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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Serie: Antipode Book Series
- Sprache: Englisch
This volume explores the series of public protests - manifestações - that took place in a number of Brazilian cities in June and July 2013, when thousands of people took to the streets to demand improvements in urban infrastructures. * Critically examines the role these protests played in politics, the political and their relationships to urban space and culture * Analyses their connections to the emergence of a 'New Right' in Brazil, which saw the election of Bolsonaro * Includes first-hand accounts and brings together contributions from both activists and scholars within a number of different fields (geography, history, philosophy, art, political economy) * The first interdisciplinary English language anthology to address Brazil's 2013 protests and the broader political and cultural questions they raise * A major contribution to Brazilian and Latin American Studies in Europe and the USA, as well as interdisciplinary studies of social movements, urban culture and politics
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Antipode Book Series
Series Editors: Kiran Asher (University of Massachusetts, USA) and David Featherstone (University of Glasgow, UK)
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Manifesting Democracy?
Urban Protests and the Politics of Representation in Brazil Post 2013
Edited by
Maite Conde
This edition first published 2022© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Conde, Maite, 1971- editor.Title: Manifesting democracy? : urban protests and the politics of representation in Brazil post 2013 / edited by Maite Conde.Description: First Edition. | Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2022. | Series: Antipode Book Series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: Introduction / Maite Conde -- June 2013: A Moment in the Struggle for Public Transport in the City -- The June 2013 Protests in the City of São Paulo -- Are they Black Blocs? The Trajectories of Militancy, Repression and Contestation of Meaning in Rio de Janeiro’s Protests -- Media Activism and Diverse Tactics on the Streets of Brazil. Observations about and from Mídia NINJA -- The Politics of Strolling -- Seja Gari, Seja Herói (Be a Binman, Be a Hero). Aesthetic Manifestations in Rio de Janeiro’s Protests -- Social Movements and Participatory Planning. The Limits of Institutionalization -- Brazil. Development Strategies and Social Change from Import Substitution to the June Days -- The Democratic Eclipse: Between the Brazil of Social Struggles and the Brazil of Political Coups.Identifiers: LCCN 2021060397 (print) | LCCN 2021060398 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119330912 (Hardback) | ISBN 9781119331100 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781119331261 (PDF) | ISBN 9781119331247 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119331360 (eBook)Subjects: LCSH: Brazil--Politics and government--2003- | Democracy--Brazil. | Political participation--Brazil. | Brazil--Social conditions--1985- | Protest movements--Brazil--History--21st century.Classification: LCC JL2431 .M326 2022 (print) | LCC JL2431 (ebook) | DDC 320.981--dc23/eng/20220206LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060397LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060398
Cover image: São Paulo, 2013 (Photograph © Maite Conde).Cover design by Wiley
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Contents
Cover
Antipode Book Series
Title page
Copyright
Notes on Contributors
List of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Maite Conde
2 June 2013: A Moment in the Struggle for Public Transport in the City: Marina Capusso and Matheus Preis
3 The June 2013 Demonstrations in the City of São Paulo: Marilena Chaui
4 Are They Black Blocs? The Trajectories of Militancy, Repression, and the Contestation of Meaning in Rio de Janeiro’s Protests: André Reyes Novaes and Mariana Lamego
5 Media Activism and Diverse Tactics on the Streets of Brazil: Observations about and from Mídia NINJA: Marianna Olinger
6 The Politics of Strolling: Pedro Erber
7 Seja Gari, Seja Herói (Be a Binman, Be a Hero): Aesthetic Manifestations in Rio de Janeiro’s Protests: Barbara Szaniecki
8 Social Movements and Participatory Planning: The Limits of Institutionalization: Renato Anelli and Ana Paula Koury
9 Brazil: Development Strategies and Social Change from Import Substitution to the June Days: Alfredo Saad-Filho
10 The Democratic Eclipse: Between the Brazil of Social Struggles and the Brazil of Political Coups: Francisco Foot Hardman
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Protests in Brazil, 2013
Figure 1.2 Political graffiti in São Paulo, 2013
Figure 1.3 ‘When your child gets ill take...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Demonstrations on the National Day...
Figure 2.2 Demonstration against the fare increase...
Figure 2.3 Demonstration against the fare increase...
Figure 2.4 Demonstration against the fare increase...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Satellite image showing the proximity...
Figure 4.2 Frame taken from a video by the newspaper A...
Figure 4.3 Demonstrators storm the police vehicle...
Figure 4.4 (a) Posters and (b) a banner evidence the...
Figure 4.5 A poster from the Movimento Estudantil Popular...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Refuse workers of the
Círculo Laranja
List of Tables
Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Distribution of the Workforce, 1940 and 1980 (%)
Table 9.2 Distribution of the Workforce, 1980 and 2000 (%)
Table 9.3 Brazil: Number of Strikes, 2004–2012
Table 9.4 Brazil: Number of striking workers, 2004–2012
Table 9.5 Brazil: Net New Employment Creation (Thousands)
Table 9.6 Brazil: Brazil: Distribution Of Wages (%)
Guide
Cover
Antipode Book Series
Title page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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Notes on Contributors
Renato Anelli is Professor in the post graduate program for urbanism at FAU Mackenzie and researcher at CNPq, where he is involved in the project Infrastructure Networks as Urban Strategy. An urban architect (FAU PUCC), with a Masters in architectural and urban history (FAU USP, 1995) and was full professor in the Architecture and Urbanization programme at The University of São Paulo – São Carlos between 1986 and 2021. He has been a visiting researcher and professor at Columbia University – New York (2016), HafenCity Universität (Hamburg) from 2013 to 2017 and at the University of Texas – Austin in 2013. Renato was also Secretary of Municipal Works, Transportation and Public Services (2001–2004), a member of the Commission for the Coordination of the Plan for São Carlos (2002–2004) and President of the Council for Urban development of São Carlos (2011–2013). He has been advisor for the Lina Bo Bardi Glass House since 2006 and was responsible for the Conservation Plan from 2016 to 2020. Renato was also advisor at the IAB SP in Condephaat (2019–2021).
Marina Capusso graduated in Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo, after having studied in state schools. She currently works training basic education to teachers and occasionally writes on topics she deems important. Marina and her co-author here Matheus Preis were part of different generations of Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement in São Paulo). They agreed to write the chapter published in this collection, with the consent of MPL-SP activists at the time, after an invitation made by the organizers to the movement in 2015.
Marilena Chaui is a renowned Brazilian Philosopher and Professor of Political Philosophy and History of Modern Philosophy at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She is a well-known scholar of Baruch Spinoza and Maurice Merleau Ponty and author of a number of books including the best-selling O que é Ideologia? (2002). Chaui served as Municipal Secretary of Culture of São Paulo, from 1989 to 1992.
Maite Conde is Professor in Brazilian Studies and Visual Culture at The University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge. She has written numerous articles on Brazilian culture and society and is the author of Consuming Visions. Cinema, Writing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro (2011) and Foundational Films: Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil (2018), winner of the 2019 Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for outstanding book published in English or Spanish in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures.
Pedro Erber is Associate Professor at the School of International Liberal Arts and the Graduate School of International Communication Studies, Waseda University. Before joining Waseda in 2019, Erber was Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Director of the East Asia Program at Cornell University. He holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from Cornell University, an MA in Philosophy from PUC-Rio de Janeiro, and a BA in Philosophy from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of Breaching the Frame: The Rise of Contemporary Art in Brazil and Japan (2014), Politics and Truth: Martin Heidegger’s Political Philosophy (2004), and numerous articles, catalogue essays, edited volumes, and translations.
Francisco Foot Hardman is Professor of Literature and Other Forms of Cultural Production at the Institute for the Study of Languages at UNICAMP in the state of São Paulo, where he has taught since 1987. He has been visiting professor/researcher in a number of national and international universities, such as University of California – Berkley, University of Texas – Austin, Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Roma La Sapienza, Maison de Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) and Peking University. He is the author of numerous books, amongst them Nem Pátria Nem Patrão: Memória Operária no Brasil (1983), A vingança da Hileia: Euclides da Cunha, a Amazônia e a literatura moderna (2009) and Meu diário da China: a China atual aos olhos de um brasileiro. In 2019, he edited of the collection of poems Ai Qing: Viagem à América do Sul, which was translated in collaboration with Fan Xing and was awarded a prize by the Brazilian Association of University Publishers.
Ana Paula Koury is Professor in the postgraduate programme of architecture and urbanism at the University of São Judas and in the Masters programme in Civil Engineering at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University. She has a postdoctoral degree from the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo and in 2016 was a visiting professor at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, CUNY. She is on the management committee of the Klimapolis Laboratory (IAG-USP/IMP) and coordinates the Itaim Paulista Laboratory, an extension project that involves the university and the local public. She is also part of the committee of the Journal of Urban Technology and Sustainability.
Mariana Lamego is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Geography at Rio de Janeiro State University. She is the coordinator of the Centre for Studies and Research on Space and Culture (NEPEC/UERJ).
Marianna Olinger is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and human rights activist with 20 years experience organizing and training courses on gender equality, violence prevention, gun control, drug policies, and urban planning. She has led campaigns for national coalitions in Brazil, and has collaborated in the development of advocacy and media campaigns in Brazil and other countries in Latin America. Throughout her career, Marianna has worked closely with over two dozen organizations, governments, international agencies and social movements. Since 2014 she has been based in New York and works as an independent consultant, researcher, and educator, in addition to working on her own creative projects.
Matheus Preis graduated in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo, and completed a Masters in Sociology at UNICAMP. He is the developer of a web-application and database for the Observatory of Police Violence and Human Rights.
André Reyes Novaes is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Rio de Janeiro State University. He is currently Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London and a member of the Commission for the History of Geography of the International Geographical Union. His research interests include visual methods, history of cartography, popular geopolitics, and history of South American borders.
Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy and International Development, and Head of the Department of International Development at King’s College London. Previously, he was Professor of Political Economy at SOAS University of London, and Senior Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He has published extensively on the political economy of development, industrial policy, neoliberalism, democracy, alternative economic policies, Latin American political and economic development, inflation and stabilization, and the labour theory of value and its applications.
Lisa Shaw is a freelance translator of Portuguese to English texts, and works regularly for Brazilian publishers and literary agents, including Companhia das Letras and Agência Riff, as well as cultural organizations and academics. She is Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool and author of various books including Tropical Travels: Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters and the Construction of Race and scholarly articles in leading journals.
Barbara Szaniecki is Adjunct Professor in the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI – School of Industrial Design) at the Rio de Janeiro State University. He has a PhD in Visual Communications École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and a Masters and doctoral degree from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Rio de Janeiro. She has extensive experience in the field of graphic design. She is a researcher at the Design and Anthropology Laboratory of the Graduate Program in Design at ECO/UERJ in addition to participating at the Universidade Nômade in Brazil. Her research examines the relationship between graphic design (especially the poster) and political concepts such as the multitude, power, protests, participation, and representation. She is currently co-editor the journals Lugar Comum: Estudos de Mídia, Comunicação e Cultura and Multitudes: Revue Politique, Philosophique et Artistique. She is the author of Estética da Multidão (2007) and Disforme Contemporâneo e Design Encarnado: Outros Monstros Possíveis (2014).
List of Illustrations
1.1
Protests in Brazil, 2013
1.2
Political graffiti in São Paulo, 2013
1.3
‘When your child gets ill take him to the stadium.’ São Paulo 2013
2.1
Demonstrations on the National Day of Struggle for the Free Fare. São Paulo, October, 2005
2.2
Demonstration against the fare increase, São Paulo, February 2011
2.3
Demonstration against the fare increase, São Paulo, June 2013
2.4
Demonstration against the fare increase, São Paulo, June 2013
4.1
Satellite image showing the proximity between theUERJ campus (1) and the Maracanã stadium (2),two sites of struggle prior to the 2013 June Days
4.2
Frame taken from a video by the newspaper A NovaDemocracia of the storming of the Assambléia Legisl-ativa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (ALERJ, LegislativeAssembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro)
4.3
Demonstrators storm the police vehicle known as the
Caveirão
4.4
(a) Posters and (b) a banner evidence the interaction between teachers and black blocs during the protest
4.5
A poster from the Movimento Estudantil Popular Revo-lucionário (MEPR, Popular Revolutionary StudentMovement) calls for the release of Igor Mendes
7.1
Refuse workers of the
Círculo Laranja
Series Editors’ Preface
The Antipode Book Series publishes books which engage and strengthen radical geographical ideas and Left politics broadly defined by combining critical theoretical interventions and empirical rigour. While we are open to different forms of substantive, innovative, and imaginative scholarship, we are particularly keen to publish monographs that develop their argument in sustained and situated ways. While the series is rooted in geography and transnational in scope, it is neither limited to disciplinary scholarship nor does it privilege particular geographical contexts. Rather, we are interested in a broad spectrum of politically engaged scholarship that is in conversation with critical debates across fields, and that might speak to issues posed by contemporary political conjunctures. We particularly welcome submissions from authors from the global South and from backgrounds traditionally under-represented in the academy.
If you have an idea for an Antipode book, whether it is a monograph or an edited collection, please contact the Book Series Editors who are happy to discuss ideas for potential book proposals. For more details about the series, see: https://antipodeonline.org/category/antipode-book-series
Kiran AsherUniversity of Massachusetts, USA
David FeatherstoneUniversity of Glasgow, UK
Antipode Book Series Editors
Vinay GidwaniUniversity of Minnesota, USA
Sharad ChariUniversity of California, Berkeley, USA
Antipode Book Series Editors (2012–2020)
Acknowledgements
This book has been many years in production. It began life as an article on the protests that took place in Brazil in June 2013, called ‘Kicking off in Brazil: Manifesting Democracy’, co-authored with Tariq Jazeel, which was published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies in 2013. I am grateful to Jens Andermann and the editors of that journal for their interest in the article. Thanks also to Tariq for his original input to this project.
I am extremely pleased to be part of Wiley’s Antipode Book series. I am grateful to the editors of the series for their support of this project and their patience is seeing it to fruition. Special thanks to Dave Featherstone for his enthusiasm and help with the book. I am also grateful to have received funding from Antipode to translate many of the chapters here from Portuguese. Many thanks to Lisa Shaw for her excellent translations. At Wiley, Jacqueline Scott has been endlessly helpful, guiding the book through its various stages with patience and dedication throughout.
The collection has benefitted greatly from the comments and suggestions provided by the two anonymous reviewers, as well as to Bryan Cameron, Ulrich Oslender, and David Treece who provided feedback on the introduction at various stages. Thanks also to Stephanie Dennison who suggested I present aspects of the introduction at a seminar at Leeds University and to those in the audience for the lively discussion that followed.
Chapter 6 of this book was previously published in the journal Latin American Perspectives and an earlier version of Chapter 9 was published in Studies in Political Economy. Many thanks to the editors of these journals for allowing these chapters to appear here.
I owe my greatest thanks to the scholars and activists who contributed chapters to this edited collection, both for their work and their patience in seeing the project through. Hailing from different fields, backgrounds, and generations they shed light on an important event in Brazil’s recent history, challenging us to think about the country’s political foundations and framework.
This book is dedicated to them. It is also dedicated to all of those who participated in the original manifestações in Brazil in June 2013 and their hope in seeing a better Brazil.
Maite Conde
Cambridge
1 Introduction
Maite Conde
Grappling with the question of democracy in Brazil is far from straightforward, not least in the country’s contemporary history. In 2016, then President Dilma Rousseff, of the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores) or the Workers’ Party, was impeached and evicted from office midway through her second term after being found guilty of breaking budgetary laws for deferring payments on public accounts, a long-standing practice common to previous governments. Two years later, her predecessor, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, the most popular ruler in Brazilian history, was incarcerated for 12 years, an act carried out ostensibly on grounds of corruption and money laundering, yet one that as recent reporting has uncovered was part of a conspiracy to prevent him and the Workers’ Party from returning to power in the 2018 election.1 With Lula out of the way, that election was won by the right-wing candidate Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a former military officer who has extolled the country’s most notorious torturer; declared that the military dictatorship should have shot thirty thousand opponents; told a congress woman that she was too ugly to merit raping; announced he would rather his son be killed in a car accident than be gay; avowed open season on the Amazon rainforest, pledging to take land away from indigenous communities; declared that indigenous and Afro-Brazilian peoples are not fit for anything, not even procreating; and promised to rid Brazil of red riff-raff.
In 1991 Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chaui, a contributor to this volume, declared ‘Brazil is an authoritarian country,’ since it has yet to ‘fully realise the principals of liberalism and republicanism’ (2011, p. 169) Brazil is a nation, Chaui stated ‘where there is no distinction between public and private, in which there is an inability to tolerate the formal and abstract principle of equality before the law, in which social and popular forms of struggle are repressed and in which racial, sexual and class discrimination are pervasive’ (2011, p. 170). Chaui’s words seem especially prescient today. Since taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro’s right-wing government has intimidated and arrested journalists investigating possible illegalities in his cabinet, accusing them of criminal activities and of spreading fake news; it has appointed Bolsonaro’s own son, Eduardo, Brazil’s ambassador to Washington DC, in spite of his lack of political experience, and hired another son Carlos, as head of communications; it has slashed funding for social initiatives, including science- and public-education programmes, that enabled poorer and Afro-Brazilian students to enter university; and it has made severe cuts to FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, curtailing the rights of indigenous people, a move that has precipitated increased deforestation, as well as land invasions by loggers and miners and led to a rise in homicides. Bolsonaro himself has called for security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders to be shielded from prosecution, stating that he hopes that criminals will ‘die in the streets like cockroaches.’ At the time of writing, with the country suffering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, experiencing one of the highest mortality rates in the world, Bolsonaro has dismissed the disease as nothing more than ‘a little flu;’2 has rejected media ‘hysteria’ over its dangers; and sacked his health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, after he publicly challenged the president’s behaviour.
More than mere words, Bolsonaro’s fondness for authoritarianism shapes his actions, policies, and his very government. He has filled his government with more than 100 serving and retired military officers, including several of his own cabinet ministers, forcing many commentators to fear for the country’s democracy. Celso de Mello, Brazil’s longest serving judge of the supreme court, for example, has stated that the nation now resembles Weimar Germany with its president bent on destroying democracy and replacing it with ‘abject dictatorship.’3 And for Oscar Vilhena Vieira, dean of the Law School at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, ‘Brazilian democracy is under serious threat. The president is not just trying to create institutional conflicts, (but also) trying to stimulate violent groups.’4 Such fears are compounded by Bolsonaro’s frequent and enthusiastic attendance at rallies, at which demonstrators, often wearing paramilitary uniforms, call for Congress and the Supreme Court to be shut down and replaced with military rule.
With the country now led by an authoritarian, it certainly seems that the question of democracy in Brazil needs to be reassessed and revived. The chapters in this volume venture back to, and analyse, a moment in the country’s recent history when such revision and reassessment of democracy was indeed taking place and was at the forefront of Brazilian society. That moment began in 2013. On 6 June of that year, nine days before FIFA’s Confederations Cup was due to kick off in Brasilia, the first of a series of public protests – or ‘manifestações’ – began in the city of São Paulo. The protests quickly swept across Brazil, and over the next two weeks they expanded to more than 350 cities and towns, bringing millions into the streets. São Paulo became the scene of some of the largest manifestações, with upwards of 65 000 people taking to the city’s streets on 17 June (Figure 1.1). Initially organized by São Paulo’s Movimento Passe Livre (MPL), the Free Fare Movement, the manifestações began as opposition to a 20-cent increase in public transportation costs. Thousands took to the streets demanding zero fare transport. This occurred at a time when conspicuous spending on upcoming mega events was taking place: the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and the 2016 Olympic Games. As Carlos Vainer (2013) notes, these mega events were key to the protests; they catalysed them and provided a global stage for the manifestações. Propelled by this initial movement, protestors’ demands soon became more diverse, encompassing a variety of issues – urban displacement, restricted forms of urban mobility, neglect of public-service investment, corruption – that for many were tied to the country’s relationship with FIFA and ensuing mega-events. As they grew, the manifestações also began to include a broad demographic range, as well as a wide spectrum of ideologies, from both the left and right. The manifestações have remained a feature of Brazil’s urban political landscape, and significantly throughout 2015 they emerged as a key tactic for a dissatisfied upper middle class and a so-called ‘new right.’
Figure 1.1 Protests in Brazil, 2013.
The unprecedented magnitude of the 2013 manifestações and the wave of urban protests they sparked led many in Brazil to dub them – half jokingly, half seriously – as Brazil’s jornadas de junho or June Days, referring to the 1848 French workers’ uprisings against Napoleon and his reforms. Karl Marx, described the original 1848 June Days as ‘the most colossal event in the history of civil wars,’ arguing in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that though the proletariat’s uprising was crushed by General Cavaignac, at least it was ‘defeated with the honours of attaching to a great world historical struggle’ (2008, p. 23). ‘Not just France,’ he wrote, ‘but the whole of Europe trembled in the face of the June earthquake’ (2008, p. 7). Brazil’s June days also produced a tremor, but not what could be called an earthquake. Class and property were not at the heart of demonstrations and the framework of the country’s socioeconomic order was not called into question. Politics was also only targeted in a diffuse way and produced little change. Yet the protests acquired such magnitude that it was clear that something had happened, and was happening, deep inside Brazil.
Exactly what was happening was unclear. The 2013 manifestações were new, dynamic, and difficult to grasp. The protests perplexed politicians, analysts, and critics alike, many of whom found themselves without solid references to interpret their novelty, and oscillated either between silence or old discourses. As Emir Sader (2013) put it at the time, any attempt to explain them would have been tantamount to a form of reductionism. In fact, the difficulty to easily ‘deal with’ the manifestações was part of their political and cultural vigour, and their significance. What was clear, though, was that the protests raised important issues regarding the politics of urban space and political agency, and foregrounded the uneven neoliberal developmental politics of Brazil’s new identity as an ‘emerging economy.’ They also indicated shifts in Brazilian society, particularly in terms of political mediation and representation, urban subjectivities, mobilities, and political enactment, although as the 2015 protests and Brazil’s current political landscape foreground, these shifts were problematically limited or were capitalized on by an authoritarian thinking. The struggle to interpret the 2013 protests, then, was not just an epistemological struggle, the struggle for theorists and analysts to pinpoint the true content of the manifestações. It was also about a struggle within Brazilian politics and society itself, with the country’s June Days the result of wider political processes. Focusing on different aspects of the 2013 protests, such as urban planning, public transport and mobility, and social media and journalism, the chapters collected here seek to understand, from a variegated lens, this ongoing struggle with in Brazil, a struggle that, as country’s contemporary politics highlights, continues today.
It is, however, important to stress that while the protests that erupted in 2013 were new and unprecedented in their dynamism, the urban centre where they began, São Paulo, was and is by no means a stranger to protest (see Chapter 3). The manifestação is an integral component of the city. In the three months leading up to the June protests, for example, the Movimento sem teto (Homeless movement), and the Sindicato dos trabalhadores das universidades federais no estado de São Paulo (Union of Federal University Workers in the State of São Paulo) led marches through the city, voicing demands and highlighting deficiencies in state provision. And, popular manifestations in São Paulo take the form not just of direct protest. The city’s streets are the stage for varied forms of popular participation. The metropolis is home to politically inflected graffiti and tagging – pixações (Figure 1.2). It is also striated by skateboarding and parkour, rap and breakdancing. Since the 1990s, these practices have embedded themselves in the urban landscape, marking it, re-signifying it, and taking it over. Such urban mobilizations, and the subtle forms of political expression in Brazil they signal, challenge long-held stereotypical views of the population’s passivity and the country’s spirit of ‘cordiality’ that position conflicts in public space as anathema to national identity.
Figure 1.2 Political graffiti in São Paulo, 2013.
All of this is relatively normal in the only country in the world that, since 2001, has constitutionally guaranteed the right to the city.5 A term first coined by Henri Lefebvre (1996, pp. 63–184), the right to the city is an abstract formulation denoting an imperative for the city’s marginalized to become part of its production, and for urban development to meet basic social needs before serving in the interest of capital accumulation. In Brazil, however, this urban theoretical abstraction has been putatively grounded by an alliance of social movements, squatters, NGOs, and academics that ensured it was enshrined in the 2001 City Statute of Brazil’s constitution – a statute emphasizing democratic urban management, the city’s ‘social’ function as a priority for urban development, and the well-being of urban inhabitants. As utopian as this sounds, this constitutional protection of the right to the city emerged from the strange collision of neoliberalism and democratization that has been key to Brazilian developmentalism since the 1990s (Harvey 2012, p. xiv).
The expansion of political expression through Brazilian urban space took root much earlier, however, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when social movements in São Paulo and beyond brought residents from the peripheries into the political arena. Their appearance followed the ‘opening up’ or abertura of political debate in Brazil, where, after the 1964 military takeover, citizen groups disappeared. The process of abertura began in 1977 and mobilized diverse sectors of the population, including women’s groups and trade unions, to make their demands heard and generate spaces for opposition movements. Their mobilizations took to city squares, their claims for rights were incorporated in the constitution, and their ways of organizing became central to insurgent forms of citizenship that enabled a transition towards Brazil’s modern political landscape (Holston 2009). Social movements also provoked qualitative changes to urban space, forcing the expansion of infrastructures and public services.
Despite the ubiquity of urban political expression, as Caldeira (2012) affirms, such spatial movements have by no means been mainstream. Practitioners of these tactics typically constitute a minority of São Paulo’s residents, and by and large stem from the working class. In this regard, 2013 was quite different. Many saw the June protests as an inheritor of earlier urban movements and their spatial tactics, and some even believed that the manifestações were a prelude to a new workers’ struggle and movement in Brazil. However, the demographics of those taking part in São Paulo’s 2013 protests were radically different and counter this perception. According to Datafolha statistics, the relative majority of protestors were under the age of 25 (53%), over 88% were under the age of 35, 43% held a university degree (in a city where only 18% have been to university), and 80% were currently studying for a degree. Furthermore, about half of the protestors had a family income of more than 5 times the minimum salary and over 20% received more than 10 times the minimum salary. The manifestações’ agents were not the city’s marginalized and working class, but young professionals and students; they were part of Brazil’s expanding middle class forged by the social and economic reforms implemented during the two decades before before the protests by the Workers’ Party (see Chapter 9). The manifestações and their particular urban interventions, therefore, represent different class and generational participation than those previously associated with spatial and social tactics in Brazilian cities. As Sader (2013) wrote at the time, while Brazil’s social movements have traditionally been linked, primarily and above all, to the working class and marginalized, the 2013 manifestações ‘reveal a new generation and a new challenge.’
It must be stressed, however, that these demographics were not uniform throughout Brazil. As Chaui asserts, ‘the demonstrations were not homogeneous.’ Indeed, André Reyes Novaes and Mariana Lamego (Chapter 4) reveal that many students participating in the protests in Rio were not middle class but rather from poor, working-class backgrounds. Students from their own university who took part in the manifestações were born and raised in underprivileged areas of the city. As members of the Movimento Estudantil Popular Revolucionário (Popular Revolutionary Student Movement), these students had already taken part in numerous protests before 2013 and regarded the June Days as the ‘product of previous actions and mobilizations.’ The manifestações, then, were not a bolt out of the blue for all Brazilians. For some it was the outcome of dissatisfactions felt especially amongst young people, including the young working class.
In the early stages of the manifestações, the MPL’s demands were dismissed and their protests largely condemned. Journalists especially attacked the protests and labelled the demonstrators as terrorists. Politicians too denounced the demonstrations, with Geraldo Alckmin, the PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasiliera – Brazilian Social Democracy Party) governor of the state of São Paulo, describing participants as ‘vandals’ and ‘troublemakers.’ Such condemnation exposed an authoritarian streak running through the Brazilian establishment. For many, this was confirmed on 13 June, when the state’s military police reacted to the mostly peaceful demonstrations with extreme violence. Using pepper spray, plastic bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades, the police indiscriminately attacked fleeing protestors and bystanders. They arrested demonstrators and hunted stragglers through the streets, injuring many, including several journalists, some of whom were shot. Police brutality fuelled protest on the streets, which escalated to incorporate grievances about the impunity of police and politicians, as well as a lack of investment in basic urban services – transport, health, education – at a time when overspending on mega-events was all too visible (Figure 1.3). The Brazil as an ‘emerging economy’ narrative was not incidental here, as people expressed frustration that they were not benefiting economically, thus connecting these global events to predatory forms of accumulation by dispossession that people, including the middle class, were beginning to feel (Harvey 2003).
Figure 1.3 ‘When your child gets ill take him to the stadium.’ São Paulo 2013.
The protests thus became diffuse and leaderless, coordinated largely via social media, thereby raising important issues around politics and representation in Brazil. Unlike the 1970s and 1980s, protestors were not united by party-political agendas or an ideology. In fact Brazil’s June Days signified a move away from party political organization. As Barbara Szaniecki (2013) has written, they articulated a collective desire for ‘direct democracy’ versus ‘representative democracy.’ They expressed popular discontent at an electoral politics that had alienated a ‘political class’ from the people. Given that the then governing Workers’ Party has a history of political organization that is so tethered to the street, this is significant. In 2013 the people on the streets were turning their backs on the government, on traditional party politics, and on representative democracy.
This rejection of traditional party politics, including the PT, was exacerbated by political corruption. In 2005, while Lula was in office, reports surfaced of payments made to deputies in return for a pledge to support the government with their votes in Congress. The votes-for-cash scandal, dubbed the Mensalão (big monthly payment), led to an investigation that uncovered a number of construction companies who had bribed or given kick-backs to politicians from numerous political parties in return for profitable contracts. In 2012, 25 politicians, business executives, and operatives were convicted of fraud, with 12 of them receiving prison sentences. By 2013 however, most of those convicted had yet to start their prison sentences, fuelling anger regarding political impunity. The ongoing trial for the Mensalão reached its zenith in the early months of 2013. The trial, which was widely televised, especially in its final stages, fed public unrest over fraud in Brasília, with anger particularly pronounced amongst the more educated Brazilians. In the first six months of 2013, the number of Brazilians who said they viewed corruption as the country’s most pressing issue tripled. This anger played a part in the protests of that year. Political corruption was cited as a key reason for the manifestações, with three-quarters of the 4,717 protestors interviewed by Datafolha on 7 July that year declaring that they wanted the prison sentences against the people convicted in the Mensalão scandal to take effect immediately.
Protestors’ dissatisfaction with traditional politics and politicians was capitalized on by the far right, who attempted to kidnap the June Days, seizing on the opportunity to criticize the PT government and fomenting an anti-petismo (anti-PT-ism). The 2013 protests thus set the stage for the formation of a new activist right in Brazil, which eventually found a front man in Bolsonaro. These right-wing activists adopted the methods and tactics of mobilization from the 2013 manifestações – notably using social media to channel the anger of the protests away from social and political issues and towards a villainous depiction of the PT and towards the valorization of anti-PT activists like Bolsonaro and his conservative, nationalist agenda.
Two of the most active anti-PT groups – Vem Pra Rua (Take to the Streets) and Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL – Free Brazil Movement) – funnelled general unrest into specifically partisan attacks. As their names highlight, these groups adopted the very language of the original manifestacões. Vem Pra Rua was the key slogan of the 2013 protest, and O Movimento Brasil Livre was named after the Movimento Passe Livre, the movement that called the initial demonstrations. Like the MPL, both groups also relied heavily on social media – WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter – to disseminate their ideas and especially to call people to the streets. In doing so they presented the manifestações as a chance for the middle classes to reclaim their space in Brazilian society. On its Facebook page, Vem Pra Rua, for instance, referred to the protests as an ‘avenue for the middle classes to repossess what had been taken away from them.’ And, in one of the MBL’s online videos Bolsonaro was referred to as the only person who could protect Brazil from ‘rabid communists who are trying to destroy the foundations of the country’s property rights.’
Both right-wing movements in this way capitalized on concerns about losses of middle-class status. Distributive economic strategies and programmes introduced by the PT (see Chapter 9), such as the incorporation of millions of workers into formal labour markets, the diffusion of higher education, and the expansion of employment rights to the domestic workers, led to an unprecedented reduction in inequality in Brazil. The established middle class resented the loss of their position and privilege in society as members of a new lower-middle class began accessing services and spaces once reserved for them. Furthermore, with the inflation of wages it was harder and more expensive to hire household help. These factors created a marked sense of frustration amongst Brazil’s middle class, convinced that welfare policies and cultural erosion were undermining their privileged place in Brazil. Despite being enshrined in the country’s constitution since 1981 it is clear that the right to the city with its promise of freedom of space and mobility was been highly and unevenly truncated.
Right-wing groups like Vem Pra Rua and the MBL tapped into this frustration offering the middle class a politics of resentment that was based on the vilification of left-wing politics and politicians. Videos and postings by the movements cast the PT, as well as left-wing activists, high-school teachers, members of the lesbian, gay, transgender, and queer community, and other marginalized groups, as threats to the established order and to the traditional foundations of Brazilian society, foundations that as Chaui has noted are far from based on equality. In doing so these groups did not just foster a conservative consolidation of the demands of the 2013 June Days into an anti-petismo, they decoupled ideology from historical and empirical reality, fostering an idea of the middle class as an oppressed people subject to the will of the state, something that was evident in the rejection of party politics and that gave rise to an authoritarian populism.
Some commentators were tempted to see the rejection of party politics and the call for ‘direct democracy’ in 2013 as ‘the return of the [authentically] political;’ to see Brazil’s manifestações as an act of political subjectivation, the emergence of productively antagonistic and embodied decisions ‘to act, to interrupt, to stage’ (Swyngedouw 2014, p. 129); whose vitality resides in their refusal to observe the proper place allocated to people and things in a social landscape where the coordinates of democracy are well proscribed. In this capacity the June protests represent a rupture in the historical fabric of Brazilian society, a society in which, as anthropologist Roberto Da Matta (1991) has argued, each individual knows their place and in which a social contract of cordiality has traditionally diffused conflicts in public space. In this rupture, many saw 2013 as representing a hopeful renewal of past political struggles. Raquel Rolnik, for instance, wrote that the Brazilian manifestações ‘renewed the dream of a utopia’ (2013, p. 8). For her, ‘the right to have rights that fed the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, that inspired the constitution and saw the emergence of new actors on the political stage, all of which had appeared to have vanished’ suddenly reappeared (2013, p. 9).
Such utopian feelings about Brazil’s June Days keyed into wider enthusiasm sparked by other contemporary international protests. Indeed, while the 2013 manifestações dumbfounded many in Brazil at the time, some international commentators soon began to underscore commonalities between the Brazilian demonstrations and global movements: protests across the Arab world, Occupy in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, student demonstrations in Chile, the Indignados in Spain, and other flash points throughout the world. The uniting thread of these international protests was their anti-capitalist thrust (privatizations of public space and public services), an awareness that market freedoms do not bring about universal freedoms.
Such links between Brazil’s manifestações and other heterodox international protests can then be understood as evidence of a ‘return of the political,’ to use Erik Swyngedouw’s (2014) phrase. Much of this broadly post-Marxist work has attempted to theorize such mass movements as a reawakening of the political in anodyne ‘post-political’ or even de-politicized contexts. The idea of the post-political, along with notions such as the post-democratic (Crouch 2004) and post-politics (Mouffe 2005), speak of a contemporary democratic condition in which real contestation and conflicting claims about the world are not apparent. Such theorizing rests on the understanding that the post-Cold War period has witnessed a new political and economic settlement centred on the norms and interests of the global market, and governance structures in which consensus has foreclosed proper political debate (Žižek 2008). The general thrust of this post-political literature is that the political realm has been hollowed out or that the political itself has disappeared (Mouffe 2005), that the parameters of political discussion and political action have narrowed to preclude alternatives to neoliberalism (Crouch 2004). Today’s consensual times have thus eliminated genuine political disagreement.
These discussions have impacted thinking about cities. For Swyngedouw (2010) urban politics has been excavated of the truly political and are constructed through empty signifiers such as the ‘global city.’ All that is left of the formerly political realm is the management and policy-making of consensus, in which political decisions are led by global public–private administrative elites, whose the outcomes are known in advance. Urban governance now operates ‘beyond the state,’ (Swyngedouw 2005, 2008) through a range of geographical scales, mobilizing a wide assortment of social actors, including architects and planners, corporations, non-governmental agencies, and the more traditional forms of local, regional, and national government. This regime exposes what Jacques Rancière (2005) calls the ‘scandal of democracy:’ while promising equality and the right to the city, it produces a form of governing in which political power fuses with economic might and an arrangement that consensually shapes the city according to the dreams, tastes, and needs of the transnational economic, political, and cultural elites.
