corps and had an increasing similarity of ideas, intended to strengthen the army against coronelism.[42] Enthusiasm was not unanimous. Supported by officers, intellectuals and capitalists, the law was unwanted among workers. Military service was until then compared to slavery and lower ranks were not valued, although the law sought to change their reputation.[61] The mood of nationalist euphoria was not shared by all of society.[54] Opposition demonstrations took place both in large cities and in the countryside.[62] In Minas Gerais, a powerful state averse to military service, the first attempt at enlistment in 1908 had violent reactions. In Sacramento, 200 women destroyed enlistment records;[63] another attack took place in Uberaba. In Mar de Espanha and Carangola, board members were murdered. In Vila da Abadia there was a mass flight of the population. There were several other resistance incidents.[64][lower-alpha 2]

After the law was passed, budget cuts reduced the army's strength to a level staffed only with volunteers, and there was no lottery.[65] Enlistment boards were put in place for the future lottery, but slowly. In Minas Gerais, only ten of the 178 municipalities had boards in 1912.[63] With incomplete lists, it was not possible to carry out the lottery.[66] With the candidacy of marshal Hermes da Fonseca in the 1910 presidential election and the opposition of the Civilist Campaign, the enthusiasm of the civilian elite for the lottery waned. The Sortition Law was associated with the marshal.[64] Hermes won the election, but in his tenure (1910–1914) the Salvation Policy discredited the army, further delaying mandatory military service.[67] An initial surge of enthusiasm for shooting societies was lost because the law was not applied, and membership only began to grow again after 1916.[68] Personnel demand continued to be met by volunteering and forced recruitment until 1916.[69]

1967 stamp commemorating Olavo Bilac's contribution to mandatory military service

The officers' consensus on the law was that it should fill in the gaps in the ranks, generalize military training, and form a deployable reserve.[70] Armies throughout South America were undergoing modernizations, and Brazilian officers looked with concern at their country's backwardness. Chile and Argentina had already adopted compulsory military service in 1900 and 1901, respectively. In the same period (1900–1912) it was also adopted by Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.[20][71][72] In the navy, the problem of lack of personnel had already been remedied with the old instruments; there was a shortage of enlisted men until the end of the 1900s, but by 1914 94% of the National Marine Corps personnel ranks had been filled.[73]

While the military usefulness of conscription was clear, ideological perspectives on it were diverse, and intellectuals were more ambitious than officers.[74] It was associated with the contemporary idea of modernity and rationality, transforming the nation in the likes of countries considered more advanced;[75] "an example, a reference for the literate avant-gardes of the time, a symbol of modernity, civilization and progress". Civilian and military republican leaders saw the possibility of modernizing the bureaucratic apparatus of the state and breaking the local clientelism that made recruitment difficult.[76] These local powers (rural coronelism) intimidated voters with the threat of impressment, and thus they opposed the lottery.[77]

Intellectuals, notably Olavo Bilac, saw an educational and disciplining potential of compulsory military service on the masses. The Armed Forces would serve as an alternative to the limited-reach education system in transforming the population, which they saw as ignorant, manipulated and lacking a sense of nationality. The recruits would leave the barracks as citizens instilled with the values of intellectuals. This "civilizing mission" would be conducted by the officers, who would become "civic priests", teachers of the soldiers-students. Bilac stressed that militarization would be against an external invader, not offensive, and the "citizen soldier" would be a militarized civilian and not a member of a military caste interfering in politics.[78][79][80][81] The scope of the lottery would be universal, giving a sense of civic and national unity to countrymen from the interior and children of former slaves and immigrants.[82] Thus, it would be a way of consolidating the Brazilian nation-state.[83] If, on the one hand, the disciplinary effect would be for the lower class, on the other hand middle and upper classes were also expected to serve, and Bilac even scandalized them with his insistence on the immediate application of the law.[84] During the law's discussion, Alcindo Guanabara spoke that the lottery would be for all social classes, and the opposition came from the bourgeoisie that did not want their children to serve. For him, "the new army will not be a prison, a place of torture, it will not be a branch of the Dantean Inferno".[85][lower-alpha 3] According to Olavo Bilac:[86]

What is generalized military service? It is the complete triumph of democracy; the leveling of classes, the school of order, discipline, cohesion; the laboratory of self-dignity and patriotism. It is compulsory primary education; it is compulsory civic education; it is obligatory cleanliness, obligatory hygiene, obligatory muscular and psychic regeneration.

Illustration in O Malho about workers' opposition to the law[lower-alpha 4]

Alberto Torres, like Olavo Bilac, an influential intellectual for the military, was against compulsory military service. For Torres, military training would not transmit civic virtues; soldiers would only be virtuous if they had been virtuous before; "civic character, morality, feelings of altruism and sympathy have only found adulteration in the barracks until today. The good soldier brings them from home and from the public squares to the barracks. The barracks, not being able to create such qualities, does not, therefore, make good soldiers for our time: it makes praetorians (...)" Instead, compulsory military service would be undemocratic, transforming permanent officers into a caste above the people and engaged in politics.[87][88][89] As a ruralist, Torres considered a civic militia, that is, the National Guard, to be the most democratic alternative.[90]

The newspapers Correio da Manhã, O Século and Gazeta de Notícias called the law bellicose and anti-individualist.[91] The satirical magazine O Malho published numerous criticisms and ironies.[92] For the Associação dos Empregados no Comercio do Rio de Janeiro (AECRJ), the law violated liberal principles and individual liberties in regards to the State and disorganized the working classes. The Positivist Apostolate of Brazil, based on the theories of Auguste Comte, saw no future for militarization in social evolution.[93] The civic discourse of Bilac and his supporters was satirized by the popular poet Leandro Gomes de Barros.[94] According to Barros' poem O sorteio militar, from 1906, everyone would be drafted — priests, the elderly, the blind, the maimed, the insane and even the dead — but not the elite.[66]

The main opposition to the lottery, however, came from the labor movement. The First Brazilian Workers' Congress, in 1906, had already passed an anti-militarist resolution. Reception to the new law was hostile in 1908; for the workers' representatives, among them anarchist leaders, militarism and war were only in the interests of capitalists. The Brazilian Workers Confederation had an anti-militarist and anti-capitalist discourse in its demonstrations and in its newspaper A Voz do Trabalhador, calling for resistance to the law. In January 1908 the Brazilian Antimilitarist League was founded. According to its program, the army "serves to keep the working class in its place, and serves as a strikebreaker", "[it] represents a barbaric past, and for this reason it opposes the ideals of individual freedom, freedom of choice of professions and respect for the person"; "The Fatherland, in the name of which the army is created to defend, does not represent the interests of all citizens, but only that of the capitalists", and the lottery "is the return of slavery and is unconstitutional".[93][95] Anarchist opposition to the law was internationalist; Brazilian antimilitarists were articulated with similar movements in Argentina, both opposed to conscription and war between the two countries.[46] In 1915, the International Peace Congress was held in Rio de Janeiro. Repressed by the authorities, the labor movement failed to prevent the implementation of the law.[93][95]

One of the central controversies, first raised by the workers, was the effect of compulsory military service on the family. For conscription opponents, men would not be able to start a family and mothers would lose their children to the degrading environment of the barracks; the manifesto of the Antimilitarist League warned mothers that the Armed Forces were dens of criminals and their children would be treated the same as them. Defenders reacted by describing the barracks as an extension of the family.[93] For many Brazilian men, military service did not represent virility but a threat to their masculinity. In the dark humor of the time, the conscripts were mocked as "cuckolds". Like mandatory vaccination, which had resulted in the Vaccine Revolt in 1904, mandatory military service was seen as a violation of domestic privacy. In both cases, the opponents of the state were similar—trade unionists, Jacobins (radical republicans), orthodox positivists, monarchists and some influential politicians. In turn, lottery advocates used the rhetoric of hygiene, which was persuasive as prophylaxis was eradicating yellow fever, smallpox and other diseases in cities.[96]

Another point, raised by the AECRJ and the Antimilitarist League, was that military service would privilege immigrants over Brazilians in the labor market.[93] However, the large number of immigrants in the factories drove precisely the unions and leagues against compulsory military service.[97] For its defenders, the children of immigrants would be one of the groups to be integrated into the national community through the service.[98]

Mandatory military service changed the paradigm of a professional army to that of a "nation in arms".[141] The professional soldier (only professional in the sense that he stayed many years in the barracks) was no longer desired.[142] Until then, soldiers served until expulsion or end of career.[143] The term of service was three years in 1891,[144] but soldiers could renew their re-engagement for up to 20 years of service.[145] Incorporated soldiers were of different ages and arrived in small numbers throughout the year.[125] NCOs (corporals, sergeants, and warrant officers) came from the ranks of soldiers, and some of the officers were soldiers that had been promoted.[143]

With the lottery, personnel were divided into a permanent element, consisting mainly of career officers and secondarily of permanent praças (soldiers and NCOs), and a variable one of enlisted men who returned to civilian life after a short period of service.[50][146] Recruits were young and arrived simultaneously, facilitating socialization into the military.[125] Volunteers or draftees served for periods of two years, after which they could then re-engage under certain conditions, and remained in the reserve after serving on active duty.[147] The figure of the professional soldier did not disappear completely, as the army needed a core of experienced soldiers[122] and a new figure emerged, the instructor sergeant.[148] The National Guard, a vestige of a military service separate from the army, was abolished in 1918 as a logical consequence of universal conscription.[119][149] Parallel to the concept of the "nation in arms", there was the elitist project of professionalizing the officer corps.[123] The access of enlisted men to the officership was gradually reduced, especially during the Estado Novo.[150]

The Sortition Law was one of the milestones in the transformation of the Brazilian Army at the beginning of the Republic,[151] with important institutional and political effects.[111] For historian José Murilo de Carvalho, universal conscription was the most important of the various facets of "the army's intense struggle to become a national organization capable of effectively planning and executing a defense policy in its broadest sense" during the First Brazilian Republic.[152] Along with other measures, such as the training of reserve officers (in which the upper class participated), there was a new model of military organization. The army was no longer closed in on itself, taking in some recruits from the outside without returning them to civilian life, but it now had multiple channels of entry and exit and could influence society by training and socializing the reservists.[153] The rebel tenentes of the 1920s gained a sociological justification for the "citizen-soldier" idea, as they could now argue that the force represented the people.[154] The "Party in Uniform" became stronger and more engaged in politics and had a greater ability to impose its ideology on society.[155]

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"Se não és reservista, ainda não és brasileiro" (If you are not a reservist, you are not Brazilian yet) (p. 195). Posters used in publicizing the 1939 Military Service Act.

The army's relationship with society was altered, introducing it to the private sphere of the family and to the most remote parts of Brazil.[156] The development of its bureaucratic structure from the late 1910s onwards allowed it to reach individuals hitherto invisible to the State.[157] The numbers grew gradually, causing "a slow and silent process of accumulation of political capital by the army and, by extension, the central power, to the detriment of local and regional plutocracies". At the national level, this ended up allowing the Estado Novo.[142] The State took the place of local coronéis as patron of the honorable poor. The inclusion of a greater proportion of the population in the military legitimized the social programs and the more inclusive electoral politics of populism, at the same time as the military gained sufficient strength to exercise authoritarian power.[158]

At the time of its implementation, a more restricted lottery was expected for the navy, reaching, in addition to navy schools, the Merchant Navy, as naval service required experience in the area.[159] In practice, the navy and the Brazilian Air Force, created in 1941, took decades to take advantage of the conscription.[138] At the turn of the 21st century, the proportion of conscripts in the navy and air force was much lower than in the army.[160]

The civic mission of mandatory military service was embraced throughout the century by officers as one of the functions of the institution.[161] At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, in view of the worldwide trend towards the adoption of voluntary military service, which occurred even in neighboring countries such as Argentina, the Brazilian Army gradually reduced its dependence on conscripts and tried to increase its core base, i.e. , soldiers who choose to remain for more than a year.[162] Even so, the consensus in the Brazilian government remained in favor of conscription. The National Defense Strategy, approved in 2008, maintained the definition of mandatory military service as a leveler of social classes, even though it did not correspond to the reality of recruitment, even more so with the very low percentages of incorporation. The arguments used in its defense are the same ones formulated at the time of the Sortition Law, a century before, such as the education of the masses and the "nation in arms". The pedagogical procedures in the training of recruits are in accordance with what Olavo Bilac, the Young Turks and the National Defense League intended, seeking to mold a "docile, politically neutral body, however, orderly, productive and patriotic".[163]