One can only imagine the back-room discussions in Brazil and then in New York that led to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's July 16 op-ed in the New York Times. Only a few days before, the Times had run two stories by Larry Rohter, a correspondent who has been expelled from Brazil for allegedly libeling Lula, the country's president between 2003 and 2011. In Rohter's story the protests that have rocked Brazil since June are about corruption and dissatisfaction with the Workers' Party, which has been in power for more than ten years. The national administration, Rohter contends, has again and again attempted to placate the protesters with mere symbolic gestures. Lula, defending his party, prefers a different version of events in which the protests reflect the demands of people whose lives have improved but whose means of communicating are out of step with an antiquated political system.
So who has the story right? And where does Brazil stand now?
A little more than a month after a series of small of protests in São Paulo over a nine-cent bus fare increase ignited national demonstrations, the "June Movement" still lacks clear claims and proposals. It is ideologically undefined. The intensity of the protests has fallen, though the movement remains active in larger cities, particularly those hosting the 2014 World Cup. Young people and college students are a notable presence, and social media has been extremely important in bringing them together. The movement has a middle-class tinge. By some estimates, at least half of participants had never been involved in political mobilizations before. Police violence against demonstrators has also been a constant.
In some cities-such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, São Luís, and Belo Horizonte-Occupy-style popular assemblies are ongoing. Participants present motions and strategies and discuss a range of political concerns. Some of the principal issues are the state of public health services, education, public transportation, police violence, generalized corruption, unresponsiveness of the political system, and media monopoly. At the assemblies in São Paulo, for example, a recent topic was the role of the corporate media in politics and the lack of alternative viewpoints on television and in newspapers. The NINJA collective (whose Portuguese acronym stands for Independent Narratives, Journalism, and Action) is a good example of the creativity of this emergent movement. Founded by out-of-work journalists, the collective reports on the movement, documenting, for example, police attempts at framing protesters for vandalism.
The political process took note of the protests and responded quickly. Brazil's political system is notoriously corrupt, and reforms had been a banner of social movements and progressive elements within the Workers' Party for quite some time. A variety of proposals had been languishing in congress for years, and the protests inspired a renewed push to see them enacted. On June 24th, in a meeting with governors and mayors, President Dilma Rousseff put forward a five-point pact to concretely respond to the protests. The second point was a proposal to hold a plebiscite on reforms including completely public funding of electoral campaigns, laws to enable popular referenda on national policies, recalls of elected officials via popular vote, better access to public documents, and more serious punishment for corruption.
But these proposals didn't get far. Big media outlets argued that reforms would just direct even more public money to politicians who are already overpaid. Aided by the press, center and center-right parties defeated the idea of the plebiscite. Fighting within the Workers' Party diluted congressional support for more modest reforms, and what remains is now an anemic, multi-party commission. Most of the more progressive ideas have been removed from discussion, and one of the elements the commission is now considering would actually make it more difficult for smaller political parties to enter the fray. It appears unlikely that any meaningful political reform is on the horizon.
The protesters have not only been stymied by politicians, but have also have run up against the traditional participants in Brazil's social movements. National movements have existed since the before the transition to democracy in the 1980s. They are large and well organized and have sought to work with the national administration. Lula's call for the Workers' Party and government to reestablish "daily links" with social movements is curious given how intense the dialogue has been, including with youth. National conferences and other participatory mechanisms have drawn millions of Brazilians to dialogue with the government over the last dozen years. The Landless Movement, for example, as critical as it has been of the Workers' Party, continues to talk with it and to send its members to government fora throughout the country.
