Guilherme Alessandro Lemos da Silva MOREIRA
Teoria & Pesquisa: Revista de Ciência Política, São Carlos, v. 32, n. esp. 2, e023017, 2023. e-ISSN: 2236-0107
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14244/tp.v32iesp.2.985 19
Most of today's politicians seem deprived of their own intellectual attributes
and ideologies, while they master the technique of presenting grand illusions
that lead voters to believe that those are the real needs of society. [...]
[...] the mere replacement of PR [Dilma Rousseff] will not bring significant
change to the 'status quo' [...] the advantage of change would be the disposal
of incompetence, mismanagement, and corruption. [...]
In this time of crisis, all autonomous, free, and virtuous consciousness needs
to awaken to the patriotic struggle, contributing to the return of national
self-esteem, pride in being Brazilian, and hope for the future (VIZEU 2015,
online, our translation).
After the content of the lecture was disclosed, the news of his dismissal from the CMS
came with an additional element that would have "contributed" to the decision: the commander
of the 3rd Army Division, General José Carlos Cardoso, who was subordinate to Mourão, issued
invitations to a posthumous tribute ceremony for Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra,
former commander of the DOI-CODI in São Paulo, who had passed away on the 15th of that
October (CRUZ; GIELOW, 2015, online).
Mourão's dismissal was reportedly agreed upon between the Minister of Defense, Aldo
Rebelo (PCdoB), and the Army Commander, General Eduardo Dias da Costa Villas Bôas. Both
reportedly agreed that Mourão "could not continue" (CRUZ; GIELOW, 2015, online), which
pleased the government for the speed of the solution to place the general in a "bureaucratic
position" within the Army's "cold storage" (FRANCO, 2015), specifically, the Secretariat of
Economy and Finance of the Army. The action "would serve as an example" to other military
personnel that "[...] this type of behavior is not acceptable from an active-duty Army general
speaking to his subordinates" (MONTEIRO, 2015a, our translation), a perspective reiterated by
Villas Bôas, who also used the incident to say that "a military officer has to speak, can speak.
[...] Society has become unaccustomed to hearing from the military, and whenever the
military speaks, it causes a reaction, repercussion, and it should not be like that" (MONTEIRO,
2015b, emphasis mine, our translation).
On the other hand, despite journalists, "civilian" authorities, and military officials
giving a punitive sense to the incident, a statement from General Mourão at the ceremony
marking his departure from the CMS in January 2016 reveals a different reality:
My departure was a normal rotation within the Army; normally, we stay
around two years, and I was about to complete two years, so the commander
saw fit to make this direct exchange between General [Edson Leal] Pujol and
me. As for the statements made, I gave a lecture to the internal public, and
some aspects of that lecture were selected and published. So here, what is
happening is the routine of the Army, nothing more than that (TVE-RS,
2016, online, our translation).