This post is a summary of four articles. The first with the title above published in a editorial at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/social-awakening-in-brazil.html. The second was published http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protests.html?pagewante. The third was published at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/18/brazil-protesters. The fourth was published http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2013/06/protests-brazil. But before this summary, let`s remember a little what happened in June of 2013. Almost two million people went to the streets in many cities all over Brazil, most of them to protest for better use of public money, such as more investment in education and health, but there were also many others demands. And the protesters had the support of 75% of Brazilian population, according to a poll from Ibope. Now lacking just 35 days to elections is time to remember the sacrifice of the protesters, so many were beaten and imprisoned. It is time of their voices to be heard, it is time of their placard to be read, it is time of their wishes and effort to be recognized, their anger to be analysed and understood. In order to have a better country, we need to do this reflection. The biggest public manifestation in Brazil history need to be more debated and can not have been in vain.
The huge street protests sweeping across Brazil this week caught almost everyone by surprise. But maybe they should not have. For all of Brazil`s achievements over the past few decades, a stronger economy, democratic elections, more money and attention directed towards the needs of the poor, there is still a huge gap between the promises of Brazil`s ruling politicians and the harsh realities of day-to-day life outside the political and business elite. Its 15 years old teenagers rank near the bottom in global rankings of reading and math skills. A succession of its top politicians have been implicated in flagrant payoff schemes and other misuse of public funds. No wonder that public-transit fare increases provoked outrage from the poor and middle class. No wonder that spending on World Cup soccer stadiums while public education remains grievously underfinanced became a rallying cry. This week`s marches and demonstrations have revealed public anger at skewed spending priorities and failures in education and other social services as well as a broad constituency for change. Brazil`s long silent majority seems to be finding its political voice.
Just a few weeks ago, Mayara Vivian felt good when a few hundred people showed up for a protest she helped organize over a proposed bus fare increase. But when tens of thousands of protesters thronged the streets this week, rattling cities across the country in a reckoning this nation had not experienced in decades, she dumbfounded, at a loss to explain how it could have happened. The mass protests across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances and spread to more than 100 cities on Thursday night. Much like the Occupy movement in U.S., the anticorruption protests that shook India, or the fury in European nations like Greece, the demonstrators in Brazil are fed up with traditional political structures. Banners in the crowd carried slogans like, "While you watch your soap opera, we fight for you." In Ribeirão Preto, an 18-years old protester was killed after being struck by a car. "They do not invest in education, they do not invest in infrastructure, and they keep putting makeup on the city to show to the world that we can host the World Cup and the Olympics," said Jairo Domingos, 26. "We work four months of the year just to pay taxes and we get nothing in return." He said. "This is a remarkably diffuse movement, they do not even use loudspeakers to get their massage with thousands of people on the street," said Lincoln Secco, a history professor at USP. Asked why the protests were emerging now, he said, "Why not now? This is not something happening just in Brazil, but a new form of protesting, which is not channeled through traditional institutions." Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology at Columbia University said it was hard to know exactly what sparks would set off a broader movement. Vivian, 23, now a waitress and geography student, and her fellow activists could not explain the change that had suddenly brought huge crowds into the streets all around the country. "People finally woke up," she said. Asked why it happened now, she shrugged and said, "we really do not know."
There were close to 80,000 of us on the streets of S.P. I was there to report but also to protest. I am about to marry a Brazilian. This place is in my future. Four nights before they would tried to do the same thing but the police attacked them with teargas and rubber bullets. One minute the crowd were chanting "no violence", the next they were firing right at us. People were crying, from teargas and from terror. It was the kind of citizen heroics you see in a blockbuster, but hope you will never have to witness in real life. They went for the journalists. Firing into the press and shooting at photographers. They made hundreds of arrests. In spite of the economic surge in Brazil, the country is still unfair and corrupt. The minimum wage is not only for low-skilled Brazilians: teachers too do not earn much more than that either. The health service, the education system and the police service are all in need of a big fix. "Keep your World Cup, we want education and health." "It is not about 20 cents, it is about dignity." "The people have woken up."
With stunning speed, protests that started on June 6th in S.P. over a 20 cents hike in bus fare have morphed into the biggest street demonstrations Brazil has seen since more than 20 years ago. By June 17th the movement had spread. The aims had also grown more difusse, with marchers demanding less corruption, better public services and control of inflation. "First-world stadiums, third-world schools and hospitals," ran one placard. In Rio protesters and police clashed outside the Maracana stadium, refurbished at a cost of over 1 billion reais, just six years after its last pricey rebuild. Brazilians pay the highest taxes of any country outside the developed world (36% of GDP) and get appalling public services in return. Violent crime is endemic. A minimum-wage worker in S.P. whose employer does not cover transport cost will spend a fifth of gross pay to spend hours a day on hot, overcrowded buses. More broadly, the middle class that Brazil has created in the past decade, have escaped from poverty, but are still only one paycheck from falling back into it, and it is developing an entirely new relationship with the government. They see further improvements in their livings standards as their right and will fight not to fall back into poverty. They are waking up to the fact that they pay taxes and deserve something in return.
