By Milton Pomar*, in South21
The first order he gave, in 1978, when he took over the direction of EMAF (Medium Forestry Agriculture School, part of the Federal University of Viçosa, in Minas Gerais), was to build a guardhouse to control entrances and exits in the area of classroom and accommodation buildings. Colonel of the reserve, the military started to command teachers and students of the agricultural and forestry technical courses of the traditional school, by decision of General Geisel, then president of the Republic – at the time, all federal technical schools received officers of the reserve as directors. Coincidence or not, ours was Cavalry.
There was a lot of excitement in the military environment at the beginning of 1978, due to three decisive political facts: the dispute over the nomination of the successor of the president of the republic – with paratrooper general Hugo Abreu in an open campaign against Figueiredo, from the National Information Service (SNI), considered Geisel’s favorite –; the consequences of the frustrated coup of the Minister of the Army, the extreme right general Sylvio Frota, in October 1977, and of his summary dismissal (and that of his allies as well) and replacement by General Fernando Bethlem; and the impacts of the “April Package” (in 1977) on the electoral dispute that year.
Two more facts, which occurred in 1977, bothered the military: the creation of state and national committees for the amnesty of political prisoners, and the resumption of the student movement, expressed in the National Meeting
III ENE), in Belo Horizonte, with Aureliano Chaves, then governor of Minas Gerais, personally commanding the soldiers of the PM cavalry, with their sabers, wooden clubs and horses, attacking students in the streets and squares of the capital of Minas Gerais.
Obliged to withdraw from the course at EMAF in 1978, to perform compulsory military service in Belo Horizonte, I did not live with the colonel director that year. I only got to know his “modus operandi” the following year, when I was discharged and went back to school to finish the course. Thanks to the political changes that took place in 1979 (amnesty law, release of political prisoners and the return of many leaders who were exiled), some colleagues were encouraged to react against the arbitrariness of the director, initiating a movement for his dismissal.
When we said that our objective was to fire the principal, because he was not a teacher, nor had anything to do with agriculture or forestry, the class reacted with skepticism: that is not possible, they will not fire the director. We insisted that yes, it was possible to fire the colonel, as long as we had something strong against it – the proposal not to accept graduation with him won.
We were able to publicize our complaints in an interview on state TV. A few days later, the repression hit: despite not being from the direction of the guild, I was called to a meeting at night at the house of a former director of the school, with the participation of two representatives of the University of Viçosa (UFV), the pro- dean of something and the head of the SNI office at UFV. The SNI guy threatened to hand me over to the DOPS, in the impasse dismissal versus graduation, because he believed that waving the possibility of arrest and torture would get us to withdraw. As the threat might have been the loud barking of an old dog, we paid to see it (even out of fear).
Our demand was the dismissal of the director. Either he was fired, or there would be no graduation.
Yes, graduation was important for students, but much more so for their families, many of them humble people from the interior of the state, who wanted to assist their son or daughter receiving the “straw” of the important course of a famous school. For this reason, there was only an agreement that all of us would face the UFV rectory together, thanks to a typically “Minas Gerais” solution: informal graduation – we had “our” in the church hall, on December 8, 1979, without EMAF and UFV, and with relatives, teachers, employees, etc. All the same as a graduation – except for the fact that legally no one was graduating –: speaker’s speech, several tributes, and the right of each and every one to be called to the stage and receive a large envelope (with a photo 20×25 of the class), as if it were the diploma.
It was the first time that a graduation did not take place, in 40 years of EMAF history. It must have also been the only time. That’s why our class became known as the one that fired the Army colonel who was the school’s director, because he was actually fired soon after – they just didn’t do it in time for graduation, so as not to admit that they gave in to our claim.
Bringing these facts so long later, at the beginning of the election year, helps to remember the need to dismiss thousands of positions of trust, federal public servants who are active officers of the three weapons, appointed by the current federal misgovernment. Military personnel who are certainly lacking in their units of origin, and their return to their functions will be important for the country to begin to remake everything that was – and is still being – systematically destroyed in Brazil, public policies for environmental preservation and indigenous populations, those of economic development (reindustrialization, generation of employment and income and reduction of social inequalities); cultural; energy, transport and telecommunications infrastructure; science, technology and innovation; health; care for the elderly; citizen security; and all the others shattered in the last six long years.
*Milton Pomar is a Geographer and Master in Public Policy
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