3—
Modernization by the Army

At the beginning of the century the national armies of the majority of South American countries experienced a qualitative leap. As a result of many factors, the "old army" gave way to a "new army." The overall military modernization began with the "professionalization" of the officer corps. This was an ambiguous formula that was to be cited often by the civilians when they were confronted by armies in revolt in violation of the constitutions that described them as "professional, apolitical, and non-deliberating." In Europe in 1973, because we had heard it said so often by the leaders of Popular Unity, we believed that the Chilean army was a professionalized and not a draft army. Alas, it was just the opposite. However, that misunderstanding is symptomatic of the change that involved making officers true professionals at arms with the understanding that they would then be concerned only with their profession. In a word, a reform that was aimed at organizing "the nation at arms" resulted in making military life a permanent full-time paid profession that required study, lengthy physical and intellectual preparation, and was subject to strictly codified bureaucratic rules.

That profound and dramatic transformation in relation to what preceded it could have appeared trivial to someone analyzing military power without considering the history and structure of the army. But if you wish to explain how in order to answer the question of why, it is difficult to overlook the specific characteristics of the modern army. Nor can one forget national differences. The permanent—even overwhelming—political role of the ar-

mies of the continent, as well as the praetorianism that appears to make them less concerned with things military, may lead us to underestimate their military nature. From there it is only a step to considering them simply as political forces in competition for power like the others. To reach that conclusion is certainly to be ignorant, not only about the "military parties" but about the functioning of the Latin American political systems for the last half century.

Therefore, we are going to examine the organization and composition of those armies that have such importance for the future of the continent. We will also look at how the officers become politicized, since the paradox of modernization, that—avowedly or not, was aimed at removing the military from politics—was that it marked the end of civilian hegemony in nearly every country in the region. Measures that were aimed at defending and stabilizing political life and regulating the harmonious functioning of the state produced, on the contrary, institutional ruptures and military usurpation. The armies, in emancipating themselves from civil society and the ruling class, became repoliticized on a different basis according to their own organizational logic.

Military Organization and "Professionalization"

Armies are all organized along the same lines. The degree of militarization of defense institutions varies, but the similarity in behavior and attitudes of military organizations that are separated in time and space is surprising. It is not necessary to postulate a common set of essential characteristics of the military, but rather to recognize that armies are institutions that act in accordance with their own manifest functions.

As complex organizations of a particular type, military forces always have as their objective, if not their reason for existence, the legitimate exercise of violence. From that defining mission follows a system of organization and norms. These values are linked on the one hand to the operation and on the other, to the functions of the institution—that is, to the goals

that it has espoused. The institution's organizational values follow from the pyramidal structure and centralized command required for decision making in combat. Its operational values provide an answer to questions regarding the purpose and need for combat. "Why are we fighting?" "Why are they our enemy?" Those two sets of values overlap, but one can weigh more than the other in specific circumstances and armies can be divided in accordance with the relative importance of each complex of norms.

In addition, armies differ from other institutions in that they are "total" organizations, or nearly so. Even if military men are generally drawn from the civilian population, the specialty of arms is not a profession like the others. The distinction between civilians and the military involves something far more significant than the separation and sense of unity produced by wearing a uniform. Armies are coercive organizations in which authority is based on a constraint that is both physical and symbolic. They are bureaucracies to which the formalized mechanisms of checks and balances and limitations on the central authority do not apply. In short, the autocratic concentration of command is in conformity with the exigencies of combat, and it is this rationale that requires commissioned and noncommissioned officers to ask the permission of their colonel to take a wife. The self-sufficiency of the armies, their independence of society—demonstrated by the existence of "military" chaplains, doctors, musicians, barbers, and veterinarians—works in the same direction. Indeed, that special quality, the voluntary isolation that is supposed to anticipate the autonomy of armies on campaign, also has another function that is symbolic in character—that is, to produce an acceptance through rituals and myths, images and identification procedures, of the monopoly of violence and the need for a defensive apparatus.

Those organizational values may appear to be universal. The norms that we have called operational, that is, the military ethic or "symbolic system,"^[1] however, are affected by the sociopolitical environment. More precisely, they are related to the type of recruitment, armament, and strategy of a given period and civilization. Thus a mass army recruited from rural groups with a low level of culture produces the glorification of heroism,

honor, and self-sacrifice that promote obedience and discipline on the part of the foot soldiers. These were the dominant values among the Western armies when the Latin American states emulated them. The importance of the formation of character and "military drill" that was an expression of the deep division between the troops (the men) and the commanders (the leaders) resulted from the same requirement.

This was the model that the Latin American countries were to attempt to adopt—or, as their critics would say, to ape. Most of this activity took place in the absence of any imminent likelihood of armed conflict, and this contributed to an increase of institutional rigidity and to the development of a heroic rhetoric justifying these particular bureaucracies. The establishment of organizations of this kind required a high level of self-sufficiency, intense socialization of its members, and the institutionalization of the military career through continuing technical formation in a network of special schools. All these elements guaranteed a normative isolation, which, as we shall see, closed the army to society, only to open to it a more direct access to power.

We have seen in the preceding chapter how modernization responded to different needs in each country. But it is clear that in all cases—even when, as in Brazil, the dominant groups needed a great deal of persuasion—the formation of modern armies developed in response to Latin America's new role in the world economy. The modern armies were state forces that guaranteed internal order and the uninterrupted exploitation of the mineral and agricultural riches desired by Europe. As modern institutions with a technical level that was advanced by international—that is, European—standards, they projected an image abroad of seriousness and competence that reassured investors. In a way they were the complement "for foreign consumption" of the Westminster-style parliamentarianism that seemed to delight the Latin American elites at the turn of the century.

It is not true, however, that these armies were created by the metropolitan economic powers in order to control the sources of their primary products. The most important economic power and the primary investor in the subcontinent at the time

of that change. Great Britain, was not a military model and only incidentally sold armaments. France, on the other hand, which shared with Germany a quasi-monopoly of the export of military technology, had only a modest place, apart from the sale of arms, in the foreign trade of the Latin American countries. Since the European countries were in constant rivalry, it is also difficult to believe in an agreement or division of labor that would be of primary benefit to Great Britain. In fact, we are discussing a process that was dependent, it is true, but was nevertheless directed from within Latin America in response to internal necessities. The modern army was both a symbol of progress and an instrument of centralization which promoted the building of the state. As national armies, the military establishments required a unified ruling class for their improvement and expansion. Thus the later that unification took place, the more the process of professionalization was delayed—sometimes to the benefit of an unstable civilian power, and sometimes to give way to the de facto power of a dictator.

Since the prestige of a well-organized and well-trained army reflected favorably on the state itself, it is not surprising that externally oriented nations should call upon instructors from the two most prestigious armies in the world between 1880 and 1920—the armies of France and Germany. These two enemy countries, victors and vanquished in two successive wars, made their services available to any nation that wished to reorganize its defensive apparatus. At stake were both diplomatic and commercial influence, and also the expansion of the armaments industry. Their transatlantic rivalry was a form of "warfare" pursued by indirect means, and in that context of bitter military-commercial rivalry any actions were justified. Secret agents inspired campaigns in the local press and gathered intelligence about the "enemy."^[2] In Brazil the Germans did not hesitate to discredit French war materiel while the French denounced the racism of the German officer as being out of place in a nation of mestizos.^[3] The struggle for influence and military preponderance put the Latin American states in a position of privilege and choice that they utilized in accordance with their own geostrategic characteristics. Nevertheless, we should note that externally oriented modernization through the purchase of

technology and armament produces a narrow dependence. Those armies that were the symbols of independence and the emblems of sovereignty thus only seemed to be "Europeanstyle" armies. Without heavy industry of their own, they secured everything from Krupp or Schneider. Thus they were involved by necessity in the diplomatic game and participated in political decisions relating to foreign trade. This is why the military in the richest countries of the continent often took the lead in industrial expansion in order to diminish the "critical dependence" that might undermine the operational capacities of these imitative armed forces.

An Externalized Modernization

The three adversaries in the War of the Pacific—Chile, which was the winner, and Peru and Bolivia, which lost—were, if not the first states to turn to Europe in order to reorganize their armies, undoubtedly those that emulated the Continent most completely. In Chile, which learned from the Germans, Prussianization left traces that are still visible today. While the officers have stopped wearing the Prussian uniforms and the mustaches and monocles of the Kaiser period, the cadets in the military college still wear the pointed helmet and parade with the goose step. In 1885 the Chilean government decided to hire a German mission to professionalize its army. The victory in the war had revealed weakness in the national military structure and the dangers were far from over. Chile felt surrounded by enemies. Peruvian and Bolivian irredentism disturbed Santiago. Peru had not yet accepted the loss of the province of Tarapacá and the occupation of the ports of Tacna and Arica. Landlocked Bolivia kept an eye fixed on its lost maritime outlet, the port of Antofagasta on the Pacific, while Chile's large Argentine neighbor appeared hostile to the narrow nation confined behind a Cordillera lacking clear boundaries. Colonel Körner, chief of the mission from 1886 until 1910, was to transform an army of veterans of the War of the Pacific into a modern force with a high-level Prussianized officer corps that enjoyed great prestige throughout the conti-

nent. While the Libertador O'Higgins had created the first military school in Latin America immediately after independence (1817), Colonel Körner founded a Colegio Militar in 1886 modeled on the Kriegsakademie with a three-year program of study. The best students were sent to German regiments and even to the imperial guard. More than thirty German officers were working in Chile by the beginning of this century. In 1906 a program of reform of the army's organization and internal regulations was completed that transformed the Chilean military into a veritable reflection of the German army. Colonel Körner, now a general, was a member of the Chilean army, having been named chief of the general staff in 1891. During the confrontation between the nationalist president Balmaceda and the parliamentary oligarchy, Körner and his followers supported the adversaries of the president while the army as a whole remained loyal to him. This has been cited as proof of Körner's antinationalist orientation and predisposition to European interests. It is undeniable that the German mission did much for German industry and for Krupp in particular. Under the influence of Körner the government contracted a large loan in 1898 in order to buy arms; in the course of the arms race that then ensued in the Southern Cone, the Chilean government did not hesitate to pledge the customs revenues of the country to its creditors,^[4]

Almost at the same time, no doubt in response to the Chilean challenge, Peru hired a French military mission. The first team under the command of Captain Paul Clément arrived in Lima in 1896. The French organized and instructed the Peruvians until 1940, with an interruption between 1914 and 1918. In contrast to the Germans in Chile, the French did not become involved in the political life of Peru, but their influence was no less, important. The French army, which at the time emphasized defense and fortifications, was of particular interest to the Peruvians because of desired assistance in the area of military engineering. In reports and instructions that were influenced by their colonial experience, the French gave special emphasis to transportation and communication, the military presence in the population, and their knowledge of the country. Some have argued that French influence was one of the causes of the

"populist" and social orientation of the Peruvian officers, an attitude that was demonstrated in the 1960s.^[5] A direct relationship cannot be proven, but the French influence produced a very different result from that of the Prussian officers in the hostile neighboring republic.

Bolivia, reacting later to the shock of the war, was more eclectic in its choice. A private French military mission reorganized the programs of the Military School and the War College in 1905. Beginning in 1910, however, La Paz imitated Santiago and hired German instructors. The director of the mission, Colonel Hans Kundt, was soon named head of the general staff. With a team of a dozen commissioned and noncommissioned officers from Germany, he initiated a German system of instruction of officers and enlisted men and introduced the regulations of the German army. His initial contract was extended until 1914. In 1921 Kundt, now a general, returned to Bolivia and became a naturalized citizen; subsequently he became deeply involved in the country's political life as one of the principal supporters of the Republican party. That old-style "politicization" of a military notable seems to have interfered with the strengthening of the war machine. When Bolivia faced Paraguay in the Chaco affair (1932–35), Kundt's army was beaten by the Paraguayans just as the old army had been beaten by the Chileans on the Pacific. That defeat and the difficult mixture of young academically trained officers with old-style generals, of veterans with politicians, had a long-term impact on the Bolivian military.

In cosmopolitan Argentina, which had attempted very early to professionalize its officer corps, eclecticism at the beginning dominated the choice of foreign connections. The Military College, which was responsible for the formation of officers and was created by Sarmiento in 1869, had as its first directors an Austro-Hungarian colonel and a French cavalry commander. The French army was the model for the Argentine army until 1904, but the armament of the old army was German Krupp cannons and Mauser rifles after 1884. In 1900 the prestige of the Imperial General Staff carried the day, and the Superior War School was created under German patronage. The teaching staff was made up of German officers, and the school,

which certified members of the General Staff, remained until the eve of the Second World War a bastion of the German military tradition. For the Argentine admirers of the German military machine who continued after 1914–18 to analyze the 1870 war from the German side, it was as if Germany had not lost World War I.

The process of Germanization was completed after 1904 when Argentine officers were sent en masse for training in the regiments of the (German) Imperial Army. A Brazilian military attaché claimed in 1921 that "half the Argentine officers have gone through German schools or the German army."^[6] The influence of the Offizier Korps penetrated Argentine military society profoundly. Half of the twelve books published between 1918 and 1930 by the Officers' Library series of official military texts were translated from German. Admiration for the German model was unbounded. Thus, few of the Argentine officers thought in 1914 that the most formidable war machine that had ever existed could be beaten. It is reported that General José Uriburu, who in 1930 would become the first military president of modern Argentina and had kept since his training in the Kaiser's guard the evocative nickname of "von Pepe," pointed to the map during the war and announced to the Military Club that the victory of the imperial armies was inevitable. This is why the few isolated voices that denounced the danger inherent in a mechanical imitation of the German model were justifiably disturbed.^[7]

In Brazil it was the officers who tried to strengthen the national army. Some civilians did not share the fears of the regional oligarchies that a strong army could be the instrument of the central government. The poor performance of the army in the face of the peasant revolt of Canudos, and the distrust of Argentina, Brazil's traditional rival in the subcontinent, argued for a reorganization and an effort to modernize the equipment of the military. In order to accomplish this it was necessary to call upon Europe. The Germans and French could not have asked for anything better: from the end of the century the two countries competed to furnish cannons to Brazil. A French mission was hired by the state of São Paulo in 1906 to reorganize and train the Public Force so that it became a formidable local

army. Nevertheless, thanks to clever propaganda, the Germans generally dominated. From 1905 to 1912 thirty Brazilian officers were sent to the German army for instruction, and in 1908 Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, the minister of war and the most prestigious and influential Brazilian general, was the guest of the imperial government. He participated in the grand maneuvers and agreed to open negotiations concerning the establishment of a German military mission. However, in 1910 the same marshal visited France and buried the German proposal, but without agreeing to a French mission. The competition between the two nations was for high stakes: the orders for the war industry included the rearming of the artillery, a program of coastal defense, and the creation of an air force.

Those who had been trained in the German army formed a "home mission" that instructed the cadets in the military school according to the German model. The oldest officers, whose promotion had owed more to political patronage than to their education or military capacity, were hostile to all foreign missions. They feared innovation for career reasons and did not always feel capable of adapting themselves to a European model. Nevertheless, the victory of arms was decisive between France and Germany, and in 1919 a French mission was hired. Directed by General Maurice Gustave Gamelin, it was to transform the Brazilian army from top to bottom, and to last until 1939.

Arms purchases from France allowed Brazil to close the enormous distance between the Brazilian military and the forces of industrial countries. However, it was in the domain of organization, education, and careers that the French influence was particularly marked. The distribution of units throughout the country in the manner of a police force was followed by the formation of large units that could be easily maneuvered and coordinated by a general staff along the lines of a French plan. The officers, who up to that time had received a very theoretical education, now were exposed to a solid military curriculum under the guidance of French instructors at all levels, as well as in the military school beginning in 1924. A series of practical schools and auxiliary services was created. As a result of the French updating, the old army, modernized French-style, underwent a veritable revolution; this was especially marked in

the area of advancement, which from that time was strictly codified by law and removed from local political influence. Merit and professional accomplishment governed all careers.

The French impact was profound and lasting. In 1937 every member of the infantry High Command had been educated by the French as were all the successive ministers of war from 1934 until 1960. General Goes Monteiro, who dominated the military scene from 1930 to 1946, had ranked first in the advanced course organized in Rio de Janeiro by the mission in 1921. The Brazilian disciples of the French army did not lack opportunities to recall the debt that they felt toward their instructors and their admiration for the prestigious officers who commanded the mission. Thus, the image of General Gamelin is very different in Brazil from his image in France, where he is known as chief of the general staff that directed the "debacle." In 1926 a Brazilian military journal stated, "He was the founder of our military doctrine. He established its principles in our basic regulations and he familiarized us with genuine knowledge of it through the superb practical and theoretical lessons that he taught us on maneuvers and in the lecture halls."^[8] Again in 1940 General Gaspar Dutra, the minister of war, declared in a speech given during the Third Region maneuvers in the presence of President Vargas, "I remember the great maneuvers of 1922. They were headed by the exceptional figure of General Gamelin, a universally admired name today that we always mention with nostalgia and veneration."^[9]

The Gallicism of these admirers of the army of Foch and Petain impressed contemporaries. Parallel to the Argentine "von Pepe" and just as real is the caricature of a Francophile general that appears in a scene in one of the novels of Jorge Amado. A self-important old fogey and a candidate for the Brazilian Academy, he had been a distinguished student of the professors in the French mission, and invincible in military maneuvers. The general, Waldomiro Moreira, nicknamed "Maginot line" by his enemies, wrote in the press that during the Second World War Hitler's Panzer Divisionen "had no respect for the established rules of military science, and every evening the Panzer Divisionen contradicted his predictions of each morning."^[10]

If we leave aside—to return to them in a future chapter—

the neocolonial armies created by the United States, we find the same efforts to learn from Europe in nearly every country under different conditions and with different parameters depending on the level of development, the geopolitical situation, and the degree to which a national state had been established. Obviously not all countries hired expensive military missions. We should mention in this context the curious phenomenon of "second-hand" Prussianization carried out by the Chilean army in several countries of the continent. In Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Venezuela, Chilean military missions were called upon to reorganize and to "Europeanize" the national army. In Colombia a team of Chilean officers created the first military school worthy of the name in 1907. The same thing happened in Venezuela, but at the same time officer candidates went for study to Peru, and in 1920 a French mission established the air force and instructed the infantry.

The foreign presence was not without its problems for the host armies. First of all, the European missions aroused genuine resistance from officers who favored a different military influence—the pro-Germans in Brazil, for example. Also, the old officers of the earlier army were not happy about returning to school or having subordinates more knowledgeable than they were, and especially about allowing foreigners to come into direct contact with the internal mechanisms that guaranteed their power in the institution. The "missionaries," on the other hand, wanted to transform and regulate everything, indeed to exercise direct command so as to implement their reforms more effectively. There is no other way to explain the complete integration of the German missions in Chile and Bolivia. General Gamelin complained about the head of the infantry general staff that he "does not support our tutelage [sic] " and "dreams of a French military mission that is completely subordinated."^[11] The responsibilities of a foreign mission were not limited to the transfer of technology and expert consultation; other functions, such as defense, the preparations and the development of military doctrine, related to the area of politics. Also, there were frequent conflicts and the admiration for the mentor army was not without a certain impatience on the part of its disciples. This is one of the paradoxes of externally oriented

modernization that was perhaps too quickly forgotten when the armies of the continent changed masters.

Recruitment and Formation of Officers

The reform of the system of recruitment of officers is central to the modernization of the military. In order to accomplish this it is necessary to produce more educated officers and to raise the professional and technical level in all the grades. In most cases this required a single source of recruitment. Graduation from military school became obligatory in order to obtain an officer's commission. The ideal desired by all the armies, even if they did not always achieve it, was formation according to a single pattern aimed at increasing the homogeneity and esprit de corps of the officers. It was precisely this desired homogeneity that the Argentine military reformers admired in the Offizier Korps. "Their officers have one and the same origin, they belong to the same social class, and to be admitted must pass the same tests. Today they constitute a veritable family,"^[12] said an Argentine general about the German officers, despite the fact that he was defending the "old army." But alternative sources of recruitment were not eliminated everywhere. A Brazilian officer, in a report to his minister concerning the Peruvian army in 1922, deplored the fact that by a law passed in 1901 a third of the officer positions in Peru were reserved for promoted noncommissioned officers because of the insufficient number of candidates for the military school. "This is a source," he commented, "of a lack of homogeneity that gives rise to a certain [internal] rivalry."^[13]

The early methods of recruitment of officers were terminated or abolished more or less slowly. In Guatemala up until 1944 it was not uncommon to find officers who had risen from the ranks rather than graduating from the Polytechnic School that was established in 1873. The continued presence of field-officers was a source of internal division within the institution.^[14] Similarly, the barrier between commissioned and noncommissioned officers was more or less unbridgeable depending on the country. It was permeable in Bolivia, but totally airtight in Argentina. In most cases after a transition period noncommissioned

officers either could not receive a lieutenant's commission or they were required to take the entrance examination for the military academy, as in Peru. In Brazil, that possibility was ended in the 1930s, producing frustration among the sergeants. The officers, for their part, acquired a feeling of belonging to an elite or a superior caste. In these highly bureaucratized peacetime armies internal social stratification was therefore very pronounced and the myth that every soldier carried in his knapsack a marshal's baton was no longer applicable.

These reforms, however rigorous their application, had a further consequence. Besides the new cohesion of the officer corps due to a common military education, the recruitment process became in principle free of direct political pressure. The requirement of a unique type of education implied a system of selection based on standards that in theory were objective and universal. Thus, the cadets were chosen by their peers in accordance with an ideal image of an officer and the needs of the institution. The control by civilian "patrons," recruitment on the basis of support by "distinguished soldiers," or "promoted officers" became a thing of the past. The reform in recruitment, by increasing the independence of the military as a corporate group, established the basis of military power.

The force of the specific socialization and resocialization carried out by the institution not only increased esprit de corps among the officers but also enhanced their sense of belonging to the military branch of the state. This influence was all the more complete because the training process was carried out with young recruits in relative isolation and lasted for a considerable period. In Guatemala, for example, future officers enter the Polytechnic School at the age of fourteen and remain for five years.^[15] In Argentina the cadets join at between fourteen and eighteen years of age. In most countries they are around sixteen or seventeen, whether or not a secondary school diploma is required. In these conditions a strong internalization of the proposed values and models takes place that assures a specialized socialization and a deeply rooted corporate spirit.

Who can become an officer and who in fact becomes one? The educational entry requirements for the military school seem to be the only limitation on an apparently open system of

recruitment. If the completion of secondary school is required, we can assume that the cadet's family has a relatively high income. And in fact in countries in which nearly a majority is illiterate (Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, etc.), the simple fact of access to secondary school is already strongly discriminatory. The lower classes are very poorly represented in those military schools, especially in the societies where those classes are the most impoverished. It is true that many officers choose a military career for economic reasons, since military studies are short and generally free. This does not mean, however, that officers are therefore recruited among the poorer classes, or that the army provides a clear means of social mobility in all countries. The closed selection system permits the application of social or even of ethnic requirements that are not democratic. Thus the height requirement (5 feet, 4 or 6 inches) is met by only 16 percent of the enlisted men in Peru, and practically eliminates the children of Indians in all the Andean countries. In Bolivia the seemingly vague and harmless requirement of belonging to a "distinguished family" implies a strict social selectivity. ^[16] Similarly, the investigation carried out in Argentina as to moral character of the family of the candidate is not limited to the elimination of illegitimate children or those whose families are not well thought of in their neighborhood. In addition, candidates are rejected as a result of medical examinations from which there is no appeal where appearance and skin color are more significant than size or chest capacity. Thus the military elite preserves its image. Not all regimes are as frank as the Estado Novo (of Brazil) which decided officially in 1942 to deny military school access to non-Catholics (especially Jews) and blacks, and also to the children of immigrants, political opponents, and divorcees or concubines.^[17]

Much has been written about the social origins of the officers. Observers and publicists have tended to put too much emphasis upon it, even trying to explain the political attitudes of the armies solely through that much-misunderstood variable. The twofold relationship of the military to society and to the state, as well as the importance of specific patterns of socialization, should permit us to put this aspect of military society in proper perspective. As a result of the authoritarian training that

he has received and of the specific characteristics of the institution that has formed him, the officer is determined less by his family origins than by his relation to the army. This does not mean that we should neglect family origins. These affect the relation of the officer to civilian society in the sense that since he lives in symbiosis with the institution that he has chosen as the organizing principle of his existence, his family (including in-laws) constitutes his main, and sometimes his only, source of contact with the civilian world.

The social and professional characteristics of the officers' parents are not the only significant elements especially in societies that are "dualistic" and contain very pronounced regional differences. Social and sometimes political coloration can result from geographical and ecological divisions. The opposition between the urban and rural areas has often been emphasized—and sometimes overemphasized. Thus, one author, noting the largely urban origin of a multinational sample of Latin American officers that included some who came from less urbanized countries (Honduras, Nicaragua) concluded that recruitment in the "modern" sector of society implies "reformist" or progressive attitudes on the part of the armed forces. There is no proof that the urban environment produces liberal or reformist behavior, even if the equation of rural and conservative is, with some reservations, more accurate.^[18] Nevertheless, it is important in understanding the Peruvian army to know that fewer and fewer officers come from Lima and the dynamic cities of the coast, and increasing numbers of officers in the course of this century have come from small urban centers in the interior and even from the depopulated Indian sierra.^[19] Between 1955 and 1965, among the infantry generals who were officer candidates in the 1930s, only 18 percent came from Lima and 56 percent came from the sierra or the Amazonian selva, while, as Luigi Einaudi notes, 94 percent of the most important leaders of Peruvian society were born in Lima or on the coast.^[20] In 1968, two-thirds of the members of the governing junta were of provincial origin.

In Brazil, where the garrisons are unequally distributed and concentrated mainly on the southern frontier and in the coastal cities, it is not surprising that there are many officers

who come from Rio Grande do Sul, which is next to Uruguay, while São Paulo, the economic capital, provides very few military men. In 1930, eight of the thirty divisional generals were gauchos (that is, they were born in Rio Grande do Sul) and none was a paulista .^[21] The poor and economically depressed states also provide a strong contingent of officers. A military witness noted that at the beginning of the century the cadets at the Realengo Military School (Rio) were organized by place of birth and that the largest groups were those from Sergipe and Alagoas, two of the weakest and poorest states in the country.^[22] A French diplomat who was chief of protocol at the Quai d'Orsay noted on the occasion of a reception in 1945 in honor of the general staff of the Brazilian expeditionary force that fought alongside the Americans in Italy, headed by the future president Castello Branco:

I enjoyed meeting those fine officers, discreet in their bearing, and ferret-like in their appearance with their skulls flattened in the back (cabeça chata ) which was evidence of some mixture of Indian blood. Almost all of them came from the states of the North (Piaui, Ceara, Pernambuco); they are the traditional efficient and able leaders of the Brazilian army. As former students of General Gamelin and Hutzinger in our educational mission, they have just fought with intelligence and modesty in Italy.^[23]

Whatever the value of his anthropological theory, the statistical observation is less debatable. Politically, the fact that the officers come largely from the smallest and poorest states (Alagoas, Sergipe, Ceara, Pemambuco, Piaui) or from a more prosperous state that is far from the axis of power represented by the alliance of São Paulo and Minas Gerais is of primary importance.

Corresponding to the preponderance of these two geographical areas in recruitment are two different social backgrounds. In the south, which is an active area of cattle breeding and agricultural development with a considerable Italian population, many children of immigrants are attracted by the prestige of the armed forces and enter the military school in Porto Alegre; thus, the military completes the process of assimilation in the country that has received them. In the northeast, which was the economic center of gravity when sugar was king, it is

the families of the ruined rural aristocracy that, in order not to lose standing, send their sons to the army. The menino de engenho, the grandson or great-grandson of the sugar baron, enters the military school when the family cannot pay for his education, since a broad range of acceptable professions is not available. Thus two opposite paths lead to the Brazilian officer corps.

In Argentina, as we have demonstrated elsewhere, the geographic origin that seems to have predominated since the great transformation at the beginning of the century is from the urban and economically modernized areas. The upper-level Argentine officers, for example, rarely come from the families of the rural squires of the old colonial provinces of the north. In that country the percentage of children of immigrants who reach the highest military ranks is very high. A desire to establish one's roots in the national society by choosing a patriotic profession also seems to have played a role here, since social mobility could have been achieved in many other more reliable careers in the economically expanding areas. Thus, the officer corps is an open group and not a hereditary caste that is reserved for the old families of "military" or political background. Let us now see to whom that profession is open.

The lack of documentation, as well as the social heterogeneity in nearly all the armies of the continent, has resulted in the commonplace that a majority of the officers in Latin America come from the middle classes. This is both true and of dubious utility. A universally applicable residual category, the concept of middle class(es) is too vague to aid our understanding. A few undoubtedly insufficient facts will provide better guidance.

In general, few representatives of the lower classes are members of the officer corps, for reasons that we have discussed earlier in this chapter; however, the lower classes are not absent. The social position that the officers adopt officially in society varies depending on their political role and the social prestige of the army, but most of the time they identify with the upper strata. The idea that hereditary social authority predisposes one to exercise command is generally well received, even though the dominant national groups refuse to send their offspring to the barracks. Nevertheless, the general staffs try to make the social

profile of the future officers coincide with their social aspirations. This does not mean that they always succeed in doing so. In Argentina before 1945 only one prestigious colonel came from a working-class background—a friend of Peron who was the son of a railroad worker. A study of Argentine cadets at the end of the 1960s showed that 2.4 percent were the children of industrial workers, but if those who came from categories of the lower middle class (technicians, petty civil servants, tradesmen) were included, the working class amounted to 25 percent of the enrollment in that same period.^[24] These figures demonstrate an undeniable democratization of access to the officer ranks.

In Brazil industrial workers and artisans provided 3.8 percent of the enrollment in the military academy in 1941–43,^[25] and 15 percent in 1962–66. For Chile the only existing investigation based on a very small sample of thirty-seven retired generals indicates the figure of 9 percent for the children of employees.^[26] We know that in Peru, where the recruitment has always been more open than in other South American countries, the officers have been recruited less and less from the quasi-white classes at the top of the social pyramid, and more and more "in the lower and darker-skinned classes."^[27] At the end of the sixties, it was noted that among those who initiated the revolutionary-military movement of 1968 were officers of clearly lower-class background: the son of a schoolteacher (Leonidas Rodriguez), sons of peasants (Hoyos and Gallegos), and the son of a telegraph operator (Fernandez Maldonado).^[28] Velasco Alvarado, who was obviously mixed in his racial background, came from modest origins in the distant northern city of Piura.

The traditional upper classes do not always leave the military career to the common people. Even in Peru they were present in the "revolutionary" junta of 1968, two of whose fifteen members came from prominent families (including the grandson of a former president who became president himself in 1975, Morales Bermudez).^[29] In Brazil the traditional upper classes (the large landholders, the members of the liberal professions, upper-level civil servants) provided 20 percent of the enrollment in the military school between 1941 and 1943, and still constituted 6 percent in 1962–66.^[30] The Chilean sample produces the

figure of 66 percent who were children of professionals, businessmen, or farmers, but these categories are very vague.

In Argentina well-known names abound in the upper ranks, and they are not absent in the graduating classes of the military college. Alongside the children of the immigrants, the local and national aristocracies are well represented in the upper ranks in the recent period. In fact, composition of the recruits has changed depending on the political role of the military at various times. After 1930 the "aristocratic reaction" pushed the children of the oligarchy toward the military college. At the end of the 1950s, on the other hand, Perón tried to democratize access to the military schools, with mixed results.

Internal recruitment and an increase in the number of the sons of military men are worldwide phenomena that are also evident in Latin America. Family values facilitate the choice of a profession that appears to contradict the evolution of society as a whole. For that reason, the increased difficulty of recruiting civilians, and even at times the disaffection of the sons of the officers with the military career, leads to the opening of the officer corps to the sons of noncommissioned officers for whom it constitutes an avenue of social mobility. The percentage of sons of military men among the students in the military schools was nearly 42 percent in 1967–68 in Argentina, and 35 percent in Brazil during the same period.^[31] Families in which one can demonstrate a military tradition for three or four generations can be found in these countries as well as in Peru and Chile. Internal recruitment could produce a homogeneous military society, the formation of a military caste, if access to the military profession did not remain open. Such a recruitment process at least results in accentuating the militarization of military life, and an insularity that is accepted, encouraged, and socially approved.

The unwritten code of the Chilean army disapproves of relations with civilians. The observation, "associates with civilian elements," written in the evaluation file of a young Argentine officer, was at the least a bad omen for his career. In the sample of Chilean officers already cited, seventeen out of thirty-seven had no civilian friends during their last year of active duty and seven of them had only one.^[32] The emphasis on grades in exami-

nations, practical training, and advanced courses—central to promotion in the absence of war—was modified at the time of the reforms at the beginning of the century in the direction of a military curriculum and a disdain for civilian subjects. Education that had earlier been very general and encyclopedic—as in Brazil—now became specialized, and civilian areas of specialization were not well regarded. In Argentina it was not until the 1950s that a university diploma would help an officer to be promoted rather than be held against him. Today, however, in the most militarized countries courses include such nonmilitary subjects as political economy and public administration—subjects that are related, it is true, to the actual responsibilities of an important sector of the officers.

In summary, except for the countries in which the prestige of the military is very low for historical reasons that we will discuss later (Mexico, Bolivia), the officers come essentially from the intermediate sectors that are comfortably off, the upwardly mobile lower-middle class, and the declining upper classes; however, the upper and lower classes are not absent—although those from the upper classes find it easier to be promoted to the higher ranks than do the members of the lower classes. Some specific examples will suffice to illustrate these social backgrounds.

First, we will consider two active Brazilian officers who opposed each other—General Goes Monteiro, the Minister of War and Grand Constable of the Vargas regime (1930–45), and Lieutenant Luis Carlos Prestes, who left the army to become general secretary of the Communist party. The first was born in the state of Alagoas, the son of a doctor who died young, leaving nine children who belonged, to use his own description, to the "decaying Northeastern rural plutocracy." He was born "in a period of the increasing impoverishment of his family."^[33] He entered the military school of Realengo in 1903 and subsequently that of Porto Alegre without a vocation to military life; but this did not prevent him from having a brilliant career as an officer involved in politics. Prestes, the future "knight of hope" and the leader of the Long March across Brazil in 1924 that marked the military revolt against the power of the established

order, came from the bourgeoisie of Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul.^[34] His paternal grandfather was a judge; his maternal grandfather was a rich merchant who had lost his fortune before his grandson was born. The father of Luis Carlos Prestes who was bom in 1908 was an officer of the infantry. He died in 1908, leaving his widow with five children and a meager captain's pension. Luis Carlos, as the son of an officer, received a scholarship to attend the military preparatory school of Rio de Janeiro where his mother took up residence in a working-class area. She made her living by giving courses in music and French, and sometimes, it was said, doing sewing in her home. This is the basis of the legend of a Prestes arisen from the people, the son of a seamstress.

The biography of Roberto Viaux, the author of a coup in Chile who had his hour of glory at the end of the 1960s is rather significant. He was born in 1917 in Talca, the son of an infantry commander, and studied at a German preparatory school in Santiago that prepared him to enter the military school after his fourth year. He graduated in artillery, and married the daughter of a colonel—something not unusual in Chile—who was also well known for his antidemocratic ideas.^[35] Last but not least, we should recall the mysterious family background of Perón, that, despite his unusual career, seems typical of the family background of Argentine cadets. Juan Domingo Perón belonged to a "good" family from the province of Buenos Aires. His grandfather, Tomás, was a doctor and well-known conservative politician. His father, who did not attend the university as his family wished, was unsuccessful in agriculture, and in his marriage. His son preferred to talk of his grandfather, rather than his father and mother,^[36] which led to the rumor that he came from very humble origins (the son of a steward and a halfcaste servant). After some years spent with his family in distant Patagonia (Chubut), with the help of his paternal grandfather he enrolled in a distinguished private secondary school in the residential suburbs of Buenos Aires. Thus he came from a good family in decline—one of the classic methods of access to the Argentine middle class and perhaps to military vocations in Argentina and elsewhere.

The Establishment of Obligatory Military Service

Paradoxically, in these supposedly "professionalized" armies, the enlisted men were civilians. While in the old army the soldiers were professional military men and the officers were very often amateurs, in the new army the opposite was the case: permanent professional officers and transitory and civilian enlisted men. The military were those who most often called for the establishment of universal service. The ideal of "a nation in arms" was always under the surface in the reforms of the military structures at the beginning of the century. A universal defense obligation—at least in theory—was therefore a basic part of the reforms initiated at that time. For the officers and the heads of the general staffs who were aware of the mediocre quality of the human "materiel" secured by enlistment, the way to improve recruitment was to enlarge it, thus permitting an increase in both quality and quantity. With enlisted men drawn from marginal elements, the army remained at the periphery of society and of the nation. The modernizing military demanded that "society be opened to the army," in the words of José Murilho de Carvalho.^[37] However, forming a citizen army is not a simple technical problem. The social and political implications of universal service are evident. An army through which, in principle, all citizens pass then aims at being the school of the nation, the crucible of national sentiment.

The role of military service in civic and moral formation has often been noted. The officers of the new Latin American armies love to speak of it. Very recently a Brazilian general in a high political position observed that it was in the barracks that a good number of Brazilians learned to use a toothbrush! Under a system of conscription, the role and responsibilities of the officer take on a national—and therefore clearly political—role. In heterogeneous societies the army acts to promote national integration and to form the citizenry. It was not by accident that during the discussion of a conscription law in 1901 in Argentina, a maladroit but sincere deputy exclaimed that it would be "a universal suffrage army" at a time when universal suffrage was part of the program of the opposition and ten years before

it was adopted. In the mind of the legislator and thus of the ruling group a conscript army was dearly responsible for molding the mentality of future voters. The citizen-soldier would be miles [soldier] before he became civis [citizen].

Compulsory military service began in Chile in 1900, Peru and Argentina followed in 1901, Ecuador in 1902, Bolivia in 1907, and Brazil only in 1916. The delay in Brazil deserves some attention. The weakness of the central government and the combined opposition of the lower classes and the local oligarchies to the federal army prevented draft lotteries from being applied. An intense campaign organized by the officers and prestigious civilian leaders, as well as a world war, were required in order for compulsory service to be imposed and for the abolition of the National Guard—which offered military service to the privileged few—in 1918.

The civic and military arguments used by the League for National Defense in support of universal service are not without interest. In the writings of Olavio Bilac, a patriotic poet and Brazilian right-wing nationalist who lent all his literary prestige to the propaganda in favor of "a national democratic, free civilian army for defense and national cohesion," an army of "citizen soldiers, . . . that is the people,"^[38] one finds the grandiose flights and sociopolitical reasoning that are still used by the contemporary military. Bilac believed that conscription would produce "the complete triumph of democracy, a leveling of the social classes"; it would constitute "a school that imparts order and discipline . . .the laboratory of individual dignity and patriotism." Military service, according to the poet,

means obligatory civic education, cleanliness, and hygiene, as well as psychological and physical regeneration. The cities are full of idle men, shoeless and in rags, who do not know the alphabet or the bathtub, animals who have only the appearance of human beings. For those dregs of society, the barracks will be their salvation.^[39]

During the same period the promilitary sectors of the Argentine political class spoke in the same way. A civilian professor of the military college declared in a lecture in 1915 that the officers were committed to the "redemption of the uneducated ignorant and

perverse conscript . . .Argentine by birth but barbarian in condition, who constitutes a danger to social stability and a menace to our culture."^[40] Such descriptions demonstrate that the officers felt that they had been given certain special rights in relation to the national community and that the social control involved in military service had political importance in the larger sense.

The introduction of obligatory military service, even with a lottery and many exemptions, led to a rapid numerical increase in all countries. Chile tripled the number of those in the army when the law went into effect between 1900 and 1901.^[41] The Brazilian army went from 12,000 men in 1889 to 43,000 in 1920. Nevertheless, military service was by no means universal and it was only obligatory for those who could not find a way to escape it. The social selectivity of the system was part of the logic of its moral and civic function: the less well-off classes were the ones that needed to be educated and integrated into the nation, not the sons of the rich. The number of exceptions was high in every country: a diploma here, enrollment in a rifle society or gymnastic group there, a pilot's license in another country, were sufficient to allow exemption from a year in the barracks. Students in most countries were enrolled for a few months in the officers' reserve. Exemptions thus were made on the basis of social criteria, often against the will of the officers. The exemptions were abolished in Argentina to a significant degree when the army as an institution was in power. In that country the head of a corps who objected to the social discrimination would exclaim as each new contingent was incorporated, "How curious, only the poor had children this year."^[42] No doubt because of this institutionalized social discrimination and the type of discipline that resulted from it, the level of desertions remained high, despite the fact that budgetary limitations allowed only a small percentage of each cohort affected by the obligation to enter the barracks. For the same reason recruitment of conscripts continued, and in certain countries a type of local recruiting sergeant became institutionalized (as with the comisionados militares in Guatemala).

All of this produced a considerable separation between the enlisted men and the officers that, along with the manifest goals of military service, brought with it political and social conse-

quences, especially in multiethnic societies. A study of the literacy program of the infantry in Guatemala revealed that 62.5 percent of the conscripts in the service in 1960 were illiterate, and that 30.6 percent did not speak Spanish as their mother tongue, while 14 percent of the soldiers did not speak it at all.^[43] The number of those who spoke only an Indian language in the Andean countries led one commentator to say that the Bolivian army resembled a colonial army with its short Indian enlisted men and tall white officers.^[44] The officers retained an undeniable feeling of superiority as a result of their contact with the populace in the enlisted contingents, which tended to incline them in the direction of the ruling classes and of the elements that are hostile to political equality and representative democracy. A survey of cadets at the Military School in Guatemala showed that more than half of them considered Indians to be inferior.^[45] However, we should not believe that the establishment of compulsory conscription of the poor into military service had only one effect on the officer corps. The contact each year with a new contingent of troops also enabled the officers to appreciate the socioeconomic developments in their country, and to discover misery and oppression, giving a professional and corporate aspect to their social concerns. This in turn is related to the ambiguous nature of military behavior and to the often quite noticeable pendulum in the character of their interventions.

To complete this overview of the modern state armies, we should touch upon the condition of the noncommissioned officers, totally subordinate to the officers. In Brazil, for example, their status is precarious and their term of employment is contractual. The slow pace of officer promotions at the beginning of the century and the bottlenecks in the pyramid of grades—and that did not change markedly after the reforms. Finally, we should say something about the navy, that unknown force that intervenes in political life only late in the evolution of the Latin American military. Sailors are removed from military society, more civilian in outlook and more cosmopolitan than the soldiers. Initially they took their models and structure from Great Britain, and later from the United States. However, their significance to the power of the military remains slight except in certain countries, such as Argentina, where they began to participate in the 1950s.