How does Brazil mark War dead and veterans?
Dia do Soldado
- Local date
- August 25, 2027
Brazil's soldiers' day commemorates one man's birthday. 25 August is the birth date of Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias, born in 1803 and patron of the Brazilian Army, and that is why the day exists. The Ministry of Defence and the Army run the ceremonies; it is not a public holiday and the country works. Brazil marks victory separately, on 8 May — Dia da Vitória, for the end of the war in Europe in 1945 and the Brazilian Expeditionary Force that fought in Italy, Brazil being the only Latin American country to send ground troops to Europe. So the soldier is commemorated through a nineteenth-century general's birthday, and the war through the date it ended.
What is this topic?
The United States splits the dead from the survivors into two separate federal holidays: Memorial Day in May for those killed, Veterans Day on 11 November for those who came home. The other six countries mostly set aside a single day, and mostly do not give it off — Taiwan lets the defence ministry decide who gets the day, Japan's 15 August rests on a cabinet decision rather than any statute, and Indonesia's Heroes' Day is filed by presidential decree under "national days that are not holidays".
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.