Almost 1,800km from the sea and
5,000 from the source of the Amazon river, the 2.2 million inhabitants of the
city of Manaus live in the steamy, hot and humid climate that immediately
springs to mind on mention of the word Amazon. What better place than this,
then, to train and educate Brazil’s jungle warriors? Situated close to the
urban sprawl that is the city, the Centro
Instrucao de Guerre na Selva (CIGS or Jungle Warfare Training School) is a
fifty year old institution that has established itself as one of the world’s
leading jungle warfare training facilities.
A sign at the entrance to the Centro Colonel Jorge Texeira, housing
the CIGS, welcomes visitors to “The Home of the Brazilian Jungle Warrior,” and
offers an integrated series of instructional and educational facilities that
sit alongside research and development activities that have already provided
insights into the physiological and psychological stresses unique to the jungle
environment. CIGS – which is soon to undergo perhaps the most fundamental
change in its half century history – is truly a hidden jewel.
Commandant of CIGS, Coronel Alcimar Marques
de Araujo Martins, explains that the central structure of training is divided
into three main courses: the ‘C’ Course, aimed at Sergeants at the squad and
platoon command level; the ‘B’ Course, catering for Lieutenants and Captains at
the platoon and company level; and the ‘A’ Course, which provides training for
more senior officers at the Major and Colonel commanding companies and
battalion levels. The important fact, Alcimar points out, is that the objective
of all the courses is “to teach command in a jungle environment” – so in a
sense, this is a “train the trainers” approach to developing jungle warfare
expertise.
Since the first course at CIGS in February
of 1967 – which consisted of 31 sergeants – the number of students enrolled in
the ‘B’ and ‘C’ Courses has grown to a typical level of 120 students per 10
week course, each of which are held three times per year. Competition for
places on the courses is fierce, with some 350 applications for 120 places on
the last course, according to Alcimar. The senior officer course is a slightly
less intense eight weeks in duration, though the same level of physical and
mental stress is applied to students.
Challenging, exhausting and providing a
‘journey into self’ for the successful applicants, the esprit de corps that results
from graduating the CIGS is palpable among the staff and alumni. The unique
symbols of a graduate include the distinctive gorro headdress, the onça
or jaguar badge (the school has a total of nine jaguars ‘on strength) and,
perhaps most prized – because the graduate has to purchase it with his own
funds – the facao, a sword-knife
reminiscent of the medieval falchion and bearing more than a passing
resemblance to the modern machete.
The onça
possesses strength, agility and intelligence – attributes the school strives to
instil and exploit among its students and hence the reason for the creature’s
adoption as its de facto mascot,
according to Alcimar. The school’s staff also share the animal’s character –
some 498 fully committed staff, including 58 officers and sergeants, provide
instruction ranging from methods of surviving in a hostile environment to
special warfare techniques such as patrolling, river navigation and crossing
procedures and individual weapons skills – firing standard weapons in the
jungle requires very different skills from those employed in more traditional
combat environments.
Alcimar shows justifiable pride in the
quality and motivation of the CIGS cadre. “They are selected from among many applicants,
they are motivated to succeed, they are experts in the techniques we teach and
they are fully committed to supporting and training the students,” he says,
going on to explain that the an individual instructor will spend up to 2,500
hours per year in the jungle surrounding Manaus: an average for a student
attending one of the ‘B’ or ‘C’ courses runs some 1,100 hours, by comparison.
There are several large training areas in
the local area available to CIGS for training. Two of them – the so-called
Devil’s Square of 115,000 hectares and the Juma training area of 96,000 – are
each well over twice the size of urban Manaus. Students live in the jungle throughout
the course, for which the administrative planning schedules show activities and
events pretty much 24/7 – many of which are unexpected from the students’
perspective, adding to the desired levels of stress and uncertainty staff seek
to inject into the training.
Students become infinitely familiar with
the issues of survival in the Amazon jungle: finding food and water from the
environment, being aware of the potential dangers of predatory animals, snakes
and poisonous plants, being stealthy and covert in movement – the list of
issues the student has to keep in mind at all times is practically endless.
Which is what makes successful graduation a prize to be relished by the
individual. In its history, 5,825 soldiers and officers have graduated from
CIGS – and every one of them knows his unique number on that list, as
Paulo-Edouardo Ribeiro, a former Colonel who graduated the course in 1991,
confirmed.
Of that number of nerly 6,000, a total of
474 officers and NCOs have come from countries other than Brazil. Over 300 have
come from neighbouring Latin American nations, but well over 100 have come from
Europe (with France dominating the nationalities – though many ‘French’
students are, in fact, from the Légion
Étrangère and not necessarily French nationals, therefore) and a
significant number from the United States. There is some justification for the
assertion that CIGS and the US Marine Corps’ own jungle warfare training
facility lead the pack in terms of pre-eminent establishments of their kind
across the globe.
Nor does the range of CIGS activities stop
at ‘mere’ training: the zoo attached to the facility houses over 200 animals of
various sorts, all local to the Amazon jungle and all contributing to the
considerable research the centre engages in as well as providing a reference
collection for familiarisation. It is open to the local civilian population and
apparently well patronised by them – which makes the fact that lack of external
funding may well put the facility at risk, given the stresses placed on the
Army’s budget currently.
There is hope, however. Plans at the Army
Chief of Staff level to make CIGS the centre of one of the planned six
integrated warfare training centres around Brazil mean that there are ambitious
plans to expand the campus, integrate other training methodologies and
facilities with the existing ones, and provide the basis for expanding the
crucial contribution CIGS makes to the medical understanding and treatment of
uniquely Amazonian ailments.
“Small, but beautifully formed” is a phrase
that springs to mind after visiting CIGS. Commitment, expert knowledge, strong
motivation and a highly developed sense of esprit de corps are revealed in
every comment made by Alcimar and his staff. Perhaps the most telling comment,
though, comes from an unidentified soldier in a video shown to demonstrate the
Centre’s breadth of activity in the “7.5 million square kilometres of mystery
and danger” that is the Amazon basin. “Change is the key to survival….and here
we change their DNA.” Words to live by…
Tim Mahon, reporting from Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil
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