Qualla: Military Academy of Agulhas Negras

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, Public domain. Queen Mary I of Portugal signed the decree in 1792, and with that signature she accidentally founded the oldest military academy in the Americas - older than West Point, older than any Spanish-American institution, the first of its kind on two continents. The Real Academia de Artilharia, Fortificacao e Desenho began in Rio de Janeiro in a building called the Casa do Trem, training young men to build forts against English, Dutch, and French corsairs. Two hundred and thirty years later, that same institution lives on as AMAN, the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, occupying 67 square kilometers in the town of Resende at the foot of the Serra da Mantiqueira. It has trained nearly every president Brazil produced during its twenty-one years of military rule.

Image: Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras | Public domain

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: A Queen's Signature

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roosewelt Pinheiro/ABr, CC BY 3.0 br. Portuguese Brazil in 1792 was a colony worried about pirates. English, Dutch, and French corsairs had been raiding the coast for two centuries, and the Crown needed officers who could design and build coastal fortifications. Queen Mary I - remembered in Portuguese history as Mari...

Image: Roosewelt Pinheiro/ABr | CC BY 3.0 br

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: The Royal Court Arrives

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michel Temer, CC BY 2.0. Everything changed in 1808. Napoleon invaded Portugal. The entire Portuguese royal court - King Dom Joao VI, the queen, the nobility, the state archives - fled across the Atlantic and relocated to Rio de Janeiro, making a colonial capital the seat of empire overnight. Three years...

Image: Michel Temer | CC BY 2.0

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: The Move to Resende

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo Stuckert/PR, CC BY 3.0 br. The Brazilian Army needed room. By the 1940s the old urban campus in Rio had become inadequate for modern training - no space for tank maneuvers, no space for artillery ranges, no space for the scale of exercises that a 20th-century army required. On 1 January 1944, the Military ...

Image: Ricardo Stuckert/PR | CC BY 3.0 br

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: The Saber of Caxias

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ministério da Defesa, CC BY 2.0. Every AMAN cadet takes an oath that begins with a specific line: I receive the saber of Caxias as the symbol of military honor itself. The reference is to Luis Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias, the official patron of the Brazilian Army and twice Prime Minister of Brazil. In ...

Image: Ministério da Defesa | CC BY 2.0

Military Academy of Agulhas Negras: The Alumni Roll

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arquivo pessoal, restoration by User:Wilfredor, Public domain. The list of notable alumni tells a particular 20th-century Brazilian story. The generals who ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 under military dictatorship nearly all passed through AMAN or its predecessor: Humberto Castelo Branco, Artur da Costa e Silva, Emilio Garrastazu Medici, Er...

Image: Arquivo pessoal, restoration by User:Wilfredor | Public domain