Haiti is here: military land management and democracy

The man Bolsonaro had chosen as vice president, General Walter Braga Netto, is not only known for having received R$926,000 in salaries in two months of 2020, when the maximum a government official could receive would be R$39.2 thousand.

He is also known for requesting exemption from bidding (the formal process by which the government makes purchases) before the responsible court (Tribunal de Contas da União), in May 2018, for purchases of the American company CTU Security made by the Intervention Cabinet in Rio de Janeiro, under the post-coup parliamentary government of Michel Temer.

In 2018, in his first press conference, General Walter Braga Netto said: "Rio de Janeiro is now a laboratory for Brazil. If it will expand to the rest of the country, which we will do here, it is not for me to answer." (Diário de Notícias, 27 Fevereiro 2018)

For this intervention, eleven private security and technology companies from Brazil and abroad would have negotiated, in contracts without bidding, around R$ 140 million with the Brazilian government. Says the newspaper Brasil de Fato:

“According to reports from Florida authorities, in an interview with the Politico website, the owner of CTU Security, Antony Intriago, hired more than 20 former soldiers from Colombia to carry out the death of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. The Haitian National Police accused the businessman of being one of the members of a conspiracy to kill the head of state. (Paulo Motoryn, Brazil de Fato -July 22, 2021).

In 2021, while Minister of Defense, Braga Netto sent a message to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), warning that if "there will be no printed and auditable vote, there will be no election in 2022." (idem). The general and the three commanders of Bolsonaro's Armed Forces had also threatened the president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Covid, Senator Omar Aziz (PSD-AM), when he spoke of irregularities "on the rotten side of the Armed Forces" within the government.

Several Brazilian soldiers from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti ( MINUSTAH ) were in the Bolsonaro government, including Augusto Heleno, Fernando Azevedo e Silva, Tarcísio de Freitas and Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz.

For historian Marco Morel, what we had in Haiti was a kind of "poverty management policy through militarization." (Unisinos Humanitas Institute – IHU, February 20, 2018)

“We see that the military presence in Haiti has served as a kind of laboratory for the genocidal policy of the Bolsonaro government, in particular the federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro in 2018, commanded by General Braga Netto, current Minister of Defense. (Marco Morel, Haiti Liberté, August 18, 2021).

As reported in The Nation, the February 2004 coup in Haiti, "fomented by right-wing paramilitary forces and the Haitian elite," resulted in the deaths of 3,000 and the arrest of thousands of supporters and members of President-elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. MINUSTAH was established two months later, a force of 9,000. (Kim Ives and Ansel Herzt, The Nation, August 5, 2011).

According to a Democracy Now! report: "The WikiLeaks cables reveal just how closely Washington and the U.N. oversaw the formation of Haiti’s new police force and signed off on the integration of paramilitaries who had previously targeted Haiti’s working classes and democratically elected governments."

(Democracy Now!, August 11, 2011).

After the end of military governments in Latin America, in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a report by the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) of Argentina:

“…some US government agencies –among them the Southern Command of the Armed Forces- and lobbyists for the Armed Forces in the region developed and disseminated the 'new threats' doctrine. This doctrine maintains that, in the absence of armed conflicts in the region, the main threats to the stability of States now come from transnational organized crime, particularly from activities linked to drug trafficking and phenomena such as 'poverty', 'migrations', 'populism'".

(The impact of "new threats" on security policies. CELS, 2018).

This idea leads to the militarization of internal security, and virtually the return of a militarized government. The governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas (who took office in 2023), was head of the technical section of the Brazilian Engineering Company of the Peace Force in Haiti between 2005 and 2006 and Minister of Infrastructure under Bolsonaro.

The militarization of the government can favor the private appropriation of public services and territories, the government working only for the aristocracy.

Regarding the military regime from 1964 to 1985, researcher Pedro Campos, from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) states:

"If we broaden the concept of corruption and think that it is the action of the State in favor of private interests, especially for business purposes, we have in that period a mostly corrupt State, which acted in favor of companies and private profit." (Ana Helena Rodrigues, Vladimir Herzog Institute, June 14, 2018)

The dictatorship, for example, expelled the Tupiniquim, Guarani and Quilombolas from their lands in Espírito Santo to create the Aracruz company in 1967, causing the disappearance of more than 30 indigenous villages. (Marcelo Oliveira. Public Agency, July 5, 2023).

General Heleno, commander of the troops in Haiti and first minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) in the Bolsonaro administration, was the military commander of the Amazon in 2007, when he spoke out against the Lula government for the expulsion of the non-indigenous occupants of the Raposa Serra do Sol lands and land demarcations .

General Braga Netto intends to run for mayor of Rio de Janeiro, for Bolsonaro's party, the PL. In the 2022 elections, more than 1,500 candidates linked to the Armed Forces (FA), military police (PM) and firefighters ran for public office.

(Bruno Fonseca, Bianca Muniz, Public Agency, August 16, 2022).

It would be good to look at Haiti, where discontent reigns after the participation of more than 13,000 Brazilian soldiers, a billion reais spent by the government.

“The truth is that, in general, MINUSTAH is seen as an occupying force,” says Michèle Montas, a Haitian journalist who was a spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. (Marina Amaral, Natalia Viana. Public Agency, September 27, 2011)

Can we observe the management of an internal Occupation Force, an internal colonization? We can ask ourselves what value popular demands will have in a military-business agreement.

Afonso Lima

*

30/07/2023 * Guarujá (São Paulo) — After the murder of military police officer Patrick Bastos Reis, 30 years old, a Rota soldier (Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar, special force of the São Paulo Military Police), which took place last Thursday (27/7), in Guarujá (SP), PMs from different battalions would be spreading terror in the slums of the coastal city by executing residents, according to witnesses. 

The secretariat did not comment on the publications of police officers on social networks and on the number of victims that the Military Police themselves share on the networks.

https://ponte.org/pm-espalha-mortes-no-guaruja-sp-e-tropa-celebra-contagem-de-corpos-hoje-pessoas-vao-morrer/

https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/07/07/crise-no-haiti-tem-digital-de-generais-bolsonaristas-saiba-quais-ministores-atuaram-no-pais

https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2023/01/22/qual-o-papel-das-forcas-armadas-na-america-latina-e-no-caribe

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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wikileaks-haiti-aristide-files/

https://haitiliberte.com/haiti-a-toujours-ete-le-theatre-de-violents-conflits-entre-les-puissances-entretien-avec-marco-morel/

https://apublica.org/2011/09/haiti-aba-minustah/

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https://apublica.org/2022/08/partido-militar-mais-de-15-mil-candidatos-militares-concorrem-nas-eleicoes-neste-ano/