Sortition or draft lottery was the mechanism used for recruiting soldiers from 1916 to 1945, when it was replaced by general class call, which is the mandatory military service system in 21st century-Brazil.

A 1906 proposal, drafted by deputy Alcindo Guanabara, was finally approved in 1908, with support among officers, the urban middle class and marshal Hermes da Fonseca's administration at the Ministry of War, during the presidency of Afonso Pena.

Only the impact of the First World War and a public relations campaign, with lectures by Olavo Bilac, breathed new life to the law, and the first lottery was held in December 1916.

Its implementation was associated with the creation of the Tiros de Guerra [pt], which were an alternative to conventional military service, the reorganization of the order of battle, construction of barracks, softening of discipline, extinction of the National Guard, and other changes.

In the following decades, the lottery suffered from administrative limitations and insubmission – thousands of men were drawn annually, but for years in a row the majority of those called for service did not comply.

The Brazilian Army traces the beginnings of the current compulsory military service to laws created in the hereditary captaincies in the 16th century, but what existed in Colonial Brazil was a mixture of impressment and the feudal militia system.

[6] The "human hunt" was a violent process, feared by the population, capable of putting workers on the run and damaging local economies; even so, it captured few recruits.

[10] The Criminal Code of 1890 [pt] punished "vagrancy", "capoeiragem" (the practice of capoeira) and "begging" with imprisonment for a few days, in which prisoners committed themselves to some occupation, such as a military career.

[11] According to officer Estevão Leitão de Carvalho [pt], in 1913 the army's main sources of recruitment were refugees from droughts in Northeastern Brazil, criminals and the unemployed or unfit for work, an "inverted selection".

The revolt had a peasant character, despite being supported by local elites, and outstanding female participation, with women defending their husbands and families; the new law did not include the traditional exemption for married men.

[42] It would appear among the military reforms discussed at the beginning of the century by groups of officers such as the Young Turks [pt] and carried out in the administrations of war ministers such as Hermes da Fonseca (1906–1909).

[56] The shooting ranges were elitist, and shooters from the Tiros de Guerra, volunteer participants in army maneuvers and students from schools with military training were exempt from the lottery.

[66] With the candidacy of marshal Hermes da Fonseca in the 1910 presidential election and the opposition of the Civilist Campaign [pt], the enthusiasm of the civilian elite for the lottery waned.

Civilian and military republican leaders saw the possibility of modernizing the bureaucratic apparatus of the state and breaking the local clientelism that made recruitment difficult.

[92] For the Associação dos Empregados no Comercio do Rio de Janeiro (AECRJ), the law violated liberal principles and individual liberties in regards to the State and disorganized the working classes.

According to its program, the army "serves to keep the working class in its place, and serves as a strikebreaker", "[it] represents a barbaric past, and for this reason it opposes the ideals of individual freedom, freedom of choice of professions and respect for the person"; "The Fatherland, in the name of which the army is created to defend, does not represent the interests of all citizens, but only that of the capitalists", and the lottery "is the return of slavery and is unconstitutional".

[93][95] Anarchist opposition to the law was internationalist; Brazilian antimilitarists were articulated with similar movements in Argentina, both opposed to conscription and war between the two countries.

[98] The outbreak of the First World War (1914–1918), with the immense material mobilization and destruction suffered by the belligerent countries, impressed Brazilian observers and motivated the discussion on national defense,[99] including a new impetus to the effort to implement the Sortition Law.

By the High Command's idea, a public relations campaign was launched in favor of the lottery, with the support of president Venceslau Brás and with Olavo Bilac as its spokesperson.

[103] In his "nationalist apostolate" from 1915 to 1916, Bilac lectured to students, intellectuals and military officers in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Porto Alegre.

[108] Finally, on 10 December 1916, almost nine years after the law was passed, the first lottery was held at the Army Headquarters in a ceremony open to the public, with the presence of the President of the Republic, the Minister of War, Olavo Bilac and other authorities.

In order to house more and more people drawn and be able to summon reservists, a major program to build barracks began during the administration of Pandiá Calógeras [pt] (1919–1922) in the Ministry of War.

Middle- and upper-class children evaded service through exemptions from powerful local patrons, shooting societies, volunteering in army maneuvers, schools with military training, and preparatory courses for reserve officers [pt].

From 1945 onwards, all young men had the obligation to present themselves, under penalty of not being able to obtain an identity card or passport, hold public office or "claim the recognition of any right, favor or prerogative based on labor laws".

[132] In addition to punitive measures, real improvements in working conditions and the advance of official rhetoric slowly dispelled the idea that military service was a punishment.

[111] For historian José Murilo de Carvalho, universal conscription was the most important of the various facets of "the army's intense struggle to become a national organization capable of effectively planning and executing a defense policy in its broadest sense" during the First Brazilian Republic.

The army was no longer closed in on itself, taking in some recruits from the outside without returning them to civilian life, but it now had multiple channels of entry and exit and could influence society by training and socializing the reservists.

[157] The numbers grew gradually, causing "a slow and silent process of accumulation of political capital by the army and, by extension, the central power, to the detriment of local and regional plutocracies".

The National Defense Strategy, approved in 2008, maintained the definition of mandatory military service as a leveler of social classes, even though it did not correspond to the reality of recruitment, even more so with the very low percentages of incorporation.

The pedagogical procedures in the training of recruits are in accordance with what Olavo Bilac, the Young Turks and the National Defense League intended, seeking to mold a "docile, politically neutral body, however, orderly, productive and patriotic".