The Brazilian Armed Forces is the largest in Latin America, with about 330,000 active duty troops, and 1,340,000 in reserve.
They descended from the Portuguese Army troops that defended Brazil during their rule. They curbstomped the Dutch in Brazil in 1648 and was considered to be the founding date of the Brazilian Army. However, in the early 19th century, the Brazilians, fed up with Portugal's attempts to infringe on their newly gained sovereignty, rebelled and the Portuguese Brazilian units joined with them at their War for Independence, forming the The Empire of Brazil. It wasn't as bloody as those of Mexico's but still bloody nonetheless. Brazil later fought with Argentina at the Platine War of 1851-2 over Uruguay and Paraguay. When the latter country's dictator went Ax-Crazy and attacked Brazil in the Paraguayan War in the 1860s, they, with the Argentines and Uruguayans bled the Paraguayans dry and almost killed the entire adult male Paraguayan population.
It also had to deal with some monarchist remnants with the War of the Canudos (1893-1897). They crushed the monarchists with a heavy price; the monarchists defeated three military expeditions sent against them by the republicans. Most of the rebels probably didn't even know who was the president, and generally just wanted to find a calm place in the middle of the Brazillian Northeast and pray in peace.
Surprisingly for a nation not known as a naval power, Brazil was the third nation after Britain and Germany to field dreadnought battleships. Even at the time this was viewed with astonishment by the major powers, all of whom assumed Brazil must have been buying the ships from British shipyards on behalf of a third party, so that Britain's latest naval technology could be stolen by a rival. Nobody could understand why a nation with neither a strong naval tradition nor powerful naval rivals could ever need such expensive warships. But need them or not, Brazil wanted dreadnoughts as a symbol of national prestige, and thus Argentina and Chile had to have their own
, triggering one of the more obscure arms races of the 20th century.
Brazil entered both World Wars at the side of the Allies. World War I had a discreet participation, where aside from a small military medical mission and some officers in the French military, the largest contingent arrived in Europe just days before the November 1918 armistice. World War II, on the other hand, had 23,000 Brazilian troops distinguish themselves in Italynote , not to mention the Brazilian air units that were embedded into the American air forcenote . And, considering what came next, this was the last time the Brazilian military ever had anything to be proud of. And given a common dissing term for the troops' involvement was that "It's more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe, than for the BEF go to the front and fight", the Army's insignia featured a snake with a pipe. Brazil's participation on the Allied side in World War II was somewhat ironic, given that Brazil's President at the time, Getúlio Vargas, was himself a quasi-fascist dictator. This fact didn't go unnoticed by the BEF or the Brazilian people, and was a major factor in the return of democracy to Brazil... for a couple of decades.
As with most nations in post-colonial South America, the Brazilian military has been, at times, rather involved in the country's political scene, most notably in 1889, when a cadre of officers, backed by coffee and cattle barons and led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew the emperor, Pedro II, ending the constitutional monarchy in favour of establishing the first republic which happened to be as, if not more, oligarchical and socially stagnant as the Empire, only without the popularity and diplomatic skills of Pedro II keeping it together, the following years saw a number of armed uprisings from federalists in the south, religious dissidents in the central region, dissatisfied naval officers (twice) and an anti vaccination revolt in the capitalnote , all of which the army quelled rather brutally. The latest bout of military interventionism in internal affairs was in 1964 when the army used president João Goulart's somewhat left leaning tendenciesnote to accuse him of being a closet Dirty Communist. This theory generally seen as hilariously far-fetched, and seen by the vast majority of Brazilians as an excuse to establish a military dictatorship, with all the nastiness that normally comes with that particular form of government, including, but not limited to: extralegal torture, mass press censorship, persecution of political oppostion, mass corruption and a sudden spike in disappearances and "suicides" of political opposition figures. The whole ordeal lasted until 1985, when public unrest over the blatant mismanagement of the country, along with an increasingly strong underground opposition movement led to the junta gradually redemocratizing the country. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the end of the last excuse for them holding political power, the military retired from politics after a referendum to restore democracy. Sane people hope they stay retired.
Post dictatorship, the Brazilian military mostly donned the Blue Helmet of the U.N. Peacekeeper, and has been instrumental in U.N. international peacekeeping efforts, most notably taking center stage in efforts to stabilize Haiti up until 2017note , and participating in the peacekeeping efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the U.N. peacekeeper forces, under the leadership of a Brazilian general, fought on the side of the government forces in quelling the M23 rebellion in the early 2010s.
Brazil also has a weapons industry, which nearly collapsed in the 1980s. Its most successful company is Taurus, a small arms manufacturer that even has a plant in Miami. Along with small arms manufacturing, Brazil's armoured vehicles industry is also renowned for producing high quality Infantry Fighting Vehicles such as the EE-9 Cascavel and VTBP-MR Guarani and to occasionally dabble in tanksnote . As a quirk of not being militarily aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, and thus coming with very few political strings attached, Brazilian armoured vehicles saw wide adoption by the (nominally) non-aligned nations during the cold war, particularly in South America, but also the Middle East and Africa. This was, notoriously, one of the few times where everyone in the cold war was at least content with the arrangement, as it meant that NATO and Warsaw could focus their production on their closer allies, the non-aligned movement got to buy stuff while remaining nominally non-aligned, and the Brazilian Military Industrial Complex got to make money.
Brazil mainly uses a conscription and mobilization military system, conscription inspection is mandatory for men at the age of 18. Service is voluntary for women, and yes, many of the women in the Brazilian military are Action Girls. There are - thankfully for those that don't want to join the Military - relatively few openings in the army, so the "conscription" tends to boil down to a guy in a uniform asking if you want in or not and putting you in the reserves due to "excess contingent" if you don't feel like joining.
In Fiction:
- In the 1999 movie The Frenchman's son they save the day at the end.
- In Red Dawn +20, the Brazillians are one of many nations to send soldiers to America when it's invaded by the Dirty Communist armies. They also send their aircraft carrier, Minas Gerais for the liberation of Houston.
- Swedish Heavy metal band Sabaton has a song called "Smoking Snakes", chronicling the Brazilian Expeditionary Force's (nicknamed "Smoking Snakes" for their logo being a snake with a pipe) deeds in World War Two. Specifically it's about Arlindo Lúcio da Silva, Geraldo Baeta da Cruz and Geraldo Rodrigues de Souza – 3 Brazilian Expeditionary Force soldiers who became separated from their unit and fought a large contingent of Germans in Italy on 14 April 1945. Refusing surrender, they fought to their deaths and were buried by the Germans, who placed a cross over their graves with the inscription "Drei brasilianische Helden" (Three Brazilian Heroes).
- The Brazilian WWII Drama Road47 talks about the Brazilian participation in the Italian campaign.
- Operators from COTER (Terrestrial Operations Command) assist the protagonists of SEAL Team in episode 7 "Borderlines" when searching for a missing CIA agent near the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina tri-border region.
- The Brazilian Armed Forces are heavily featured in Vampiros do Rio Douro with one of their field commanders being a point-of-view character. They are fighting a Hopeless War against Portuguese vampires that are awakened from their sleep and proceed to wreck havoc in Southern Brazil.
- Batalha dos Guararapes depicts the aforementioned war against the Dutch invaders.
