Selection and socioeconomic background The student body was initially made up of soldiers, graduates of the and, until 1919, officers. The Military Colleges were boarding schools for military families and some civilians. The 1916 regulation distinguished between positions reserved for graduates of Military Colleges, enlisted personnel and civilians. Until 1924, there were minimum service requirements in a troop corps for candidates. A three-year Preparatory Course was instituted in 1924 for 15- to 19-year-olds, but ceased to exist in the following decade.
Cadet Preparatory Schools (EPCs) were created in Porto Alegre and
São Paulo in 1939 and 1940. The EPC came to be considered a filter for the best cadets. Beginning in 1924, a certificate of honor signed by a civil or military authority was required. The age group and social origin of the student body were homogeneous, apart from the officers in the first years. Entering the ranks of the Army was, during the
First Brazilian Republic, a means of intellectual training and social ascension for families of modest economic status, especially those of the urban middle class. Some of the young people were from traditional military families, but the civilian elite was notably absent. Still, selection for the School required political influence, and educational prerequisites maintained a
white majority in the officer corps. Since the previous century, many young people without a vocation for a career in arms, interested only in social ascension, became officers. Still in the 1930s, Góis Monteiro complained that the School attracted poor students without moral motivation for a career. The 1934 regulation intended to broaden the candidates' social base, making it less endogenous and attracting the best civilian elements; until then, graduates of the Military Colleges occupied almost all positions. Half of the positions were reserved for the contest open to civilians. Applicants were required to have a “grade” of moral standing and intellectual ability from the head of their previous school and pass a qualifying medical inspection. Commander José Pessoa's idea was to “improve qualities, not correct defects”; however, he did not engage in or directly influence the discrimination. In the middle of the decade, more conservative officers intended to isolate the Army from contamination by external conflicts. Its most explicit measures were in recruiting officers. The military elite should correspond to the social elite. A discriminatory policy was applied to access the School from 1938, when general Dutra was Minister of War, as a State policy, regulated behind the scenes by instructions, official letters and secret circulars, in addition to decree-laws. The Secret Note of 22 January 1941, from Dutra to the School Commander, is an explicit example. It established the following criteria for accepting candidates: "being a native Brazilian and the legitimate son of Brazilians who are also born; belonging to an organized and well-regarded family; be physically and mentally healthy; not colored; not – nor his parents – Jewish, Muhammedans or avowed atheist." Candidates' backgrounds and their families were taken into account by the Commandant of the School and the commission of officers that analyzed the individual files. Applicants provided a lot of information, and items such as surname and photograph were taken into account in their exclusion. Special cases were sent to the War Office office. The EPCs adopted the same discriminatory criteria. Armies from neighboring countries, such as
Argentina and
Bolivia, also had their forms of discrimination.
Racism and
anti-Semitism in the criteria were political and cultural in nature. For Dutra, a Jew was not fit to be an officer because "he was a race devoid of land", and the black, because "it was not up to the Army to change social conventions". As for foreigners, the Estado Novo was nationalistic and blamed them for competing with Brazilian workers and introducing communism to the country. There was flexibility for the children of Portuguese, Spanish and Italian parents. In religion, the Estado Novo's proposal to make the nation a moral community and collective consensus brought it closer to the
Catholic Church. The intended social pattern excluded illegitimate children, children from separated parents and single mothers, as well as less well-off parents. The unfit proportion reached almost 40% of candidates in 1942, but exceptions were still made due to palliatives such as being the son of an officer. The criteria were softened, but did not disappear, after the
end of the Estado Novo and the . In 1938–1942, around 70% of candidates' parents were from the middle and upper classes—professionals, civil servants (civil and military), and landowners. Civilians were the majority. In the classes of 1941–1943, 19.8% of students came from the traditional upper class, 76.4% from the middle class, 1.5% from the skilled lower class, and 2.3% from the unskilled lower class, as per analysis by political scientist
Alfred Stepan. This analysis has superficialities, including civil servants and military personnel in the middle class without specifying their positions. 21.2% of cadets were children of military personnel. In 1939, 61.6% of cadets came from civilian high schools, and 38.4% from Military Colleges. In the following decades, the participation of the upper class retracted, that of the qualified lower class grew and recruitment became more endogenous, with greater participation of children of military personnel.
Discipline The disciplinary offenses provided for in the regulations ranged from common delays to more serious cases such as fights in the city or on the tram, confronting an instructor's authority or absence from the School during a punishment. The penalties were reprimands (privately or on a bulletin), impediments and arrests (forbidding the student to leave the accommodation or the internal area of the School), for milder cases, arrests (at the School or in a troop) and exclusion. Arrested or detained students were still required to attend daily work. Exclusion for disciplinary reasons was rare. , a student in 1918, recalled an anarchic environment in the early years: the School was "an educational institution in which a family could not enter. The student's ideal was to be macho, with a gun on his waist and a machete in his vest." "Students would walk around naked and leave school that way to go buy a newspaper at the Station." "When the students passed through
Bangu, people locked the doors, otherwise the students would invade everything."
João Punaro Bley, recalling the same year, described the young people as “practically given over to their own impulses”. This changed in 1919–1922, when commander Monteiro de Barros and the instructors at the Indigenous Mission imposed a strict discipline, which students recalled as excessive. Prisons became the most common punishment, and the rate of punishments increased a lot. The verb “to toast” was synonymous with “to punish” at the time. The Cadet Corps Regulations of 1931 reformulated punishments. For José Pessoa, the greatest control over the cadet should be his own conscience, and prison outside the School was harmful, as it mixed inexperienced young people with whom they should not have contact (undisciplined soldiers). Thus, during his command, the rate of punishments decreased and the few arrests were for attacks on the School's reputation or personal dignity. For lighter transgressions (“missing the curfew check, poor uniform appearance, lack of body cleanliness and hygiene in the accommodation, loss of documentation, delays at the ranch or instructional activities and failure to salute superiors”), detention and suspended licensing were applied, a new punishment in which the cadet could not leave on the days or hours of licensing; in both, they still circulated within the School. However, efforts to curb cheating on written tests had not been successful. José Pessoa himself ended his command in 1934 with a student strike, and for a year the two generals who succeeded him were unable to maintain control; only colonel
Mascarenhas de Morais, who took office in 1935, managed to impose discipline again.
Students' life The officer career had a reputation for being difficult to join. Many of the candidates who made it through the initial selection were turned off by the eliminatory exam at the end of the 1st semester, the infamous "carro de fogo" (fire car). As the newcomers, the “bichos” (beasts), were integrated to school life, they were subjected to
hazing by seniors. Hazing, often with physical violence, was prohibited, but it still occurred. It imposed a hierarchy on the “bichos” and was a form of socialization. The heavy routine of guard duty, studies, punishments, missing the family, etc. “dismantled” the students' individuality, creating a new identity, which was considered superior to the civilians. Selflessness came to be considered a requirement for a military career. The notions of honor, virility and romanticism reproduced throughout the career began to be assimilated at the Military School. Rites of passage such as hazing, exams, choosing branches, field exercises and graduation created a sense of belonging to the Army and the class, giving rise to the “Realengo generation”. Students lived in intense competition, but there was a sense of camaraderie. Weather, daily activities, and permission to go out on weekends were all under the authority of the School Commander.
Juarez Távora, who studied under the 1913–14 regulation, described the routine as follows: The Indigenous Mission used strict discipline and hard physical work to absorb the youth's energy. In the words of João Punaro Bley, “four hours of instruction in the sun and hot sands of Gericinó to the rigors of virile and diversified exercises 'broke' anyone”. The timetable changed little, but the rigor of the physical exercises became known even outside the School. The infamous “death ramp”, in which the students, carrying all the equipment, had to climb a steep obstacle, jump over a deep ditch and crawl under barbed wire, left
Humberto Castelo Branco injured for two weeks. The organization of the Student Corps in 1918 increased the military framework of students' lives. Unlike American cadets, Brazilian students did not have the opportunity to command subunits; for the Army, students had to obey before they could command. Instructors were in close, daily contact with students. Another aspect of the military framework was boarding school life, for which the School was conceived from the beginning. However, originally most students lived in fraternities. Internment did not become integral until 1930. Detailed and unprecedented details of cadet life were covered in 1932 by the Cadet Corps Bylaws. Its time and space were rigorously controlled, bringing the School closer to the concept of a “total institution”. The bonds of association between the students were strong, and they had a Military Academic Society (SAM). In the early decades (1910s and 1920s), due to the lack of recreational facilities, the pastime was to walk through the streets of Realengo. Nocturnal getaways were undertaken to discuss politics, steal chickens, as meals were austere, and visit nearby prostitutes, as the School was an exclusive male environment. A dozen students founded a
Vincentian Conference in 1917, under the influence of the parish priest of Realengo. One of them, Juarez Távora, reported an environment hostile to religion until the Vincentians' demonstration of altruism during the
Spanish flu in 1918. The Catholic movement in the School grew much more in the following decade. In the 1930s Commander José Pessoa sought to increase the cadets' social standing. He discouraged their participation in the suburban festivities of
Méier and Bangu, prohibited their permanence in taverns and billiards, “where elements of all classes gather, so as to avoid a promiscuity that does not pay them any respect”, and convinced the biggest clubs (
Tijuca and
Fluminense) to invite cadets to their dances. Physical renovations made the School more comfortable. Testimonials from former cadets in the 1980s recall the much higher social status of Realengo cadets than AMAN cadets decades later; in the late 1930s and early 1940s, cadets had prestige for clubs, parties, and dating. This went hand in hand with their higher social background at this time. Cultural manifestations were concentrated in SAM, which edited the
Revista da Escola Militar magazine (currently
Revista Agulhas Negras), with an annual circulation. From 1933 it became more literary. More intellectual cadets published short stories, poetry and philosophical themes. The most politicized followed economic and social themes in
A Defesa Nacional. Most students found little time for reading. Cadets appeared in the media in the 1930s and 1940s, especially in the short films of Cine Jornal Brasileiro, produced by the . In the 1930s, an annual sporting competition against midshipmen from the
Naval School began. == Symbols and rituals ==