Rio’s surprising military history

An obscure cemetery in the Rio downtown bairro where slaves were once landed and sold, is the last place you would expect to find the grave of a Gallipoli hero, but the Cemitério dos Ingleses in Gamboa is where Chief Stoker Veney, DSM, shares a small Commonwealth War Graves plot with 12 other British servicemen, 10 of whom were also Great War casualties. All died a long way from both home and the main theatres of the war.

But this seldom-visited cemetery is just one of a number of surprise finds that await the military historian or curious traveller searching for an alternative to the cliched, if seductive, attractions of sun, sea, samba and soccer, especially on a cloudy day.

The marketers have made such a great job in developing Brazil’s fun-seekers image that while ‘Rio’, ‘armed police’ and ‘drug gangs’ are words that might be found together in the news pages, few travellers would put the words Rio and ‘Military’ in the same sentence. Indeed, people are often astonished to learn that Brazil was involved in both World Wars (on the Allied side) in addition to bloody ‘local’ Latin American conflicts, including the bloodiest of all, the Paraguayan War of the 1860s. Over five centuries since colonisation, they have had a war of independence, at least a dozen assorted rebellions, insurrections and uprisings. There have been slave revolts and mutinies, putsches and had more revolutions than a vinyl record. Truthfully, modern Brazil is the child of its violent ancestors.

Throughout the city, hidden in plain sight, are numerous museums, monuments, forts, statues and even road names that evoke both the city and country’s turbulent history. Free of the madding crowd, with a token entry charge if any, they add a unique and unexpected dimension to any visit to the ‘Cidade Maravilhosa’ and are a real eye-opener for Australian visitors whose knowledge of Latin American history is perhaps understandably sparse.

The first and most easily accessible sites are the Copacabana forts, part of a string that guard Guanabara Bay. At one end of the great sweeping beach lies Copacabana Fort, built in the years before the Great War with its concrete cupolas housing 305 mm cannon. At the other end of the beach, on top of the Morro (hill) do Leme, is the Forte Duque de Caxias. Only opened to the public in 2010, a thigh-stretching walk up a 300 plus meter hill rewards you with some more monster Krupp 280 (11 inch) kanone. And there’s a view to rival those from Sugar Loaf and the famed Christ the Redeemer statue. Not that any of these massive guns saw much action, other than in 1942 when some unfortunate whales were mistaken for German U-boats!

Brazil’s involvement in the WW2 saw them engaged in fierce fights for the Italian Gothic Line, principally around Monte Castello. While the county’s losses of approximately 470 infantry in the fighting doesn’t compare with the losses of other allied units, or indeed Brazilian losses at sea, they were much feared by the Germans. Originally buried in Pistola cemetery, the bodies were repatriated in 1960 and the Monument to the Dead, Monumento aos Pracinhas, with its 31 mm high tower, was constructed in Flamengo Park, five minutes’ walk from the Cinelandia metro station.

There’s another mausoleum for the FEB (Brazil Expeditionary Force) at the labyrinthine Cemitério São João Batista in the suburb of Botafogo, but the more interesting tombs are those of sailors from the Great War and a veritable officers mess full of individual commanders of land, sea and air forces passed over and on since the cemetery’s foundation in 1852. In a 45-acre maze of architectural wonders, elaborate tombs commemorate longforgotten heroes and villains (depending on one’s politics) as well as Brazilian political, music and sports greats. Most intriguingly, there’s a monument to those Brazilians who ‘Morte pour le France’ in the Great War. A guidebook usefully identifies some of the tombs and their occupants’ stories.

The smaller Protestant ‘Cemitario dos Ingles’, were Chief Stoker Veney lies, contains tombstones telling of a couple of centuries of merchant seaman deaths by yellow fever, drowning and even accidental shooting! Poor Veney, who won his Distinguished Service Medal serving on the HMS Amythest under fire during mine clearing operations in the Dardanelles in the weeks before the April 25th landing, also probably died of disease contracted while his ship patrolled the Brazilian coast for U-boats.

One destination not to be missed by the military history enthusiast is the downtown, Castelo District. Here in the renovated dockside, and the nearby terminus for ferries that cross Guanabara Bay, are the National Historic Museum, Naval and submarine museums. In the first, you can submerge yourself in the rich if bloody history of revolt, rebellion and revolution, before cruising to the latter for a review of 400 years of Brazilian maritime history.

Pay attention as you skirmish past skateboarders, cold drink vendors and rough sleepers or you’ll miss one of the more interesting military monuments; it commemorates the ‘Revolt of the Lash’, an early 20th century naval mutiny against colour prejudice and harsh naval discipline. It says something about the commonplace nature of the city’s violent history that an event involving the successful ‘capture’ of two new Dreadnoughts by the mutineers, and the subsequent death of over a hundred of them in bizarre circumstances after their surrender and pardoning, remains largely unknown outside of Brazil.

Perhaps it’s no wonder Rio’s publicity team stick to sun, sea, soccer and samba.

Bruce Cherry