Will Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico (Lincoln, NE, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), pp. xxvi+501, £25.00, hb.
the authoritarian generals of the high command made sure that the FEB troops were prevented from making any political comment, and were rapidly demobilised on their return. The reception in the barracks was thus rather chilly ; FEB officers – most of whom actually supported Vargas – were sent to distant locations and no effort was made to capitalise on their war experience. The government did not manage to provide significant assistance and the few benefits veterans were granted were then extended to all the military. Ironically, only after the end of the military dictatorship did the remaining 5,000 veterans receive significant material recognition for their patriotic sacrifice. Shawn Smallman questions the view that torture of political opponents during the military regime was due to the army’s lack of professionalism. He argues that the army had already used extra-legal violence against its own internal dissidents, most prominently after the rebellions of 1910 and 1935. In the years before the coup, nationalist officers and soldiers were victims of violent repression, in particular during April and May 1952, when the high command eliminated them from the leadership of the Clube Militar, and implemented another anti-communist purge in the armed forces. The officers of the Cruzada Democrática took over military intelligence, which later became the infamous SNI. After the coup this extra-legal violence was extended to all civil society in order to consolidate the power of the generals. Renato Lemos revisits the issue of why the military regime allowed the judiciary to maintain some of its independence. Criticising the view that it served only as a democratic smokescreen, he shows the struggle between different factions within the two highest courts responsible for judging the most political cases : the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and the Military Supreme Court (STM). Only when the composition of the STF was changed, with the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), did it issue judgements that complied with the military’s aims. And whereas the military courts of first instance that ruled on the infamous ‘political-military inquiries ’ (IPM) were dominated by young, authoritarian officers, the STM tended to be more moderate and often reduced penalties or dismissed cases on formalities. Maria Celina d’Araújo looks at how the Brazilian military started to incorporate women whilst still maintaining an absolute ban on open homosexuality among its ranks. A proposal to abolish article 235 of the 1967 Military Code, that stipulates punishment for ‘ libertine ’ practices, did not pass in Congress. Since 1980 the Navy has recruited women to work as technical and administrative staff, and in 1982 the first cohort of women officers graduated in the Air Force. However, a project to train women for the firearms service was abandoned in 2002. As in many other countries, the perception that women and homosexuals are unfit for war persists among the Brazilian high command.