Next Tuesday, June 20th, One of the biggest protests in Brazil history will complete four years. The reason why those protests are studied until now and other though bigger, of March 2016, for example, is not, it was its character totally spontaneous and unexpected. It was as, if suddenly, the Brazilian people realized that they deserve a better governance, a better return for so many taxes the Brazilians pay. Besides, we want respect for our human rights and justice when they are violated. We want a fair and inclusive electoral and political systems. We want honesty, efficiency and accountability from our political and state-owned systems. In short, we want a country that really works for the well-being of its citizens. This post is a summary of the report published in March of 2017 at http://americasquarterly.org/content/revisiting-brazils-2013-protests-what-did-they-really-m. The second summary was published in June 2014 at http://www.booksandideas.net/Brazil-s-Forgotten-Political.html
The year 2013 began quietly in Brazil, with no obvious hints of the turmoil to come. Indeed, almost no one predicted what 2013 would bring: A massive and unprecedented wave of streets protests that would in turn prove to be a major turning point in Brazilian history. Just five months later, in June 2013, more than 1 million people would pour into the streets on a single night to protest a dizzying variety of grievances, from shoddy public transportation to corruption to overcrowded hospitals. Brazil's political and chattering classes would be unified by their main reaction: Utter shock. Virtually no one saw the demonstration coming, just as no one would anticipate their unexpected medium-term consequences. The protests would cause Brazilians' perceptions of their economy and their president to completely and abruptly flip, thus ending the narrative of prosperity, that had dazzled the world in years prior. In retrospect, the protests of 2013 started a chain of events that would culminate in the impeachment of President Roussef in late 2016. But the fallout went beyond any one leader or political party, indeed, the entire political class would fall into disgrace. The suddenness of Brazil's shift from boom to bust raises several questions: what really caused the protests of 2013? Were they themselves the trigger for the downturn in public opinion, or did they belatedly reflect dissatisfaction and unrest percolating just beneath the surface? Looking back now, some of the signs of impending trouble were in fact somewhat clear. A closer look at public opinion polls, and at other gauges of national satisfaction, reveals fissures just beneath the surface. mistakes of hubris and arrogance by president Roussef, and other members of the political class, had been accumulating for some time. Indeed, the protests begins just before that fateful year, with a seemingly banal policy decision.The decision that triggered the protests was not regarded at the time as a particularly momentous one: Whether or not permit an increase in bus fares in Brazilian cities. By the turn of the decade, the strains from the growth were apparent. For example, while Brazil sold a lot of cars during the boom, its auto fleet grew 80% from 2002 to 2012, that expansion was not matched by a similar expansion in roads. This led to endemic traffic jams in Sao Paulo, Rio and other cities. Some commutes that previously lasted 45 minutes now took two hours or longer, with especially long delays for poorer living on the periphery of large metropoli. This severe imbalance between supply and demand was repeated elsewhere throughout other sectors of the economy too, at airports, hospitals, schools and elsewhere. Simply put, infrastructure had not come remotely close to keeping up with the previous decade's growth, creating tremendous strain and frustation throughout society. Simultaneously, expectations had risen. Many poorer Brazilians had previously accepted their de facto second-class status within society. But now, upon ascending into the lower strata of the middle class, millions (rightly) believed they had the same right to quality healthcare, education, and transportation as anyone else. It was no longer enough to have a job, people also wanted a government that provided them with quality infrastructure and services. However, this new generation of demands from society was not being met. In retrospect, Brazil was much more of a power keg than its politicians or pundits believed. And the spark would come during the first week of June, from a group of university students in the country's biggest city. The flames spread slowly at first. The initial protests against bus fare hikes occurred in late May in mid-sized cities such as Natal and Goiânia. After the bus hike went into effect in SP on June 2, a group known as Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) organized a demonstration. The MPL was widely seen as a fringe movement with unrealistic goals, and was unknown to most Brazilians. As such, the first protest gathered only a few dozen people, and was also mostly ignored by mainstream media. The night that changed everything was June 13. The march began peacefully, but police began firing tear gas and rubber bullets to stop demonstrators from reaching Avenida Paulista. Battles between police and demonstrators erupted. 130 people were arrested and about 105 were wounded. The peak of the protests would prove to be the night of June 20, when an estimated 1.2 million Brazilians took the streets in more than 100 cities. In Rio, turnout surpassed 300,000. In some ways, it was surprising that Roussef would suffer the harshest short and long-term consequences of the protests. Unlike authoritarian leaders facing similar protests in Venezuela, Turkey and Russia, for example, she welcomed them in her public comments with a degree of pragmatism and even accomodation, praising them as reflective of brazil's democratic values. If politicians were eager to forget the lessons of the 2013 protests, the public was not. Approval ratings for Roussef and other politicians would never come close to their previous lofty heights. Faced with an increasing public demand for change, but unable or unwilling to deliver it, Roussef adopted a strategy that would prove disastrous, touting the need for change without actually doing enough about it. The 2013 protests were a powerful example of how a single event can cause an entire nation to take "another look" at reality, and draw a very different conclusion. In the course of a month, during June of that year, a third of the population changed its view of their government and economy. The reality did not change overnight. But the popular mentality did, and especially in the age of social media, Brazilians saw that their friends had begun telling a different story about Brazil's fate. It was as if millions of people simultaneously said: Things are not great after all. Indeed, Brazil's experience of 2013 shows how popular perceptions can lag reality, but when truth does catch up (as it inevitably will), the disruptive effects can arguably be even greater and more traumatic than otherwise. In light of this experience, Brazil shows how it is ultimately preferable for leaders to be as honest as possible about a country's present and future reality. The final major lesson is more familiar one to students of political science: the danger of hubris. The Workers' Party, and Brazil's political class in general, had become supremely confindent after the triumphs of the mid-2000s. That period did, indeed, see a run of success. But the time Roussef took office in 2011, the policies that had yielded positive results had run their course, and a new wave of reforms was necessary. Instead of changing her approach, Roussef doubled down on her interventionist economic policies, while embracing, the call for change. Her failure to reconcile her own beliefs with the demands of 2013 would ultimately lead to her demise.
No one could have predicted the wave of protests that shook Brazil in June 2013. The protests were marked by a dizzying diversity of causes for dissatisfaction: not only bus fares and the right to mobility, but World Cup, political corruption, poor public education, access to quality public health, and a host of other issues. Even socially conservative made their presence felt, protesting in favor of the reduction of criminal age. Shortly after the protests of June 17th, when several cities besides SP were mobilized, it was clear that what was at stake was no longer just fares. President Roussef proposed five "pacts", including a call for a referendum on political reform. The point of view of the federal government seemed to be that the demonstrations signaled a huge democratic deficit, in which politicians lacked legitimacy and the population did not feel respected. Disappointment mounted among activists and alarm among analysts. Gabriel Cohn warned, in an interview, that Brazilians were creating a system of "perverse selection": "the more you say that politicians are worthless, the more you scare those who have democratic attitudes and beliefs. This discourages them to enter the political game. You destroy the institutions from the inside." Marcos Nobre assumed there were two possible consequences of the demonstrations. One would be a radical reform of the political system to accomodate demands, and the other would be an ever more closed political system based on " low intensity democracy." The demands included not only the reform of the electoral system, but also a series of tweaks to representative democracy, trying to address decision-making in society as a whole. This generated a platform relying on several pillars: the strengthening of mechanisms of direct democracy (such as plebiscites), the strengthening of participatory/deliberative democracy, the improvement of representative democracy, the democratization of a more transparent judiciary. Within this platform there were specific proposals like the importance of protecting campaign financing. A final legacy has been to renew the interest in political reform. In the civil society, there are two ongoing, complementary initiatives. On the one hand, a popular initiative has been collecting signatures. And another plenary of social movement is organizing a plebiscite for an constituent assembly to reform the system. But we may wonder whether political reforms go far enough. The proposed changes are certainly important. It is undeniably critical to curb the influence of economic power over the electoral process, as well as to introduce mechanisms to improve access to the electoral system. But the demonstrations also lead us to reflect on other absences. Is what missing in Brazil more participation, more debate, more voices in decision-making? Or is it also missing a political project going beyond class compromisse in trying to recover the utopian legacy of participation?
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