What are the socioeconomic consequences of the presence of a military organization in the municipalities along the border band?

Abstract

One of the characteristics of the Brazilian frontier, particularly in the Amazon region, is the low levels of social and economic development. The Brazilian Army, in addition to having a secular presence strategy in that region, welcomes and remunerates young people from the municipalities where its Military Organizations (OM, in Portuguese) are installed. In view of this, research was conducted that seeks to explain the contributions of the of the OM in the generation of employment, income, and development in the municipalities of the border strip in Arco Norte. To answer the following question: how does the presence of an OM directly contribute to the generation of employment and income in a municipality in Arco Norte? The overall objective is to understand the impact of a State institution in a region far from the major economic centers and geographically isolated from the rest of the country and how state investment promotes a dialogue with the Human Development Index (HDI). The focus of the work was the 124 municipalities with territories in the Border Strip of the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, and Roraima, and, within these states, those municipalities with the presence of OM. Primary economic indicators were collected from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) database, and governmental data referring to the pay of the military and numbers of the variable personnel of the analyzed OM. The method for data analysis was univariate inferential statistics, with the support of the SPSS software in carrying out the tests. The spatialization and clipping of the sample were carried out with the support of the QGis georeferencing software. The results were analyzed seeking to confirm the hypotheses raised from historical arguments of the strategy of presence.