Burn the books!

The barracks listened to the commander's Order of the Day: "The Armed Forces participate in the history of our people, always aligned with their legitimate aspirations."

They are indeed part of history. But "aligned," General?

Was it the legitimate will of our people to pay mercenaries to form and command Armed Forces that would secure the slave-owning and ethnocidal Imperial State under the whim of the Portuguese dynasty?

Our people didn't want to serve in the Army or the Navy. The troops were made up of starving Europeans and men from the interior recruited "by force," pursued by local potentates. Or by robbers released from prison! Or even by unprotected urban vagrants!

Caxias tried to implement mandatory military service. He failed. Serving as a private was humiliating because of the corporal punishments, the daily indignities, and the inedible food!

Among numerous testimonies, General Demerval Peixoto recounts the application, during the republican period, of the Disciplinary Code established since colonial times by the Prussian mercenary Count Schaumburg (known as Count Lippe).

A soldier who had gotten drunk the night before bled profusely from endless whippings before the motionless troops. Afterwards, he was covered in brine.

The Army was no less humiliating to the Navy than the Army was in the face of the people's children.

It was only in 1916 that the law of universal compulsory service began to take effect. European military officers taught Brazilian officers that, without recognizing the humanity in black men and in ordinary people, Brazil would not have a modern military apparatus.

It took the help of the Parnassian poet Bilac for the gradual acceptance of compulsory military service.

For most of their existence, the troops were not composed of citizens, but of men without rights.

Even today, "our people" resist military service. Proof of this is the persistent TV advertising reminding viewers of the legal obligation.

Only poor young men, with no prospect of attending college, getting a job, or passing competitive exams, serve as enlisted men. They are descendants of slaves, indigenous people, and, as was said in colonial times, dispossessed "free men." Middle-class children do not enlist.

Time flies, the ranks don't align with society. The ranks seem far above society.

Those saying this are not communists, but officers whose books and articles are available in the libraries of the military schools where the general studied.

Was it a "legitimate aspiration of our people" to kill and die defending territorial boundaries in Cisplatina? Well, in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Bahia, Maranhão, nobody knew what that place was.

Did Brazilians volunteer to decimate Paraguayans?

A century and a half after the great massacre, the popular saying still echoes when someone is forced to do what they don't want to do: they go as if they were going to the Paraguayan War!

Our people wanted land, freedom, paid work, and respect. Did they want the death of the brave Balaios and Farroupilhas?

Did he rejoice when the Army slaughtered ten thousand rural workers in Canudos, the second largest human settlement in Bahia? Did he smile at the beheading of the ragged men and women who believed in the Counselor?

Did he celebrate with the backwoodsmen entering civilization "with planks" (reminiscent of Euclides da Cunha)?

In Brazil, the military made its debut by dropping bombs on the humble people on the border between Paraná and Santa Catarina. Fortunately, due to incompetence, it missed its target.

Did our people want to buy expensive airplanes in Europe to terrorize the people of Contestado?

Did people from Ceará rejoice at the Caldeirão massacre?

Did our people enjoy the brutalities of the Estado Novo?

Did churches, schools, and unions thank Olga Benário for handing her over to the Nazi gas chamber operators?

Did academies and universities pay homage to the dictatorship following Graciliano's imprisonment?

Did our people feel moved when the Galeão Republic and the "Generals' Manifesto" forced Vargas's resignation in 1954? Or did they become distraught when the president shot himself in the chest?

The people were on one side; the Armed Forces, on the other...

If our people aspired to a military coup in 1964, what was the need for support from the United States navy? Or is the will of the US government the same as that of our people?

If Brazilians were united in the coup, why did John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Wernon Walters, and CIA agents waste their time and money funding pro-coup movements?

Did our people celebrate with fireworks or were they terrified by the purges, imprisonments, torture, and executions of the dictatorship established in 1964?

I was 14 years old at the time, and at the school I attended, we used to write "down with the dictatorship" on the wall.

One day, a school monitor caught me, and the principal, obedient to military orders, told my father that I could no longer study at the Liceu do Ceará, a public school. My classmates in the student union would say: "Good grief!" Those kids weren't part of "our people"...

By sailing across the Caribbean Sea to submit to the command of the United States and participate in the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, were the Brazilian military fulfilling the legitimate aspirations of the Brazilian people?

Did our people really want to impose a new dictator in Santo Domingo?

How many Brazilians rejoiced at the murders of Herzog, Fiel Filho, Grabois, Pomar, Inês, Bergson, Helenira...?

Was it the legitimate aspiration of our people to see these individuals executed? If so, why did they hide the bodies, the circumstances, and the glorious perpetrators of these deeds?

Did our people want my eardrums to burst from beatings, my kidneys shattered, and my expulsion from the university? Blindfolded, even today I don't recognize the sons of the fatherland who heroically beat me.

Did our people want to see Celso Furtado, Leite Lopes, Josué de Castro, Brizola, Arraes, Luís Hidelbrando, Jango, Prestes, Diógenes Arruda, Renato Rabelo, Amazonas, Chico Buarque, Caetano, Gil... leave our homeland?

Was it the legitimate desire of our people to censor artists and journalists, shut down unions, invade convents, and throw bombs into amphitheaters?

Was it also a legitimate aspiration of our people to hand over a considerable portion of the Amazon to the American millionaire Daniel Ludwig? The old megalomaniac was grateful to the Armed Forces for the chance to dazzle the world!

Why am I remembering all this now?

I think I'm following the President's orders. First, he said to "celebrate" the glorious March 31st. Then, fearing justice, he said it was just to "remember".

Let's remember!

Another option would be to burn books and documentary records.

The President could start by setting fire to the libraries of ESG, EGN, UNIFA, ECEME...

Then, he summoned the world's press to witness the great fire at the National Library and the National Archives, filled with papers written by wicked communists!