Behind the Coup: All the Generals of the Republic

 A full, transparent understanding of the failed coup d'état of January 8, 2023, becomes increasingly complex with the new revelations stemming from the CNN video episode on April 19, the fragility of strategic security institutions like the GSI (Institutional Security Office), and, as of May 3, with the actions surrounding the highly militarized "inner circle" of power during the Bolsonaro presidency.  

 It became clear that the actions of the new Lula da Silva government in the area of ​​Institutional Security, right from the first days of his term, were slow and, at the very least, partial. The trust placed in General Gonçalves Dias to create an environment of civic coexistence, and also in the Minister of Defense José Múcio Monteiro, proved to be overly optimistic. Both General Dias and José Múcio – with excessive support from Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, concerned about the "image" of fragility of Brazilian institutions abroad – sought, from the moment Lula's election was confirmed, to defend a diagnosis that pointed to a "gradual" and "without trauma" return to normality after the elections, as early as October 30, 2022, without the need for a direct confrontation with Bolsonaro's supporters. They considered that the Bolsonaro “danger,” after the second round and especially after the apotheotic Presidential Inauguration ceremony, was beginning to diminish on its own, like “powdered milk that dissolves without stirring.” However, they failed to identify the clear coup attempt orchestrated by the then Minister of Justice in the second round of elections as a direct threat of undue intervention in the Superior Electoral Court (STE) aimed at annulling the results of the presidential election. It was clearly a matter of continuing the false arguments about electronic voting machines and the entire Brazilian electoral system, explicitly revealing the coup-mongering spirit of the President's “inner circle,” referred to in the media as the “Hate Cabinet.”   

 Lula himself – who emerges as the one who best understood the extent and dimensions of January 8th – reaffirmed that there was a "conspiracy," a general intelligence behind the coup, demanding punishment for all those involved, denouncing a complete "security failure" on January 8th.¹However, within the GSI (Institutional Security Office), ABIN (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), and the Armed Forces, especially the Army Command, the "Doctrine of Gradualism" prevailed until January 8th, and even afterward, it was only seriously questioned from April 19th, 2023 onwards, when the presence of the Chief Minister of the GSI and several of his employees was revealed. They were not only present in the Planalto Palace but also interacting with the invading vandals, and even in the face of the illegal acts committed, they did not, at any time, activate the "Shield Plan" for integrated defense – Military Police, Armed Forces, Federal Police, and Federal Highway Police – of the Federal Capital, nor even the "Scooby Plan" for the defense of the Planalto Palace. We recall that the Duque de Caxias Battalion has five rapid-action companies for the defense of the Presidential Palace, each with 200 men, and two of them are riot control companies, which, however, remained encamped and inactive in the garage of the Palace Annex. In fact, "Plan Scooby" is an offshoot of "Plan Shield," which covers the protection of the entire Three Powers Square, and was not activated at the request of either Colonel Fernandes da Hora, commander of the Presidential Guard, or General Dutra, then head of the Planalto Military Command, nor by the then Commander of the Army, General Arruda. However, the federal agencies whose primary function is the protection and prevention of crises, such as the GSI (Institutional Security Office), did not assess the dimensions and risks of the immense gathering of people with coup-mongering sentiment since Friday, January 6th, in Brasília. By Saturday, January 7th, the crowd was estimated at around 20,000 people, of whom 4,000 headed towards the Planalto Palace. In this march, they were "escorted" by the DF (Federal District) Military Police, then under the command of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro's former Minister of Justice.²The revelation of the existence of 160 unreported videos – in which GSI employees appear in inappropriate behavior alongside vandals – and which were not presented to the government or the public. The justification that the videos were "sub judice" does not seem convincing, especially when the Supreme Federal Court itself ordered the full release of the material.  

 Thus, the “security flaw” correctly pointed out by Lula da Silva, confirmed by the subsequent actions of the Minister of Justice, the Federal Intervenor Ricardo Capelli, and the Attorney General's Office with Minister Jorge Messias, proved to be deeper and wider than imagined. Of the three pillars supporting the January 8th Coup – (i) the multitude of vandals financed by businessmen and transported to Brasilia, in addition to the crowd concentrated in the encampment at Praça dos Cristais in front of the Army HQ; (ii) the action and inaction within the scope of the Federal District Government, including the Military Police and (iii), however, it was in the “third base”, with the federal crisis prevention and strategic advisory bodies such as the GSI and Abin, but also the intelligence services of the Armed Forces, especially the Army, in the case of the Army Intelligence Center/CIE (created by decree no. 60.664, of May 2, 1967, as the “Army Information Center”, which was an important part of the repressive apparatus of the Brazilian State during the military regime), that the most serious and widespread “security failures” occurred, as we now see in the released videos, and which ended up bringing down a chief minister, and from the “personal quota”, of President Lula da Silva.

 We must keep in mind that the "security failure" pointed out by Lula da Silva did not occur in a vacuum. There are causes, and these must be analyzed and corrected. We already know that there was a delay in replacing the GSI (Institutional Security Office) staff compromised with Bolsonaro's ideology. However, this "delay"—which continues in other areas of the State—was due to a "diagnostic failure" regarding the political, cultural, and social situation in Brazil. The "Doctrine of Gradualism," a form of appeasement with radical sectors of fascism, as in the case of the so-called "patriotic" encampments, fostered the possibility of a coup. This "diagnostic failure," which involves a necessary theoretical, historical, and political analysis of the "moment" the world is going through, its future-forming trends, and Brazil's role in such conditions, was not carried out. The image of an "internal enemy," fostered by forms of military cooperation with other nations, implies a strong entropy of the institutions dedicated to Institutional Security.

 The “Security Failure” has its own history. Within the group of advisory bodies for the government transition, even at the end of 2022, with extensive consultation with civil society and its entities, the stance of those responsible for the areas of Defense, Institutional Security, and Military Affairs was one of complete denial. The study commissions that existed in other fields/ministries were not created, experts were not called upon, and postgraduate programs and research institutes specializing in Defense were not consulted. In an absolutist manner, both the designated Chief Minister of the GSI (Institutional Security Office) and the future Minister of Defense, armed with the “Doctrine of Gradualism” – even in the face of the coup-mongering and terrorist fervor represented in the “patriotic encampments,” including the discovery of terrorist plans to attack Brasília International Airport – concluded that they were quite well-informed to deal with the “Military Question.” Thus, a short and shallow document was drafted within the GSI (Institutional Security Office) regarding the Military-Lula Government relations, outlining points absurdly referred to as "fundamental clauses" that should be "respected" by the new Government. There were criteria such as seniority, internal evaluation and scoring, rotation within the Armed Forces ("the turn" to appoint someone from the Army, Navy or Air Force) and within the Forces the rotation "of Arms within each Force" (for example, "the turn" to appoint someone from the Infantry, Artillery or Marines, etc...), the inviolability of the "Military Education System," which, as Celso Castro rightly points out, does not exist in the face of a single national education system, the training and operation of the Information services, known as Intelligence – which insist on monitoring the citizenry –, the guarantee of the role of Military Justice, the safeguarding of archives, etc... In short, the document issued by the GSI and presented by Gonçalves Dias seemed more like an ultimatum from an ambassador of the Armed Forces to the new Government than a diagnosis of the sector. In the name of "Gradualism," nothing was altered, the Bolsonaro supporters were not affected, and the loyalties owed to the three generals guaranteeing the Bolsonaro government (Gal. Augusto Heleno, Chief Minister of the GSI; Gal. Luis Eduardo Ramos, Chief Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic; Gal. Walter Braga Netto, Minister of Defense and former running mate for the Liberal Party/PL with Jair Bolsonaro) remained in place, even though this was not the dominant current in the Army High Command/ACE, which was already concerned about the profound damage that the institution's association with Bolsonarism was causing to the Armed Forces as a whole.   

 The rest is history: Brasília in ruins, the attempt to force the government to resort to the GLO (Guarantee of Law and Order) mechanism through the controversial Article 142 of the Constitution, and the possible paralysis of the Lula government overseen by a general appointed by the Army Commander. This would be the new guise of a coup in the 21st century.   

 However, the swift action of Lula da Silva, the Ministry of Justice, and the Attorney General's Office, along with the legal framework provided by the Supreme Federal Court through Minister Alexandre de Moraes, paralyzed the coup, and the expected "Federal Intervention," via GLO (Guarantee of Law and Order), did not occur. Even though the resistance cost moments of rare exacerbation and confrontation between the Army Commander, General Júlio César de Arruda, and the Military Commander of the Planalto Palace, General Gustavo Henrique Dutra, on one side, and the Minister of Justice and the Federal Intervenor, Ricardo Capelli, on the other. Throughout the week of the coup, General Arruda's position as Army Commander would prove untenable. The aggression against ministers of the Republic, the mobilization of troops and armored vehicles to protect the "patriotic encampment" in front of the Army HQ, and, the last straw, the refusal to remove Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid from a position of extreme relevance and strategic importance for the protection of the Federal Capital (the Command of the country's Special Forces, based in nearby Goiânia) would lead to the general's dismissal on April 12, 2023, less than a week after the failed coup and on the same day that the dimensions of the Yanomami genocide were exposed to the public.  

 The aggravating factor in the whole situation is that after January 8th, the necessary changes in the institutional security and crisis prevention sector, as expected, did not occur. After a few, almost obvious, dismissals, the "Doctrine of Gradualism" returned, already transformed into a kind of ideology of the Military-Lula Government relations within the GSI (Institutional Security Office), ABIN (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), and the Armed Forces, with the replacement of General Carlos Penteado in the General Secretariat of the GSI by General Ricardo José Nigri, previously responsible for peacekeeping missions and Inspector-General of the Military Police, a former officer in General Villasbôas's office. Similarly, the videos proving the "freezing" of action by General Gonçalves Dias and other military officials of the GSI were considered "classified," and thus forbidden to the public and authorities. Only after the "CNN Case," which still has strong ties to the periphery of Bolsonarism and much larger interests, did this change.³And with the removal of General Gonçalves Dias and the intervention decreed in the body with the appointment of Ricardo Capelli, a distancing from Bolsonaro's supporters effectively began.      

 Finally, the decision was made to maintain the GSI – it remains to be seen whether this will be with the configuration foreseen at its creation, as a replacement for the former “Military House”, as per  Provisional Measure No. 1.911-10, dated September 24, 1999, from the then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso - or will it continue with its militarized role and dependence on the Army Commander's nominations? Ricardo Capelli's firm action points to a restructuring, and yet the nomination of General Marcos Antonio Amaro for the position – which he already held between 2015 and 2016, when, in the face of the scandals of American espionage against the Dilma government, the GSI was dissolved – reinforces the previous practice of considering Security  

 An institutional "Military Question"...

  1^ PODER 360. Lula decrees federal intervention in Brasília after security failure..., 08/01/2023. In: https://www.poder360.com.br/governo/lula-decreta-intervencao-federal-em-brasilia-depois-de-falha-de-seguranca/, accessed on 8/01/2023.

  2^ UOL. Federal District Military Police escort Bolsonaro-supporting terrorists to the Three Powers Square... - See more at https://noticias.uol.com.br/politica/ultimas-noticias/2023/01/08/pm-escolta-terroristas-bolsonaristas.htm?cmpid=copiaecola, on 08/01/2023, consulted on the same day.

  3^ FORUM MAGAZINE. CNN journalist who leaked images was an advisor to a PP leader, who has a historical link with Bolsonaro, 04/20/2023. In:  
https://revistaforum.com.br/midia/2023/4/20/jornalista-da-cnn-que-vazou-imagens-foi-assessor-de-lider-do-pp-que-tem-elo-historico-com-bolsonaro-134604.html, accessed on 21/04/2023.