ABSTRACT
Examining the issue of diversity in the present-day Brazilian armed forces immediately gives rise to a serious problem: the sources. Not much public information is available on the matter, particularly regarding the Navy and the Air Force. Undoubtedly, the long authoritarian presence of the military, in power for twenty-one years – between 1964 and 1985 – has contributed to the lack of information on the internal demographics of the institution, something that could be viewed as a matter of ‘national security’. It is important, however, also to ascribe part of the responsibility to civilian researchers, who have relegated the theme to a subordinate position. Because of the Marxist perspective dominant in the Brazilian social sciences during roughly the same period as the military regime, most social scientists viewed the armed forces as a kind of ‘armed fist’ of the bourgeoisie, within the wider context of class struggle. An interest in studying ‘internal’, ‘structural’ or ‘organizational’ aspects of the armed forces only gained ground, slowly, at the end of the military regime.1
