The Armed Forces started on Monday a seven-month-long law-and-order operation (GLO, in Portuguese) in Brazil’s main airports and harbors to fight organized crime. About 3,700 service members will work with police powers to seize drugs and guns in places such as the Port of Santos, the largest in South America, and Brazil’s top two international airports, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Under Brazil’s Constitution, the president can employ the military in GLO law-and-order operations without congressional approval. The law stipulates that such operations should occur when regular public security instruments are “exhausted.”
In practice, all presidents elected since 1989 have resorted to GLOs, with little to no enduring effects on public safety.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who authorized 41 such operations during his first spell in office (2003-2010), was until very recently reluctant to resort to them again. During a press conference on October 27, he clearly said: “While I’m president, there will be no GLOs.”
A mere five days later, he signed the decree authorizing the first GLO in his new term.
Lula’s reluctance to employ the military in public security is understandable. Since the January 8 riots, he has acted to demilitarize strategic areas of the government, such as moving Brazil’s intelligence agency from under the military-run Institutional Security Office (GSI) to the purview of the Office of the Chief of Staff.
A file found in the email inbox of a Navy official, and revealed by newspaper O Globo, contained a draft authorization for a GLO operation in Brasília on January 8. Such an operation would...
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