Brazil created in 1865 a set of standards to regulate the treatment of enemy combatants captured in (1864-1870). The document anticipated in 64 years the adoption of the Geneva Convention which, in 1929, would regulate the theme in international conflicts.
The pioneer, which will be 160 years old in December 2025, remains relatively ignored today, even among historians, jurists and military, despite representing a forefront milestone in international humanitarian law.
“This is still very little known,” he told Sheet Péricles Aurélio Lima de Queiroz, STM Minister (Superior Military Court).
Knowledge about “instructions for the treatment of prisoners of war” downloaded by Dom Pedro 2nd War Minister, Ângelo Moniz da Silva Ferraz, Baron of Uruguaiana, is restricted to a small circle of researchers, of which one of the main is Francisco Doratioto, PhD in History and author of the book “Damn War: New History of Paraguay War”.
“In Brazil, the ignorance is great,” he said. Doratiototioto blames “a teaching structure that for decades paid little attention to the subject, and often presented conspiracy explanations that further aggravated this ignorance” about the Paraguayan War.
In 1865, it did not exist in the world. Many were tortured and executed, besides having their goods and to be subjected to forced labor and to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatments in the battlefields.
The rules lowered by Baron of Uruguaiana did not, in themselves, guarantee respect for prisoners, but allowed the offenders to bring to the martial court, as shown records of the time.
One of the circulars that make up the rules, issued on August 10, 1865, sent a Brazilian commander “punish the (subordinates) who, forgotten of their duties, commit the disapproved acts” against enemies captured.
Prior to the government of Dom Pedro 2, only that of Abraham Lincoln, in the United States, had issued specific rules on prisoners of war.
The 1863 American document was called Lieber Code, referring to its editor, Francis Lieber, a Berlin-born jurist and political scientist, who even fought in Napoleonic wars (1803-1815) in Europe, before emigrating to the US and fighting in the secession war (1861-1865).
The document made by Lieber and Lincoln in the US precedes the Brazilian similar in two years, but is less comprehensive and detailed with regard to prisoners. In addition, the Lieber code was applied to an uninior armed conflict, while the Uruguaiana Baron document did it in an international armed conflict.
One of the scholars of the theme, STM Minister Mario Tiburcio Gomes Carneiro wrote in an analysis published in 1942 that the Baron of Uruguaiana document complements the Lieber Code “with more thorough regulation, as it not only regulated the direction and custody of prisoners, but also their treatment, discipline and employment.”
The instructions of the Uruguaiana Baron even deal with the type of fabric and colors of the uniforms that should be used by Paraguayan prisoners, as well as dealing with salary payment to captured officers.
“The Paraguayan officers who went to Rio de Janeiro received the same salary as Brazilian officers, paid for Brazil. They were prisoners in Cavelheresque terms, because they were around the city, lived in pensions,” said Doratioto.
The standard may not have been applied extensively and uniform and benefited more officers than low -patent military and arms -raised civilians. This is due to the fact that many Brazilian and Paraguayan officers were descendants of families with noble titles in Portugal and Spain, which made them reproduce certain privileged treatments, according to Doratioto.
The fact that Brazil has copied, extended, and perfected a law on prisoners of war that had been issued just two years earlier in the US is no surprise to the historian. He notices that other innovations, such as the battlefield air observation balloons and the battleships called so-called monitors, were also used by Brazil at the same time after being observed in action in the American Civil War.
Historian Lilia Schwarcz is prudent with the idea of a Dom Pedro 2nd cosmopolitan, because “the image of the internationally connected monarch will be built after the Paraguayan War, not before.”
In addition, the emperor was created from the cradle “with this varnish of illustration, and there was a whole projection operation of this [imagem de uma] connected and tuned person “.
Schwarcz also notices that “the Brazilian Army was not very good with the Paraguayans”, as noted by the historiography of the neighboring country. “Maybe the document is part of this lecture of a monarch who wants to project this image,” she ponders.
Doratioto says these are not exclusive things. “Until World War I, war was a physical clash between soldiers and you only kill the other if you hate the other. And if you don’t kill, you are killed today with drone operated on miles away. In the 19th century, you killed yourself with a bayonet and short-range weapons. Hence the fact that the violations have lived with the existence of a avant -garde humanitarian document.
Paraguayan prisoner turned the coat in Rio
In 1865, Paraguayan General Antonio de la Cruz Estigaribia had invaded Rio Grande do Sul and occupied with his troops the city of Rio Grande do Sul, on August 5. He ended up, however, overcoming Brazilian forces and was taken as a prisoner on September 18 of that year, in what the Paraguay National Library files classify as a “humiliating surrender”.
As a prisoner, Estigarribia benefited from the rules downloaded by Baron of Uruguaiana. Humanitarian treatment not only spared his life, but also allowed him to later live in Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the Empire.
Even as a fighter captured, he circulated freely and had access to the court. Estigarribia even “writing a note to Dom Pedro 2º, asking him to allow him to fight against [Francisco Solano] López “, according to records of the Paraguayan Official Archive. Nothing indicates that the military has returned to the battlefield to fight the president of his own country, as he died in Rio in 1870, the year of the end of the war.
The Baron of Uruguaiana, who played an important role in the capture and decent treatment of the Paraguayan General, later received from Dom Pedro 2nd, the title of Baron, for which he would become known, and the post of Brazilian War Minister, which he would be exercised from 1865 to 1866.
