UNUSUAL SUSPECTS: EXPELLED OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS UNDER MILITARY RULE IN BRAZIL, 1964–1985 BY MARÍLIA CORRÊA KUYUMJIAN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Jerry Dávila, Chair Associate Professor Marc A. Hertzman Associate Professor James R. Brennan Professor Kristin L. Hoganson ABSTRACT Between 1964 and 1985 the Brazilian dictatorship expelled from the military ranks thousands of officers and soldiers who were seen as subversives. Through an examination of state archival sources and interviews, Unusual Suspects examines how these servicemen remembered expulsion and how their experiences shaped them socially and culturally. When joining the military many officers and soldiers conflated notions of masculinity with military honor. This dissertation argues that as they were expelled these men were denied access to their military identities, which led them to experience a disconnection with their ideas of manhood. Expulsion from the military, imprisonment, torture, and marginalization from Brazilian society inflicted upon these servicemen what I call a gendered trauma. This project draws from written and oral sources collected throughout Brazil—Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Salvador—College Park, MD, and Mexico City. This dissertation shows how expelled servicemen reacted to the violence they endured, often engaging in actions that helped them to reclaim their manhood. While some were more successful in overcoming this trauma, others endured it for a longer period of time. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that the dictatorship had overarching effects in servicemen’s lives that transcended the era of the dictatorship itself. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a dissertation can be a lonely endeavor. Therefore, I am thankful to have been surrounded by a supportive community at Champaign-Urbana during the past years. This project could not be completed without the support of numerous people. First, I thank my dissertation committee. In particular, Jerry Dávila for his advice, counsel, patience, encouragement, and meticulous comments on my writing. I will be forever thankful for his mentorship. I thank Marc Hertzman, who has always provided me with valuable guidance and support, always challenging me to think about different approaches to sources and the significance of my research. I thank James Brennan and Kristin Hoganson for their advice, particularly for challenging me to find my own voice and pushing me think about my research audience more broadly. I also thank the University of Illinois Department of History for welcoming me and being a home during the past six years, providing me with financial support, including fellowships and teaching assistantships that made this project possible and allowed me to grow as a scholar and as a teacher. I thank Tom Bedwell, Shannon Croft, and all staff in the Department of History for helping me navigate the necessary steps to completing my graduate degree, from class registration, to preliminary exams, research, dissertation defense and deposit. I thank the support of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at UIUC, particularly Angelina Cotler and Gloria Ribble, and the Tinker Summer Grant, an award that allowed me to travel to Brazil to start this project. I thank the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies, Jerry Dávila, Mary Arends- Kuenning and Elis Artz, for providing funding for my research in Brazil and for the writing state of this project, and for connecting me to different scholars in the United States and in Brazil. I thank the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for funding part of my dissertation’s writing stage and for organizing fellows’ seminars where I could learn from peers and share my iii own research—I thank Antoinette Burton and Nancy Castro in particular, whom I learned from immensely at IPRH. I also thank the Nelle M. Signor Graduate Scholarship in International Relations for complementing my research funds in 2016. Thanks to professors across the Illinois campus who helped me grow as a researcher and a teacher, particularly Nils Jacobsen, Mireya Loza, Antoinette Burton, Kathryn Oberdeck, Dana Rabin, John Karam, Glen Goodman, and Joe Love. I also thank professors outside of Illinois who provided me with valuable advice to conduct research on Latin America and authoritarian regimes, particularly Jeffrey Lesser, Peter Beattie, Raanan Rein, Steve Stern, Victoria Langland, and Heidi Tinsman. A special thanks to the staff at the University of Illinois Library, particularly Antonio Sotomayor. I also thank the Writers Workshop and Carolyn Wisniewsk for organizing writing productivity groups, where I found support from other graduate students and got thousands of words written. And I also thank the Graduate Employees’ Organization, its staff and members, and workers around the UIUC campus, who make the university work every day. I am thankful for the friends I made in Champaign-Urbana, particularly my colleagues at the Department of History for the engaging debates in and outside classrooms and for their friendship, especially John Marquez, Thaís Sant’ana, Cassie Osei, Carolina Ortega, Raquel Escobar, Lydia Crafts, Silvia Escanilla Huerta, Rob Rouphail, Peggy Brennan, Peter Wright, Nate Tye, Augustus Wood III, Liz Matsushita, Ian Toller-Clark, Beth Eby, Megan White, Mark Sanchez, Zach Riebeling, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Devin Smart, Brian Campbell, Adam LoBue, and Saniya Ghanoui. I also thank the support of friends from other departments and in the Champaign-Urbana community, particularly Juan Andrés Soárez, Sam Brotman, Mona Ghadiri, Catherine Corr, Gianne Neves, Dawn Durante, Jessica and Andy Wheelock, Mariane Lin and Josué Bastos. iv My thanks to the dedicated staff members at Arquivo Nacional, APERJ, including Johenir Jannotti Viégas, CPDOC, APESP, including Ricardo Santos, APERS, and APP, who helped me navigate these archives’ collections. I also thank the archivists at the Archivo General de la Nación, the Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada, and the U.S. National Archives II. In Brazil, thanks to all professors and other professionals who helped me understand and access oral and written archives, including professors Celso Castro, Maria Paula Araújo, Pablo Porfírio, Paulo Ribeiro da Cunha, Cláudio Beserra de Vasconcelos, psychologist Vera Vital Brasil and researcher Vicente Rodrigues. A special thanks to the thirty-three expelled members of the armed forces I interviewed: José Araújo Nóbrega, Darcy Rodrigues, Carlos Roberto Pittoli, Simão Kerimian, José Wilson da Silva, Almoré Zock Cavalheiro, Ivan Cavalcanti Proença, Fernando de Santa Rosa, José Alípio Ribeiro, Paulo Novaes Coutinho, João Barroso, Florivaldo de Oliveira Mello, Luiz Carlos Figueiredo, José Bezerra da Silva, Belmiro Demétrio, Ponciano Santos dos Anjos, Dailton Soares, João Martins de Oliveira, Jorge de Souza, Jório Gonçalves Dantas, Laureano Santos, Luis José Medeiros, Luiz Cláudio Monteiro, Luiz Cláudio Garcia, Norberto Batista Simões, Ponciano dos Santos, Robson Ferreira, Sonilson da Silva, Antonio Rodrigues da Costa, Ricardo Waite, José Carlos Pires, Luiz Alberto Couteiro, and Celio Ribeiro da Silva. Their willingness to share their life histories with me made this project possible. I also wish to thank my family for their support. I thank my parents and my sister, Fábio, Patrícia and Olívia, who were always there for me even when thousands of kilometers away. A special thanks to my mother who, in addition to supporting me, helped me with this project transcribing a number of interviews. Lastly, I thank Marcelo, who has been my rock through it all. For the past eight years he has helped me to grow academically and as a human being in more ways than I can describe. His sense of curiosity, generosity, and ability to see beauty in the world have given me strength to persevere. Obrigada. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ACRONYMS ..................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1. NATIONALISTS VERSUS INTERNATIONALISTS INSIDE THE BARRACKS (BEFORE THE COUP, 1950-1963) .................................................................33 CHAPTER 2. EXPULSIONS AND RESISTANCE IN THE WAKE OF THE MILITARY COUP (1964-1968) .......................................................................................................79 CHAPTER 3. OUSAR LUTAR, OUSAR VENCER: SERVICEMEN IN THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENT AND THE INTENSIFICATION OF REPRESSION, THE CASE OF VANGUARDA POPULAR REVOLUCIONÁRIA (1968-1974) .................... 118 CHAPTER 4. SURVIVING MILITARY RULE AS EXPELLED OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS IN BRAZIL AND ABROAD........................................................................... 166 CHAPTER 5. THE STRUGGLE FOR AMNESTY: INCOMPLETE TRANSITIONS FOR FORMER SOLDIERS ........................................................................................................... 210 CHAPTER 6. THE STRUGGLE FOR MEMORY ....................................................................... 259 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................................