Military revival in Latam stirs unease over past abuses

Bloomberg

With the world anxiously waiting to see whether the Venezuelan military throws its weight behind interim leader Juan Guaido, the role of the armed forces in Latin America has been regaining prominence.
After decades of democratization, with soldiers largely confined to barracks and borders, Latin American governments are turning to the military to run ministries, oversee state projects and fight crime, raising the specter of an authoritarian past.
The new governments in Brazil and Mexico, one on the right, the other on the left, are both dramatically increasing the role of their armed forces, moves that reflect their public’s preferences. Like elsewhere around the globe, Latin American voters enraged by corruption and fearful of rising crime are increasingly disillusioned with democracy, surveys show. They now trust the military more than any institution except the Catholic Church, according to a 2018 Latinobarometro poll.
“There’s this idea that civilian politicians are corrupt and that the military is somehow immune to corruption,” Wagner de Melo Romao, a political science professor at Brazil’s Unicamp University, said. But the trend poses a threat: “When the armed forces are linked to a government’s political support, there is a greater risk of slipping into an authoritarian regime.”
Jesus Ramirez, a spokesman for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, said the government is taking steps to avoid abuse. He added that the military is the only body able to guarantee security in several parts of the country, and a civilian government is overseeing everything.
Brazil’s Government Affairs Minister General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz said the armed forces have earned respect because they are meritocratic. Asked why the government was leaning so heavily on them, he replied, “There are three factors: incompetence, corruption and ideology, three things that you don’t have in the armed forces.”
Brutal Dictatorships
Military regimes ruled much of the region until the 1980s. In Argentina, thousands were murdered by the junta, while the Chile of Augusto Pinochet became a byword for brutal dictatorship. Large swaths of Central America also remain traumatized by the violent repression of the armed forces. Venezuela has become increasingly militarized.
In Colombia, the army continues to play a big role in public security even after the signing of a peace accord with Marxist guerrillas. A car bomb that killed 20 in Bogota last week highlighted how serious the threat from guerrilla groups remains.
With the average murder rate in Latin America standing at 21.5 per 100,000 — more than four times the US average — many in the region are willing to ignore past abuses and look to the military for solutions.
This is proving to be especially true in Brazil and Mexico, which together account for half the region’s population and where past military crimes have received relatively little attention. This month, Jair Bolsonaro the first ex-military president of Brazil in more than three decades — since the 1985 return of democracy — took office. At an Army handover ceremony in Brasilia, excitement ran high among the crisp green uniforms.