Changing Concepts of the Role of the Military in Latin America

During the past decade, traditional views about the role of the Latin-American military have been challenged or substantially revised. Traditional opinion holds that the armed forces perform no really useful functions and that their repeated interventions in politics and their demands on national budgets have thwarted and continue to thwart political, social, and economic development in most Latin-American nations. Therefore, they should be abolished or at least sharply reduced in size and placed under strict civilian control. Newer interpretations and prescriptions, while basically antimilitarist, hold that militarism has been and continues to be an expression of, rather than a basic cause of, political instability in Latin America, that in most instances the abolition of the military or their reduction to civilian control is impracticable under existing circumstances, that the military performs a number of useful national services, particularly in the field of civic action, and that the expansion of such activities should be encouraged. Both traditional and revisionist views, however, are based on inadequate data and are generally expressed in continental-wide generalizations which often do not apply to specific situations. Careful studies of individual countries are needed as bases for a truly comparative evaluation of the role of the military in Latin America.