Lieutenant-General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was normall ...

Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar (1947 – January 6, 2006) was a Brazilian soldier. He was born in

Bagé Bagé () is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. In 2020, its population was 121,335 in a total area of 4,096 km2. It is the seventeenth largest city in the state according to the 2011 census. The city was f ...

in the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, ; ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative units of Brazil#List, fifth-most populous state and the List of Brazilian s ...

. He served for 39 years in the

Brazilian Army The Brazilian Army (; EB) is the branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces responsible, externally, for defending the country in eminently terrestrial operations and, internally, for guaranteeing law, order and the constitutional branches, subordina ...

and eventually rose to the rank of

. He was married and had two children. On September 1, 2005, he was selected to lead the military contingent of

MINUSTAH The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (), also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of its French name, was a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti from 2004 to 2017. It was composed of 2,366 military personnel and 2,533 police, supported by int ...

, the UN

peacekeeping Peacekeeping comprises activities, especially military ones, intended to create conditions that favor lasting peace. Research generally finds that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed w ...

force in

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

, replacing his fellow Brazilian,

Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira. Graduated at the

Agulhas Negras Military Academy The Military Academy of Agulhas Negras (, AMAN – named after the Agulhas Negras summit) is the biggest school of formation of combatant officers of the Brazilian Army. It originated in 1792 with the creation of the Royal Academy of Artillery, ...

, he was a decorated officer. Having a great career, he was also a teacher at AMAN. He was nominated to lead the UN mission MINUSTAH in

. On January 7, 2006, General Bacellar was found dead, fallen from a chair on the balcony of his hotel room in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

. State news agency

Agência Brasil Agência Brasil (ABr.) is a nationwide Public service, public news agency, run by the Federal government of Brazil, Brazilian government. The agency was founded in 1990 and is part of public media corporation Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC ...

said Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira Da Matta Bacellar was the victim of "a firearms accident". Later that day, UN and Brazilian officials said that he appeared to have shot himself in the head, several days after national elections had been postponed for a fourth time. Bacellar was also a teacher of geography and of Brazilian Studies in military schools. He was 58 years old. An autopsy was also performed, to determine the exact cause of death and the calibre of the weapon that killed him. On January 12, 2006, both the UN and the Brazilian government announced suicide as the official cause of death. In January 2011, diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released in the

United States diplomatic cables leak An incident, commonly referred to as Cablegate, began on 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around ...

, revealed that

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

President

Leonel Fernández Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna () (born 26 December 1953) is a Dominican lawyer, academic, and was the 50th and 52nd President of the Dominican Republic from 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2012. From 2016 until 2020, he was the President of th ...

suspected Bacellar had been assassinated by a group of Contras led by

Guy Philippe Guy Philippe (; born 29 February 1968) is a Haitian former police officer, politician, and convicted money launderer, who led the 2004 Haitian coup d'état against president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after being fired from the police in 2000. He o ...

, a former soldier and police chief and a Haitian anti-Aristide "rebel" leader that had been armed by the USA. The same cables also reveal that the

contras In the history of Nicaragua, the Contras (Spanish: ''La contrarrevolución'', the counter-revolution) were the right-wing militias who waged anti-communist guerilla warfare (1979–1990) against the Marxist governments of the Sandinista Na ...

, according to President Fernandez, had the mandate of creating chaos in Haiti and had even killed a Canadian and a Jordanian

member in the past and that the killing could have been a response to Bacellar's reluctance to use force in

's shanty town

Cité Soleil Cité Soleil (; ; English: ) is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 resi ...

regardless of pressure from Washington and a pressure campaign by the Chamber of Commerce head Reginald Boulos and

André Apaid André Apaid, Jr. is a businessman in Haiti known for leading the Group of 184, a coalition which forced Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004 through a coup d'état in collaboration with the United States The United States of Americ ...

, the latter a

sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a cramped workplace with very poor and/or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperat ...

king in Haiti and both main figures in the civic front named Group 184 that played a main role in ousting President Aristide in the 2004 coup. His position as leader of the military contingent of

was temporarily filled by his deputy,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

an General Eduardo Aldunate Herman. On January 17, 2006, it was announced that Brazilian General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira would be the permanent replacement for Bacellar as the head of the United Nations' Haiti military force. His body was returned to

Brasília Brasília ( ; ) is the capital city, capital of Brazil and Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. Located in the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region, it was founded by President Juscelino ...

to burial with full military honours in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

Awards

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bacellar, Urano 1947 births 2006 deaths Brazilian generals United Nations military personnel People from Bagé Suicides by firearm in Haiti