Military Draft Under Fire in Latin America

In Latin America, where obligatory military service is a tradition, the draft is under fire. And in some countries, it’s a lost cause.

Argentina’s Congress is pushing through a law to eliminate the draft next year. The Honduran National Assembly passed similar legislation in May. Uruguay and Nicaragua had already done away with the draft. And Panama has eliminated its armed forces altogether.

Elsewhere, from Guatemala to Chile, the draft is a subject of debate in parliaments and the media.

Chilean youth groups have organized protests against obligatory military service; Paraguayan legislators are discussing changes in conscription law, and human rights groups in Guatemala are blowing the whistle on the army’s abduction-like practice of forced recruitment.

In a region once dominated by men in epaulets, generals today have less clout to defend the draft. And some, mindful of examples in Europe and the United States, are beginning to see advantages in downsized, modernized, all-volunteer armies.

Public criticism of military service and the draft was taboo in many Latin American countries when they were ruled by armed forces in the 1960s and 1970s. In those decades, many of the region’s armed forces advocated a “national security doctrine,” which they used to justify military intervention in government and ruthless action against Marxist movements perceived as threats to stability. The draft was a way not only to fill military ranks but also to control and indoctrinate young men.

In the 1980s, military regimes gave up power in country after country as a wave of democracy swept through Latin America. Almost everywhere that they had governed, the armed forces had lost prestige because of human rights violations, economic mismanagement or corruption.

As democracy has taken root, militaristic policies have come under increasing question. Growing sensitivity to human rights has further nourished sentiment against conscription and mistreatment of draftees. Meanwhile, Marxist movements have waned and guerrilla wars have wound down or come to a halt.

The Cold War, which fed both revolutionary action and the doctrine of national security, is over. “This refocuses the subject of the armed forces in society and on the new international scene,” Chilean historian Claudio Fuentes said. “The communist threat is no longer there.”

Border disputes between Latin American countries also have become less volatile as civilian governments have sought to resolve differences diplomatically while strengthening commercial ties. That trend has further reduced the role of the armed forces and the need for the draft.

But that does not mean the draft is heading for extinction in all countries of the region, Fuentes said. Military establishments still exert strong influence in some countries, and many generals still hold on to the draft as a hallowed tradition. Also, where military budgets are too small to support a professional, volunteer army, low-paid draftees are sometimes seen as a necessity.

The current controversy over the draft in some countries, therefore, centers more on how obligatory service can be reformed than on whether it might be eliminated. In some countries, reforms have already been made.

Brazil, for example, has become the only country in Latin America with legislation that permits alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors. The provision was written into Brazil’s 1988 constitution, enacted four years after the armed forces left power.

Since the mid-1980s, military service throughout the region has endured the worst beating perhaps in this century: Uruguay abolished the draft in the late 1980s; Nicaragua did the same after President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro took office in 1990. In Honduras, President Carlos Reina won congressional approval in May for a bill to eliminate obligatory military service.

“Citizens between the ages of 18 and 30 will join the military service voluntarily in time of peace, under the modality of an educational, social, humanist and democratic system,” the new provision says.

“Five years ago this would have been impossible,” said Victor Meza, a Honduran political analyst. “This is symptomatic of the consolidation of civil society.”

As legislators voted on the draft ban, young Hondurans held a hunger strike outside Congress to demand its passage. It passed unanimously but must be ratified by the next legislative session in 1995.

Panama became the second Latin American country to abolish its army with the Legislative Assembly’s final approval Oct. 5 of a constitutional amendment. In practice, the Panamanian Defense Force had ceased to exist after the December, 1989, U.S. invasion that removed Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

Costa Rica’s army was abolished in 1949 by the late President Jose (Pepe) Figueres, father of President Jose Maria Figueres.

In Argentina, the army had planned a gradual transition from obligatory to voluntary military service as part of a modernization program. Then, this spring, a draftee was reported to have been beaten to death in an artillery regiment. The scandal consolidated public opinion against the draft.

Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem, seeing political advantage in following popular sentiment, sent a bill to Congress to abolish the draft in 1995. The bill passed the lower house Sept. 21; approval by the Senate is expected soon.

Fuentes said it is unlikely that Chile will follow Argentina’s example in replacing the draft with an all-volunteer force. “The military has said it is impossible because of the cost,” he said. And the civilian defense minister, Edmundo Perez Yoma, has said the administration of Chilean President Eduardo Frei supports obligatory military service.

But Chile’s anti-draft movement is more active than ever. Jose Sabat, a Chilean university student and president of the non-governmental Youth Rights Commission, helped organize a protest against the draft Sept. 19, the day of Chile’s annual military parade.

Society must discuss “the elimination of the obligatory nature of military service,” protesters said in a statement.

Sabat acknowledged in an interview, however, that hardly anyone sees elimination of the draft as a realistic goal for now in Chile, where former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet still commands the army. Political and human rights activists are concentrating on such reforms as conscientious objector status, alternative service and reduction of service time. Two Socialist members of the Congress introduced a bill at the end of July to reform draft laws.

In many Latin American countries, it is not difficult for middle- and upper-class youths to avoid the draft. Many Chileans obtain exemptions with questionable doctor’s certificates. Others receive student deferments and are never called up again. In all, only about a quarter of all draft-age youths are inducted; most of them are from Chile’s working class.

In Mexico, obligatory service is also loosely enforced. “A lot of people get out of it by paying someone else to do it for them, or by paying some lieutenant,” said Roderic Camp, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who has written about the Mexican army.

In several of the region’s poorer countries, the draft exists legally but is not actually used. Peru and the Dominican Republic, for example, fill the draft quota each year with jobless volunteers who have little education and see the army as a way to survive and perhaps learn useful disciplines and skills.

Times special correspondents Steven Ambrus in Bogota, Colombia, and Eduard Orlebar in Guatemala contributed to this report, as did Susan Drummet of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau.