The Brazilian Marine Corps (, CFN; or 'Corps of Naval Riflemen') is the Brazilian Navy's naval infantry component. Its operational components are the Fleet Marine Force (, FFE), under the Naval Operations Command, in Rio de Janeiro, and regional battalions under the Naval Districts in the coast and the Amazon and Platine basins. Its seagoing component is the FFE, with a core of three infantry battalions and its own artillery, amphibious and land armor, special operations forces and other support elements.
Tracing their origins to the Portuguese Navy's Royal Brigade of the Navy, Brazilian marines served across the 19th century aboard and landed from the Imperial Navy's ships. By the next century, they were relegated to guard duty and largely influenced by the Brazilian Army. In political struggles, they were usually loyalists. Only after 1950 did the CFN acquire true amphibious warfare capabilities, under long-lasting inspiration from the United States Marine Corps.
The CFN relies on the fleet and Naval Aviation for mobility. Its amphibious capability varies historically according to the fleet's available ships and attention given to other priorities, such as counterinsurgency during the military dictatorship and law and order in the current political order. Participation in United Nations peacekeeping is frequent and the 2008 Brazilian National Defense Strategy established that the Marine Corps must be a high-readiness expeditionary force for power projection by the navy. In Brazil's strategic surroundings, this means a capability for urban operations, from humanitarian aid to war, in crisis-ridden countries.
As a cadre of personnel, the Marine Corps is one of the navy's three main components, alongside the Fleet and Logistics Corps, and its ranks are named almost the same as the others. As officers, marines may rise to the highest peacetime rank. Marines are a professional, all-volunteer cadre which undergoes a cycle of military exercises with amphibious assaults (Operation Dragão) and live fire on land (Operation Formosa). They have a distinctive identity tied to both the sea and land and comparable to the army's infantry.
History Origins
The Brazilian Marine Corps' official history dates back to the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil in 1807, making it the oldest force of marines in Latin America. The Anglo-Portuguese squadron that transported the court to Brazil also brought along the Portuguese Navy's Royal Marine Brigade (), a corps of naval infantry. The corps, founded in 1797, was divided into infantry, artillery and engineer units and is the predecessor to the modern-day Portuguese Marine Corps. Earlier during the 17th century, Portuguese marines of the Terço da Armada da Coroa de Portugal had fought in Brazil against the invasions of the Dutch West India Company, conducting amphibious landings during the 1625 recapture of Bahia.
In April 1809, the Royal Marine Brigade participated in the Portuguese conquest of French Guiana, which the CFN considers to be its baptism of fire, even though the marines were Portuguese. 550 marines of the Brigade embarked on a four-ship Portuguese Navy squadron at Rio de Janeiro, which set sail for Cayenne and arrived there on 6 April. The marines landed on the beaches near Cayenne and advanced into the colony, which capitulated on 14 April. Upon returning to Rio, the marines were stationed at the Fortress of São José at Cobras Island, which is the modern-day headquarters of the CFN. The Royal Marine Brigade subsequently participated in the first Banda Oriental invasion, second Banda Oriental invasion and Pernambucan revolution.
When John VI of Portugal returned to Lisbon in 1821, he left a unit of the Royal Marine Brigade, the Battalion of Fusilier-Sailors (), in Rio. Serving under Pedro, Prince Regent, the unit fought for the Brazilians during the Brazilian War of Independence, carrying out amphibious landings and artillery bombardments against Portuguese forces.
Imperial Brazil
Shortly after Brazil's independence in 1822, the Battalion of Fusilier-Sailors was renamed the Rio de Janeiro Artillery Battalion of the Navy (). In this early phase, the CFN was a naval artillery corps, later named Imperial Navy Artillery Brigade (, 1826) and Navy Artillery Corps (, 1827). This was one of the Imperial Brazilian Navy's cadres of personnel, alongside the Fleet Corps (), and the only properly militarized cadre. Its commander was an army artillery officer, who was also given command of the Fortress of São José. Military campaigns were largely maritime, owing to the difficulty of transport by land. Throughout the tumultuous regency period (1831–1840), the Navy Artillery Corps was deployed against internal revolts and was itself behind one of them, on 6 October 1831, leading to the bombing of Cobras Island by the fleet and its occupation by the army and National Guard.
The force was renamed Corps of Naval Fusiliers (, 1847), later Naval Battalion (, 1852), and converted into naval infantry. Its personnel was drawn from the Artillery Corps and officers of the Fleet Corps in commission. In 1852 it comprised 64 officers and 1,216 enlisted personnel in eight companies of riflemen and two artillery batteries. Total strength was small compared to the Army.
Internal stability during emperor Pedro II's reign, from 1840 onward, directed military operations towards international conflicts in the Platine basin. Marines enforced crew discipline, captured and garrisoned forts and patrolled rivers in small boats during the Platine, Uruguayan, and Paraguayan Wars. In the Battle of Riachuelo (1865), they fought enemy boarding parties in close combat. Two years later, they built a five mile long rail line across the Paraguayan Chaco. The CFN's current three infantry battalions are named after battles in this period (Riachuelo, Humaitá and Paissandu battalions), as well as the Special Operations Battalion (Tonelero battalion).
361 marines were killed in action during this period. After the Paraguayan War, the 1870s and 1880s saw no combat and total strength fell to 900 personnel. Marines were assigned to guard duty in naval facilities and internal order operations, such as the control of popular unrest in the Vintém Riots (1879–1880). Previously in 1864 they had already repressed striking port workers in Santos. On 15 November 1889, 400 marines joined army forces to proclaim the Republic.
First Republic
The early republican crisis found the Naval Battalion aligned with the rest of the navy against the government of president Floriano Peixoto. Its participation in the second Naval Revolt (1893–1895) concluded with the Fortress of São José destroyed by loyalist bombings and the battalion disbanded by the victorious government. Amnesty in 1895 allowed the navy to reorganize the force with 216 well-behaved enlisted men from the former battalion and 184 army soldiers. The new unit was named Navy Infantry Corps () until 1908, when it once again became the Naval Battalion. (2008), a semi-official history of the Corps, asserts that by this period "the Battalion was deemed, by public consensus, the most correct and well-drilled of all battalions in the Rio de Janeiro garrison".
Sailors and marines had completely distinct roles, and the latter, when on ship duty, would be responsible for repressing the former. Social backgrounds and discipline regulations, on the other hand, were equivalent. Days after the sailors' 1910 Revolt of the Lash, a rumor spread among marines that the abolition of corporal punishment achieved by the revolt would not apply to them. On 9 December, part of the enlisted contingent took up arms and occupied their quarters. This uprising was isolated and easily crushed, leaving 26 marines dead, many expelled and serious damages to the Fortress of São José — "the near extinction of another generation of marines", according to CFN historian Manoel Caetano Silva. The Corps does not pay homage to any of the rebels, but has never again used the lash to enforce discipline.
Traditionally, marines were loyal to their commanders-in-chief. The Artur Bernardes government, facing numerous tenentist military revolts, converted the battalion into the Naval Regiment () in 1924, increasing its strength from 600 to 1,500 men. Enlisted personnel were mostly from Northern and Northeastern Brazil. Recruits from Rio de Janeiro were blamed for high desertion rates and ceased to be the majority after 1910. The drought-stricken Northeast was a source of labor for Rio de Janeiro and other Southeastern states. The uniforms, employment, housing and authority drew volunteers to the Corps, but many requested to leave when they found rigorous discipline and a demanding routine.
There were no marine officers at the time. The Naval Battalion was commanded by officers of the Fleet Corps, instructed at the Naval Academy, and technical services were rendered by Fleet non-commissioned officers. The 1924 reform made possible, for the first time, the promotion of enlisted marines to officer rank. Lacking education at the Naval Academy and coming from lower social backgrounds, they were deemed second-rate officers by the Fleet. The Naval Regiment as a whole was seen as a guard force and not an elite.
During the Revolution of 1930 marines were attached to army columns and once again defended the established government — at the moment, that of Washington Luís. After his overthrow by a military coup in the capital, marines previously taken prisoner in Santa Catarina made their way back as part of the victorious revolutionary armies. On 30 October the Naval Regiment paraded in Rio de Janeiro showing its loyalty to the new government.
Vargas Era
Among the Getúlio Vargas government's military reforms, on 29 February 1932 the Naval Regiment received its current designation (Corps of Naval Fusiliers), with an authorized strength of 2,524 men. Professionalization was sought in the army's Officer Improvement School (EsAO) and Infantry Sergeant School (ESI); EsAO's course would be mandatory for CFN captain lieutenants until 1990. These officers, starting on 1937, began their careers in the Naval Academy just as their peers in the Fleet Corps. NCOs would only reach officer rank through the Marine Auxiliary Cadre ().
In defense of Vargas' government, marines fought against the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 and the Communist (1935) and Integralist (1938) uprisings. In 1932, some landed in Parati to maneuver on the right flank of the constitutionalists, while others served aboard the blockade fleet in São Paulo's coastline. Marines were gaining political, strategic and even social prominence. Although seen as a reserved and focused soldiery, their military band was successful in public and in the radio in the 40s. In two paintings by Alberto da Veiga Guignard, ('Bride and groom', 1937) and ('The marine's family', 1938), the uniform was depicted as a point of pride for Afro-Brazilian families.
The first CFN bases outside of Rio de Janeiro were installed in 1932: the 1st and 2nd Regional Companies, in Ladário and Belém. Additional companies were installed in Natal, Salvador and Recife for coast defense during World War II. A detachment was posted at Trindade Island and marines served on ship duty aboard the Northeastern Naval Force. When the need to garrison the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha arose, some officers proposed a detachment of marines, but the navy had no means to provide it.