June 23, 2013–Enclosed are two news articles and three commentaries on the social explosion that is rocking Brazil during the past week. This nine-minute video report on the Real News Network explains the issue that sparked the explosion–the right to public transport. And here is an article by Patrick Bond of South Africa, the country that last hosted the World Cup of football, in 2010: Ordinary Brazilians foot the FIFA bill — some lessons from South Africa.
In the favelas on the front line of protest, Brazilians ask: Who is this World Cup for?
By Jo Griffin, The Observer [UK], Sunday, June 23, 2013
Wednesday night was due to be a celebration in Fortaleza. This north-eastern coastal city was the first in Brazil to complete its World Cup stadium in readiness for the 2014 contest. Things didn’t quite work out as planned.
“After the first teargas bomb, my brother and I ran with a few others to flee the police,” said Julia Lopes, 27, who was among 30,000 local people demonstrating before the Brazilian national side’s showcase Confederations Cup match against Mexico. “My husband Pedro ran in the opposite direction. Later I met him – he had a swollen eye.
“Brazil is experiencing something very big and we cannot completely understand it now. During the demonstration we saw many claims, not only concerning the World Cup, but some that were more political. Some were clear and others vague. People were definitely asking: Who is the World Cup for?”
The sudden explosion of resentment and frustration in Fortaleza was repeated in cities throughout Brazil last week. On Thursday night [June 20], more than a million people took to the streets demanding new spending priorities in a country whose recent economic boom has made international headlines.
In Fortaleza – the fifth most unequal city in the world, according to the United Nations – the protests were led by the young and middle-class. But the website of Portal Popular da Copa e das Olimpíadas makes clear its concerns include those of the poorest. The World Cup, say campaigners, has justified “the distancing of the poorest to remote areas on the fringes of Fortaleza, causing segregation and social distinction”. One does not have to walk far into the city’s desperate suburbs to understand their concern.
Outside a row of breezeblock houses along a dirt road in Bom Jardim, one of the most violent favelas in Fortaleza, social worker Silvana Severo rips open the parcel of flour, beans and other food that she is bringing to a family. “We do that to stop them selling on the food for drugs,” she says.
The precaution is routine for the social workers who visit the poorest families living in some of the more than 400 favelas that encircle the fifth largest city in Brazil. But they could not prevent the sale, a few months earlier, of a baby by her mother for 50 reais (£15). The child, rescued from the trafficker, is now toddling around outside the house in just a nappy.
Inside, seven people are crowded into the sparsely furnished living room, where the baby’s grandmother, Felicia, says she is no longer smoking crack and plans to find her own house. They are struggling, but their situation is a big improvement on the days when the whole family lived on the streets, including Paolo, 14, who is staying at a shelter for street children run by a charity, the Pequeno Nazareno (PN).
Then the social workers visit the family of Emerson, also 14, who once lived on the streets. His brother was shot dead by gang members last year when he went back to his old favela for a concert. Outside the home of a third boy, Sandro, 13, the team hear cries and inside find a young baby swinging in a hammock, left entirely alone.
In recent years more than 350,000 people have emerged from extreme poverty – classified as living on 70 reais or less a month – in the state of Ceará, but hardship is still widespread. Statistics from Ipece, the Ceará institute of research and economic strategy, show that more than 133,000 people were living in severe poverty in Fortaleza in 2011. A third of inhabitants live without sanitation and there is a dire lack of adequate housing. In Barroso, a community built on a rubbish dump, residents hunt for recyclable goods while their children run past flying plastic bags on string.
The renovation of Fortaleza’s stadium for the World Cup cost 519m reais (£149m). The match against Mexico on Wednesday marked the return of the national team to the Arena Castelão after 11 years. According to Lopes, “the committee (Comitê Popular Copa e Olimpíadas) has been debating the legacy of the World Cup for the past three years and investigating how investments are made. What we have seen proves the country is going to be the stage for an enormous abuse by Fifa – with the endorsement of the government.”
Speaking from Rio de Janeiro, political scientist Luiz Eduardo Soares, the former minister of public security under President Lula da Silva, says the protests nationwide reflect an unwillingness to go along with a new public image that is at odds with reality. “There are several agendas [of the protests] but citizenship rights, the quality of public services, the choice of priorities and the ruin of politics are the core. People cannot stand any longer the theatre of authorities and political leaders pretending that everything is getting better in our land of promises, in our tropical paradise.”
For Forteleza’s poor, the World Cup has meant changes including the forced removal of 5,000 people from communities Lagoa da Zeza and Vila Cazumba to areas without schools, and fears that the tournament will increase exploitation of children in a city that has been trying to shake off its reputation for sex tourism.
“There would be no problem in investing in better stadiums and infrastructure to benefit the megaevents (World Cup and Olympics). The problem starts when, one suspects, corruption is involved in the way vast amounts of money are spent at the same time as there is no investment in education or hospitals,” says Bernardo Rosemeyer, the founder of the PN.
Street children are at the sharp end of the social divide in Fortaleza. Around 300 are believed to have fled to the streets because of poverty, abuse or other problems at home. While social welfare programmes such as the Bolsa Família have lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty, many of the poorest do not qualify for such assistance because either their children do not attend school or they have no fixed address. Some fear that, as has happened in the past, homeless children will be bussed out of the city when visitors start to arrive. For now, they exist in a twilight zone of begging, stealing or working on the streets, at risk of falling into prostitution or drugs.
At night on the Beira Mar, a stretch of road that is lined with hotels and bars, PN worker Antonio Carlos is searching for children sleeping rough. His aim is to persuade them to visit PN and then to begin the process of reintegrating them into their families, where possible. Tonight he meets Elena, the woman who sold her baby to the trafficker. She is obviously high on crack cocaine. At just 22, having already spent more than a decade on the streets, for her it may be too late.
Hopefully, however, it won’t be for the boys living at the shelter, where PN provides schooling, healthcare, counselling – and the chance to be children and play football. For Paolo, Emerson and Sandro, the World Cup has had a positive impact on their lives in one sense – they are in the boys’ team that will represent Brazil in the Street Child World Cup that takes place before the Fifa championships in Rio de Janeiro in March 2014.
The tournament will bring together teams of former street children from up to 20 countries for a 10- day event that aims to raise awareness of street children and give them a platform.
For these three boys and the other members of their team in Fortaleza, as well as the girls’ team from the Ibiss project in Rio, playing in the tournament is the chance to be part of a society where they are largely invisible, to demonstrate their talents and forget the hardships of life. No one would dream of begrudging them that chance. But in Forteleza, as elsewhere in Brazil, among broad swaths of the population, the enthusiasm for the real thing is ebbing away as a nation takes a hard look at the priorities of its elite.
Interview: Brazil’s collective rage
Published on Jacobin, June 21, 2013
In the course of two weeks, what started as protests against public transit fare hikes has spread into mass demonstrations across Brazil that are presenting a challenge to the Workers Party (PT) government, led by Dilma Rousseff, whose record as a left-wing activist includes time spent in prison under the military dictatorship. Another point of anger is Brazil’s spending on sports stadiums ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics while public services are cut. But like the protests themselves, the grievances have multiplied.
Miguel Borba de Sa, a lecturer at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and author of Bolívia: Passos das revoluções, talked to British socialist Mark Bergfeld about the protests and the political currents involved.
HOW COULD a 20-cent increase in bus fares spark protests in more than 100 towns and cities across Brazil?
IN HIS book The Road To Serfdom, the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek wrote that there are two areas that one cannot leave to the competitive principle: transport and the environment. Brazil’s bourgeoisie consistently fails to understand this.
In the last 10 years, transportation has become a lucrative business for the Brazilian elite and local government officials. Enterprises and corporations bid for local routes and lines. Local government officials cozy up to the bus companies for benefits.
Here in Brazil, transport costs cut into workers’ wages far more than other utilities such as electricity or water. Fares have risen faster than inflation. An average worker’s wage is 650 Brazilian real per month. A bus ticket is 2 real. This private-public relationship has broken down.
The movement we see on the streets today actually started in Porto Alegre. People protested the fare increase two months ago. The police turned violent. Public outrage followed, and the hike was halted. Was it a victory? No! The money for the bus company was raised by exempting the local bus company from future tax payments. In Rio, for every real I pay for a ticket, the local authorities add the same amount in subsidies or tax exemption.
At the same time, the huge infrastructure projects like the Confederation Cup, the Pope’s visit later this year and the FIFA World Cup have displaced poor people from the city center and, in many cases, even cut them off from public transport. Dissatisfaction and “unfairness” have been simmering on Facebook, in the popular neighborhoods and among working-class youth. Radicalization and marginalization have gone hand in hand. Now there is collective rage.
A FEW days ago, FIFA President Sepp Blatter condemned the protesters and said, “We did not force the World Cup on you.”
IN TOWNS and cities where the World Cup will take place, there has been an escalation of social conflicts on an unprecedented level for the last year and a half. (People might remember Pinheirinho.)
Infrastructure and recreation projects like the FIFA World Cup wreck people’s livelihoods and are class war from above. The protests don’t articulate concrete demands, but people are automatically linking up the issues. The displacement of indigenous people and the further enrichment of the elites–two issues at the core of the protests–are two sides of the same coin. People are sick of the elites.
That’s why the escalation has been so rapid. There’s a daily escalation. FIFA President Sepp Blatter said that the World Cup might have to be cancelled. That led even more people to spill out into the streets. Some 80,000 people surrounded the stadium in Fortaleza where Brazil held its first match in the Confederation Cup. That’s more than the stadium’s capacity.
HOW ARE people organizing and coordinating the protests?
THERE’S NO doubt that in many towns and cities, the protests are spontaneous. People saw photos and reports on Facebook and started organizing their own protests.
In Rio de Janeiro, the local authorities announced a hike in fares for the beginning of this year on January 2. Anonymous, the collective of computer hackers, organized a protest in response. Radical left organizations such as PSOL and others showed their solidarity with the protest. Only 95 people turned up, yet the demonstration stopped the hike from going forward.
In May, we organized big demonstrations against the new human rights commissioner, who is homophobic, racist and sexist. The demonstrations were big. The mainstream press denies that there is any correlation between these protests and the ones today.
Throughout all this time, we organized assemblies (Forum Contra O Aumento Da Passagem) that brought together different organizations, students and non-political people. In other cities, there have been similar initiatives. At least in Rio, we never managed to get Anonymous and the hackers to come along. In other cities, that might be different.
These assemblies are really beautiful. They are popular and really changed my outlook on radical politics. They have a political quality to them. I have never been involved in anything like it before.
HAVE THE assemblies experienced any difficulties?
JUNE 16 was a huge turning point. The middle classes started to mobilize on an anti-corruption platform. Alongside their buddies in the media, they called for a demonstration for June 24. They tried to split the movement and the assemblies that had called for the June 20 demonstration.
Luckily, they were unsuccessful. The movement had gained so much momentum that they had to come in behind the June 20 protests.
WHAT IS the influence of these middle-class groups? And what is the role of the media?
THE MOVEMENT has become the prime site of struggle for hegemony. Different actors try to articulate themselves through the movement. The parties of the radical left, Anonymous and the autonomists aim to push the protests in an explicitly anti-capitalist direction. We raise the property question and point to the systemic inequality that government after government perpetuates.
It is more and more the case that the middle classes and the media-savvy anti-corruption parties are the dominant voices in the movement. With the media at their disposal, they appear to be successful. In many towns and cities, they’ve managed to sideline the demands of more radical elements.
In its own right, the media has mastered an historic shift. For a long time they kept quiet. Then a journalist from Sao Paulo’s biggest newspaper lost his eye, and six other journalists were seriously injured. That changed the situation. Some circles within the ruling class altered their strategy. The media started to support the protests–and even call on people to march. This gave the protests a greater sense of legitimacy, but represents a clear attempt to hijack the protests.
WHAT IS the Workers’ Party (PT) doing?
THE PT and the CUT [the main national trade union] didn’t mobilize initially. Only when the liberal-conservative elites started to call for President Dilma Rousseff’s resignation did the PT mobilize its members to prevent the protests from turning into an anti-government movement. Now PT and CUT members are in the streets to defend Dilma’s government.
The CUT is currently discussing the possibility of a general strike. Depending on what shape the movement takes in the next few days, a general strike could become a reality. But that’s speculation.
THERE HAVE been reports that right-wing thugs and nationalists are mobilizing as well.
THE DEMONSTRATIONS have turned increasingly yellow and green as the movement goes on. All the contradictions in Brazilian society come to the fore.
People come up to radical left and autonomist activists and scream at us for not carrying Brazilian national flags. Our comrades have been physically confronted in a number of places. People with left-wing flags and red t-shirts have been hunted down on the demonstrations. As people don’t have clear demands and no clear enemy, they turn against all political parties.
The media whips up hatred against the radical left. The bourgeoisie uses sexism, racism and homophobia. In this case, the “Carneval-ization” of the protests serves those hostile to the aims of the movement. And undercover police are creating chaos everywhere as well. Recent clashes in Brasilia, the capital, were led by the extreme right. I’m astonished at their capability to lead, highjack and imprint meaning on these events.
Recently, when protesters closed Octávio Frias de Oliveira Bridge in Sao Paulo, there was a great deal of hostility directed at our comrades. Then, the bloc of radical-left organizations, students and members of the social movements were attacked by thugs in Rio de Janeiro. The levels of intimidation and aggression we experience on the demonstrations are out of this world.
In response to these attacks, the left closed ranks. PTSU militants, PSOL and PCR joined ranks and defended people carrying red flags and banners on the demonstration.
WHAT IS the future for the protest movement?
THE MOVEMENT is a battlefield. It highlights all the contradictions of Brazilian society. The “common sense” ideas prevail in people’s heads. Sexism, racism, homophobia aren’t vanishing like they should. At the same time, the state apparatus and the elites remain intact. That is mainly due to a change in strategy. Yet the bourgeoisie is acting irresponsibly and playing with fire.
There is no political force on the left that could articulate any alternative to the current status quo. Social movements have declined in the last few years, and the radical left doesn’t have the kind of political instrument we so desperately need. However, the anti-elite sentiments of the majority of protesters should be fertile ground for us.
While it is a possibility that this movement ends with a right-wing consolidation, the future of the movement is really up in the air.
First reflections on the mass movement that has shaken Brazil
By Emir Sader, published on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, June 22, 2013. Translated from the Portugese original by Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke (this version below is slightly abridged—RA)
The mass movement that began as a protest against increased public transport prices was unprecedented and surprising…
The cancellation of the increase (in public transport ticket prices) constitutes a victory for the movement and demonstrates the power of demonstrations, even more so when they are in support of just and achievable demands…
This victory, in the first place, concretely reinforces the idea that popular mobilisations are worthwhile, they raise awareness among people, they allow the whole of society to speak and serve as a strong point of pressure on governments. Moreover, the movement opened up a discussion on an essential question in the fight against neoliberalism: the polarisation between public and private interests, and the issue of who should finance the costs of essential public services which, unlike now, should not be subject to the interests of private companies, driven by profit.
Achieving the cancellation of the price hike results in a benefit for the poorest sectors of the population as they are the ones who usually use public transport, showing that a movement should seek to include not only the demands of particular sectors of society, but attend to broader demands, especially those having to do with the neediest sectors of society who have more difficulties mobilising themselves.
Perhaps the most essential aspect of the protests has been to enable broad sectors of youth to enter political life, sectors that were not taken into account by government policies and who, until now, had not found a specific form to politically express themselves. This may turn out to be the most permanent result of the protests.
It is also clear that the various levels of government run by different parties have difficulties relating to the popular demonstrations–some governments more so (the right-wing ones), some less so (the left-wing ones). They take major decisions without consulting, and when they are confronted with popular protests, they tend to technocratically reaffirm their decisions – “there is no money”, “the numbers don’t add up”, etc. – without realising that they are dealing with a political issue, a just demand of the people that is supported by an immense social consensus and to which they must find political solutions. Only after many protests and the wearing down of support for governing authorities are correct decisions taken. It is one thing is to say that we “dialogue” with the movements; it is another to deal effectively with the mobilisations, especially when they resist the decisions made by governments.
Certainly, a problem that the movement faces is attempts at external manipulation. One of them is represented by the most extremist sectors, who seek to raise maximalist demands for a “popular uprising” against the state in order to justify their violent actions, which are nothing more than vandalism. They are very small sectors, external to the movement and in some cases infiltrated by the police. The media is very quick to highlight these sectors, but they were rejected by almost all of the movements.
The other attempt comes from the right, and is clearly expressed in the attitude of the traditional mass media. Initially, they were opposed to the movement, as they normally are with all popular protests. Then, when they realised that this could help wear down support for the government, they promoted the protests and tried to insert artificially their orientations directed against the federal government. These attempts were equally rejected by the leaders of the movement, despite the fact that a reactionary component began to make its presence felt, with the typical rancor of rightist extremism and magnified by the traditional media.
It is worth noting the surprise of the government and its inability to understand the explosive potential of the living conditions in urban areas and, in particular, the absence of policies directed towards youth on the part of the federal government. The traditional student entities were also taken by surprise and were absent from the movements.
Two attitudes have become apparent during the mobilizations. The first are the denunciations manipulated by the right – something that was evident given the actions of the traditional media – and the temptation to oppose the movement. The second is to uncritically exalt the movement as if it embodied clear projects towards the future. Both are wrong. The movement emerged out of a just demand, promoted by young people with their existing state of consciousness, with all the contradictions of a movement of that type. The correct attitude is to learn from the movement and act together with it, in order to help it achieve a clear consciousness of its objectives, of its limitations, of the attempts to be utilised by the right, of the problems that have emerged and how to carry out a discussion regarding its significance and the best way to confront challenges.
The most significant aspect of the movement will become clear in time. The right is only interested in its narrow electoral concerns, in its desperate attempts to reach the second round in the presidential elections.* Extremist sectors are seeking exaggerated interpretations that see the conditions as ripe to promote violent alternatives, which would quickly dissipate.
Most important are the lessons that the movement itself and the left – parties, popular movements, governments – can draw from the experience. No previous interpretation accounts for the complexity and unprecedented nature of the movement. Probably the biggest consequence of all this will be the introduction of the issue of the political significance of the youth and their actual living conditions and expectations in 21st century Brazil.
* The next presidential election in Brazil will take place in 2014. In the 2010 election, Dilma Rousseff, candidate of the Workers Party, won on the second round, run-off ballot.
Emir Sader is a leading left intellectual in Brazil. He is emeritus professor of political science at the University of São Paolo and director of the Latin American Social Science Research Council (CLACSO). This article was first published in Portugese, here.
Open letter to President Dilma Rousseff from Brazil’s social movements
(and further below, ‘A succinct report from the MST’)
Published on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, June 23, 2013
In the midst of the largest street demonstrations Brazil has seen in decades, some of the country’s most important social movements – including the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), the Unified Workers’ Central (CUT) and the National Union of Students (UNE) – sent the following open letter to President Dilma Rousseff on June 20, 2013.
* * *
June 20, 2013
This week, Brazil has witnessed mobilisations across 15 capital cities and hundreds of other cities. We are in agreement with the statements coming out of these protests which affirm the importance of these mobilisations for Brazilian democracy. We are conscious of the fact that the changes we need in this country will come through popular mobilisation.
More than a conjectural phenomenon, the recent mobilisations are a sign of the gradual renewal of the capacity for popular struggle. It was this popular resistance that paved the way for the electoral results of 2002, 2006 and 2010 [victories for Brazil’s trade union–based Workers Party (PT)]. Our people, not satisfied by neoliberal measures, voted for a different project. In order to implement this project, it was necessary to confront great resistance, primarily from rentist capital and neoliberal sectors that continue to have a lot of weight in society.
But it was also necessary to confront the limits imposed by last-minute allies, an internal bourgeoisie who in challenging government policies impeded the realisation of structural reforms, as is the case in the areas of urban reform and public transport.
The international crisis has blocked growth, and with it the continuity of the project pushed by this broad front that, until now, has sustained the [PT] government.
The recent mobilisations are being carried out by a diverse cross section of youth who, for the first time, are participating in mobilisations. This process educates its participants, allowing them to understand the necessity of confronting those who are holding back Brazil from moving forward in this process of democratisation of wealth, of access to health, education, land, culture, political participation,and the media.
Conservative sectors within society are trying to dispute the significance of these mobilisations. The media is trying to portray the movement as anti-Dilma, as against corrupt politicians, against the wasting of public money and other demands that would impose the return of neoliberalism. We believe that there are many demands, just as there are many opinions and visions of the world present in society. We are dealing with a cry of indignation from a people historically excluded from national political life and accustomed to seeing politics as something that is damaging to society.
Given all this, President, we write to you to express our position in support of policies that guarantee the reduction of public transport fares by reducing the profits of the big companies. We are against the policies of tax exemptions for these companies.
Now is the time for the government to implement these democratic and popular demands and stimulate the participation and politicisation of society. We commit to promoting all types of debates around these issues and we place ourselves at your disposition to also debate them with the government and its institutions.
We propose the urgent convening of a national meeting, involving the participation of state governments, mayoral offices of the main capital cities and representatives of all the social movements. For our part, we are open to dialogue, and believe that this meeting is the only manner of finding a way to confront the grave urban crisis that is affecting our big cities.
The time is right. These are the largest mobilisations that the current generation has seen and other major ones will follow. We hope that the current government decides to govern with the people and not against the people.
Signed:
Movimentos da Via Campesina Brasil, ADERE-MG, AP, Barão de Itararé, CIMI, CMP-MMC/SP, CMS, Coletivo Intervozes, CONEN, Consulta Popular, CTB, CUT, Fetraf, FNDC, FUP, Juventude Koinonia, Levante Popular da Juventude, MAB, MAM, MCP, MMM, MPA, MST, SENGE/PR, Sindipetro – SP, SINPAF, UBES, UBM, UJS, UNE, UNEGRO
A succinct report from the MST [Movement of Landless Rural Workers], June 21, 2013
Dear comrade friends of the MST and ALBA social movements,
Yesterday, June 20, over 1 million people took to the streets in 15 capitals of the country.
There is a bit of everything. In each city there is a dispute for hearts and minds. In Sao Paulo and Rio, right-wing sectors have taken the lead, attacking left militants and provoking violence to generate chaos. But in other cities the left is giving the tone.
Summarising:
1. The mobilisation is social, from a sector born after neoliberalism. They are young people from middle and lower classes. Workers, however, remain silent. [Young people] are a sector that communicates solely through social media and is not influenced by mass media.
2. It is the result of 12 years of class conciliation (as in Chile) which excluded the youth from political participation. And they want to participate somehow, even if it is just to walk on the streets without repression.
3. It is a consequence of the grave structural urban crises, established by speculative finance capital, which resulted in rising rents, massive car sales financed by the banks and chaotic traffic, without public transport, where people spend two, three hours to go to work, school …
4. Nobody can control them. They have no political leadership.
5. For the moment traditional politicians are the most affected, bourgeois politics and of course the method developed by the Workers Party (PT) in the years it has been in government, all of them from right, centre and left….
6. The right infiltrates and tries to generate a climate of violence, blaming PT and [President Dilma Rouseff].
7. Dilma’s government is paralysed in its politics. It only wanted to manage and now it does not know what to manage.
8. Social movements are trying to generate a political platform, to move on (see the letter to the president above) and to expand the demands in order to advance towards a political reform, a reform of the media, a tax reform and the agrarian reform.
9. Nobody knows now what is going to happen: we are going in the same direction as Spain (where the right capitalised at the ballot box — what will happen in 2014?) or we are going in the direction of Argentina (2001), with advances … Or we will remain like Greece in a situation of deadlock? Probably none of them, we will find a Brazilian formula which nobody knows at the moment…
10. But, it is certain that we need changes of all sorts!
Warm regards,
National Secretariat of the MST
Translation: Ana Amorim
