“ANTIGUIDADE É POSTO”: Um estudo sobre o critério de hierarquização no Curso de Formação de Oficiais da Academia de Polícia Militar Gonçalves Dias (São Luís/Maranhão)

Abstract

This paper analyzes a principle of hierarchy in the Polícia Militar do Maranhão (PMMA), based on the Curso de Formação de Oficiais (CFO) held at the Academia de Polícia Militar Gonçalves Dias (APMGD), conceiving it as a domain of production of power relations, distinctions, and professional identities. Part of a series of studies on elites and institutions developed by the Laboratório de Estudos sobre Elites Políticas e Culturais (LEEPOC), the research starts from the category of “seniority” and its role in organizing military life, structuring successive classifications, regulating relations between agents in the training process, guiding disputes, and defining prerogatives throughout the course and careers. Based on in-situ observations at ceremonies, graduations, events, and daily life, documentary analysis of institutional sources, manuals, and internal regulations, and, above all, the application of questionnaires to students at the Academia de Polícia and interviews with cadets and officers of the PMMA, relationships were identified between social origins, disparate incomes (grades and rankings), and internal prestige predetermined by the principle of “seniority.” By emphasizing the interactions, tensions, competitions, and strategies associated with the pursuit of higher and more recognized positions in the internal hierarchy, it was observed that “seniority” is not reduced to an administrative criterion, but operates as a structuring mechanism of military culture, contributing decisively to the reproduction of forms of domination and the selection of PMMA leadership groups.