10 Days that Shook Brazil – A Look Back

I have a piece up that tries to summarize the causes, events, and outcomes of the last ten days of social mobilization in Brazil up at Lawyers, Guns & Money.

…the protests expanded rapidly. On Monday night (the 17th), 230,000 people took to the streets nationwide to protest, in what at the time seemed like a high number. Yet by the middle of the week, the protests were growing; in response, nearly a dozen cities (including São Paulo and Rio) rolled back bus fares.But it was too late. By Thursday night (the 20th), nearly 2 million people across 483 municipalities throughout the country had mobilized. And while two million in a country of 190 million is still a tiny number relatively speaking, the support is much broader, with a poll finding 75% of Brazilians supported the mobilization. Nor was the mobilization limited to a single socioeconomic group, as people from the favelas in Rio joined people from the middle-class Zona Sul on Thursday, leading to at least 300,000 (and perhaps more) in the streets for the largest urban rally in Rio since at least 1984, when the country mobilized for direct elections as the twenty-one-year military dictatorship wound down.

Of course, the events in Brazil have rippled throughout the region in the world. In Paraguay, around three thousand people took to the streets to protest corruption in their own country, with participants openly admitting the events in Brazil had inspired the Paraguayans to speak out as well. More ridiculously, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said that the unrest in his own country and now in Brazil is due to foreign conspirators who want to destabilize both countries (though Erdogan was silent in explaining why, out of all the countries in the world, vague “foreign” threats would target Turkey and Brazil). Of course, such allegations are ridiculous, as citizens of both Turkey and Brazil are responding to the abuses of power and national contexts within their own countries. Beyond that, the most obvious similarity between Turkey and Brazil is the police’s overwhelming and disproportionate use of force in each case, based on privatized weaponry and brutality against unarmed protesters found in police forces not just in Turkey, but Davis, New York, and now, Brazil.

You can read the whole thing here.

More Victories & More Protests (or, Why Reducing Bus Fares Won’t Make Brazilian Protests Go Away Immediately)

Following up on the reduction of bus fares in several cities Tuesday, yesterday, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo both announced they were reducing fares for their public transport in the wake of protests over the past week (down to R$2.75 in Rio, or about US$1.25, and to R$3 in Brazil, or about US$1.40). The announcement marks yet another victory for the protesters. In São Paulo, this of course meant the elimination of the 20-cent hike in fares that was originally scheduled and was the cause of protests (and violent police suppression) in São Paulo last Thursday.

Yet these announcements were made just a few hours after demonstrations in Fortaleza (where a Confederations Cup game was taking place), turned violent, as police once again cracked down against protesters expressing their anger at the expenses of the World Cup and the lack of internal and infrastructural development in Brazil. And after the announcements, people across the by from Rio de Janeiro gathered to protest in the city of Niterói, carrying signs objecting to the money that went to the World Cup and even shutting down the vital Rio-Niterói bridge that over 100,000 people cross every day as they travel between the two cities.

And these protests before and after the bus fare announcements get at the heart of why the protests are not likely to just disappear with the concession of lower fares for public transport. Yes, the fares were the superficial cause of protests in São Paulo last Thursday, but by the weekend, it was clear they were just part of broader demands that included anger at government spending for the World Cup, the disconnectedness of Brazil’s political elites from the citizenry, the police’s brutal and disproportionate use of force against demonstrators, and numerous other issues. Indeed, both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch now asking the government to investigate the police’s excessive use of force against protesters, making clear that these issues are not going away just because bus fares went down.

Indeed, the connection between soccer and police violence is seeming to become intractable. In protests in Rio last Saturday, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, even chasing protesters (and non-protesters) into the subway system. And again yesterday in Fortaleza, we witnessed a similar experience, even after it was clear that police violence played no small part in the rapid expansion of protests throughout the country earlier this week. This seems to be because soccer and police violence are interrelated. Protesters angry at the $13.3 billion spent on preparations for the World Cup gather at the most obvious symbols of that excess: the stadiums themselves. Meanwhile, the police have nowhere to retreat when protesters show up, even as they try to cordon off and protect the stadiums and to prevent protesters from entering no matter what the cost, both for the sake of Brazil’s image and for FIFA’s own interests. And when FIFA Secretary-General Jerome Valcke claims that “less democracy is better for organizing a World Cup” and praises Putin’s Russia for maintaining “less democracy,” it’s clear where FIFA stands on Brazilians taking to the streets, an attitude Brazilians themselves are not likely to welcome. And thus, the expenses of the World Cup and FIFA’s presence in the Confederations Cup this year and World Cup next year will continue to fuel anger and protest in Brazil.

And so, the movement will not just disappear or dissipate in the wake of a reduction in bus fares. Certainly, it can continue without taking to the streets, and so perhaps the demonstrations will fade for the time being in the coming weeks, as the Confederations Cup comes to a close. But that won’t resolve the broader macroeconomic troubles, the political abuses and corruption, and the sense of disillusionment with traditional politics among many Brazilians, and the ramifications at the state and local levels could be felt for quite some time. Indeed, last night, protesters gathered at Maranhão’s state capitol in São Luís to voice their anger at politician (and former president) José Sarney, who has long used his personal connections among elites to remain in power for decades even while flaunting that power (including getting a court to order a blogger to pay $900,000 in fines for a comment some visitor to her site left on her blog). Discontent with politicians existed well before the issue of bus fares arose, and readjusting bus fares in a handful of cities is not going to get rid of the deeper and more widespread discontent with politicians throughout many parts of the country.

Additionally, the recent demonstrations have reminded a new generation of Brazilians that organizing, publicly protesting, and making their voices heard can and does have very real effects, and provides a powerful way to shape democracy in Brazil. For a country that hadn’t seen such mobilizations since the early-1990s, that is a powerful lesson indeed, and one that a new generation of Brazilians is unlikely to forget, just as those who took to the streets to demonstrate against corrupt president Fernando Collor in 1992 still recall their role in the eventual resignation of the president.

Thus, with deep-rooted issues and inequalities still endemic to Brazilian society, and with the new lesson of the power of popular mobilization, the likelihood of the popular movement that we’ve seen in the last week seems unlikely to suddenly disappear completely. Some temporary victories have occurred, but they haven’t resolved Brazil’s bigger problems even while they’ve reminded Brazilians of the ways that they can shape the path of their country and their government. As thousands of Brazilians have uttered, in the streets, on Twitter, and elsewhere: “the Giant has awoken.” And it’s hard to see that giant demobilizing or forgetting the lessons of June 2013 anytime soon.

The Face of Police Violence in Brazil’s Protests

To understand the grotesque response of police to citizen protests in Brazil, there’s hard to find a more horrific, yet succinct, picture than the one below making the rounds on Twitter.

Clearly, this is an extreme response to a non-threat. And though the image may be grotesque, this type of response is not uncommon among police forces in Brazil, which in turn helps to explain why so many people turned out to demonstrate throughout Brazil last night.

Protests and Police Violence in São Paulo

With the recent announcement of a hike in bus fares in São Paulo, residents took to the streets last night to peacefully express their opposition to and anger with the hike. However, the protests turned very ugly when the police responded with overwhelming force against peaceful and unarmed protesters. And this wasn’t some “warning shot” situation – photographs reveal the extent of damage from police violence, police were caught repeatedly approaching protesters and firing rubber bullets at protestors’ upper bodies from close range, even hitting two journalists in the faces with rubber bullets. Such violence led to more people gathering to protest police violence, which led to more violence. As one woman tweeted last night, “It’s not about the fares anymore. Fuck the fares. This has become much greater than the question of fares.”

That statement is true, but indeed, it’s possible to argue it wasn’t ever about the fares in the first place – at least, not strictly about the fares. Twenty cents may not seem like a lot, but it’s important to contextualize. São Paulo has a subway system, but like its counterpart in Rio de Janeiro, the metro is far more expensive than the bus lines are, reinforcing broader social hierarchies in transportation – the middle classes can more easily afford the faster metros than the working classes can. Yet many more are affected by the hikes based on simple geography. Though São Paulo’s metro system is not insignificant, the metro area is enormous (around 20 million people), and the subway simply does not reach many parts of the city; for an anecdotal example, when I visited São Paulo several years ago, I stayed with a friend who lived in a middle-class neighborhood far from the city center. I spent an hour on a city bus just to get to the beginning of the metro line that would take me into the city. So though the working classes rely more heavily on buses than on the metro, many outside the working class also rely on the bus system simply due to urban geography.

Still, what’s twenty cents? Well, for starters, it’s a not-insignificant amount of money for a working class that is often underpaid even while living in one of the most expensive cities of Brazil – in 2012, it ranked as the 12th most expensive city in the world, ahead of New York City, Los Angeles, or any other city in the US. And in recent years, unemployment in São Paulo has been above the national average for Brazil, compounding the problem for many paulistanos [those from São Paulo city]. And then there’s the national economy. Growing inflation, growth rates that have slowed down, and currency devaluation have all further worsened matters, making well-paying jobs harder to come by and lessened the overall value of incomes among both the working and the middle classes in Brazil. In that setting, outrage over twenty cents is far from the total issue; while the move directly impacts millions of people, the protests over bus fares tap into broader discontent over the economic situation in São Paulo.

And that only adds to the horrific repression and violence on the part of the police last night. Just as in the case of Turkey, UC-Davis, and New York City in recent history, police have responded to peaceful protests with an overwhelming and disproportionate use of force. This is the face of repression of protest, free assembly, and free speech in the 21st century, drawing on the same police tactics that resemble those of the 1960s throughout the world, but with new technologies like pepper spray and rubber bullets. And police insisting they could no longer be held responsible for their actions last night only further reeks of police abuse and impunity for state violence. The state’s Secretary of Security can insist that the government will look into the use of police force, but given the long history police violence and impunity for police and neglecting the socioeconomic inequalities in São Paulo, it’s difficult to imagine there will be any real efforts to prevent such repression of protests or change police tactics anytime soon.

Around Latin America

-Still dealing with the loss to Chile of its only route to the Pacific 140 years ago, Bolivia is set to take its case to the International Court of Justice, a move that Chilean President Sebastián Piñera has said would open a “Pandora’s Box” of territorial issues in the Americas (including the territory the US took from Mexico in the wake of the Mexican-American War).

-US President Barack Obama is set this week to make his first trip to Latin America since winning re-election last November, with stops in Mexico and Costa Rica planned. Prior to the trip, he met with Latino leaders in the US, with whom he discussed socioeconomic issues.

-Peruvian President Ollanata Humala may be preparing to pardon former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving jail time after his conviction for human rights violations that Fujimori oversaw during his 1990-2000 presidency.

-Evo Morales is set to run for a third term as president after Bolivia’s constitutional court ruled in favor of presidents serving three consecutive terms.

-Chilean Laurence Golborne, seen as the frontrunner among conservative candidates to challenge former president Michelle Bachelet in next year’s election, has removed himself from the race amidst allegations of shady business practices.

-Cuban gay rights activist Mariela Castro will travel to the US to receive an award in Philadelphia next week. Castro had initially been denied a visa to the US, due primarily to the fact that she is the daughter of Raul Castro.

-Colombia is set to resume peace talks with the FARC after a month-long break in the peace process.

-The Catholic Church has excommunicated Brazilian priest Roberto Francisco Daniel (known colloquially as Padre Beto) for his defense of open marriages and his defense of same-sex love. More than a symbolic move, the excommunication marks a split between official church hierarchy and a growing strain of moderate and even progressive Catholicism among some parishioners in Brazil.

-A new scientific study suggests that Latin America is facing a “cancer epidemic” due to challenges in diagnosing and treating cancer, as well as to increasingly unhealthy diets, higher levels of tobacco-smoking and alcohol consumption, and an increasingly inactive lifestyle.

-In what is an important step in addressing impunity (albeit a significant issue in its own right), sixty officers in Rio de Janeiro have been arrested on charges of corruption, even while another five officers were arrested for the murders of a journalist and a photographer who were working on a story on militias in Brazil’s interior state of Minas Gerais.

-The next president of the World Trade Organization will be from Latin America, as the remaining to candidates for the position are Mexico’s Herminio Blanco and Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo.

-Finally, when I studied in Costa Rica about a decade ago, the “best” beer one could find was Heineken, so this is excellent news for Costa Rica.

Around Latin America

-Marking the first major protest of the year, over 100,000 Chilean students took to the streets to continue to push for educational reform, an issue that has garnered much support and been a consistent problem for conservative president Sebastian Pinera. (And for those wondering, this is what (part of) over 100,000 people in the streets looks like.)

-With the recent conviction of some of his former top aides for corruption, Brazilian federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva to examine what, if any, role in or knowledge of payoffs Lula might have had during his first term.

-Uruguay became the third country in the Americas to legalize gay marriage nationwide (joining Canada and Argentina) after the Chamber of Deputies approved the Senate’s changes to the bill (the Chamber of Deputies originally passed an earlier draft of the bill last December). Meanwhile, in Chile, Congress has begun debating the legal recognition of same-sex couples; though the recognition would fall short of allowing gay marriage, it would grant gay couples the same rights as married couples.

-Although the frontrunner in Paraguay’s upcoming elections, conservative candidate Horacio Cartes apparently has quite the history of shady dealings and possible corrupt practices, including international smuggling, practices that, if true, could further strain Paraguay’s relations with its neighbors, relations that were already damaged when Congress rapidly removed former president Fernando Lugo through a dubious “impeachment.”

-A study finds that an overwhelming amount of the money donated to aid Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake ultimately ended up in the hands of US companies, with only one percent aiding Haitian companies themselves.

-Speaking of Haitians, they are among the thousands of immigrants who have recently entered into Brazil, leaving the small state of Acre to ask for federal aid in supporting the influx. I don’t quite agree with Boz that their desire to move Brazil automatically means that the economy there is doing well, but it at least suggests that people in other countries perceive the Brazilian economy to be preferable to their own.

-In spite of his family’s claims late last year, Alberto Fujimori does not actually have cancer, which was the reason his family initially called for his release from prison, where he is currently serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations during his 1990-2000 presidency. Although the former president is not actually ailing, that has not stopped Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani from calling for a pardon for Fujimori.

-As a hunger strike among prisoners at US facilities in Guantanamo continues, the US has begun force-feeding some of the striking prisoners.

-In the wake of the rape of a tourist from the US, Rio de Janeiro has banned the use of vans for public transit (rather than the larger buses) in the southern part of the city. Of course, that the ban is in effect only in the wealthier southern zone where tourism dominates provides yet another reminder of the social stratification evident throughout Rio, including in public transportation options.

-Hundreds of thousands of Colombians, including President Juan Manuel Santos, marched in support of ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC.

-Are Brazil and Russia close to a missile deal?

-Although scholarship and human rights activism have already torn much “the veil” off Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime, the recent exhumation of Nobel-laureate Pablo Neruda could further shed light on the poet’s death and end years of speculation over whether he really died of cancer, as had long been maintained, or if the regime had him killed, a theory that has been bandied about as well.

-Outrage continues over the appointment of evangelical politician Marco Feliciano as the head of the Brazilian Congress’s Human Rights Committee in spite of a history of public homophobic and racist statements. As a result, in a blow against transparency or accountability in government, the Committee recently decided to close all hearings to outsiders  in hopes of preventing protests from erupting in committee hearings.

-Speaking of human rights in Brazil, police are finally facing trial for their role in the executions of prisoners during the Carandiru massacre of 1992. The massacre, which occurred 21 years ago this October, left 102 prisoners dead from gunshots after police entered the prison to break up gang fighting between prisoners.

-A Guatemalan court upheld the not-guilty verdict of former president Alfonso Portillo on charges of theft of state funds. However, his legal problems are far from over, as the ruling now opens the path for his extradition to the United States, where he faces indictment for embezzlement and money laundering.

-A Chilean court has suspended development on the Pascua Lama mine, originally set to be one of the world’s largest gold mines, ruling that the pollution and environmental destruction already caused by the Canadian mining company Barrick violates the original terms of the agreement. The shutdown marks a victory for indigenous groups, who had argued that the mine threatened their daily lives and resources, and is part of broader challenges to Barrick’s environmental toll and presence throughout Latin America.

-Finally, scientists have recently encountered a new species of porcupine in Brazil, but the future of the species is already uncertain, as the tree-dwelling Coendou speratus lives in an endangered forest.

Around Latin America

-Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine recently came out in favor of legalizing first-trimester abortions in Brazil, adding to the arguments and debate over the issue in a country where abortion is currently only legal in the case of rape, severe mental disability in the fetus, or if the pregnancy is a threat to the mother’s life.

-A hunger strike at Guantanamo continues to expand and to last, adding to questions of indefinite detention at the US bas in Cuba.

-Students in Chile continue to demand educational reforms, and, after police attempted to force students onto a route other than the already-approved one, the march turned violent, a turn of events that could perhaps have been avoided had police not forced the last-minute change.

-In an attempt to reduce violence against women, Ecuador may categorize femicide as a separate crime within the country’s penal code.

-The Brazilian Senate passed a law this week that gives domestic workers the same rights as other workers, including overtime pay, finally extending workers’ rights to the millions of domestic workers (almost all women) who work for Brazil’s middle- and upper-classes. Unsurprisingly, those who employ domestic servants have pushed back against the idea of their workers actually enjoying basic rights (an attitude the Washington Post itself reinforces by declaring the law will “impinge” upon the economy).

-Police violence in Honduras continues to be a major issue, as police act excessively and with impunity in ways reminiscent of the 1980s, even as the US allegedly continues to funnel money to forces that operate as death squads (a charge US officials of course deny).

-In tales of opposite results, the Peruvian government is working on setting aside lands for indigenous peoples who voluntarily remain isolated from most of Peruvian society, even while one of the few Bolivian indigenous groups that is growing faces opposition from ranchers who continue in their attempts to relocate native groups and seize their lands.

-A Brazilian doctor and her medical staff are under investigation for the murder of seven patients at a hospital; however, reports suggest that at least another 20 deaths could be tied to her team, with 300 more cases under investigation. According to one recording of the doctor, she allegedly committed the murders in order to open up beds in the hospital.

-As Paraguay’s elections approach, conservative candidate Horacio Cartes appears to be in the lead.

-Speaking of elections, Michelle Bachelet has officially announced she will run for president for a second time (she previously served from 2006-2010) as Chile prepares for elections next year. However, in spite of her incredible popularity when she left office in 2010, the path to a second term is far from assured. She is already facing harsh criticisms from other politicians and has significant work to do among social groups (including students and those who support the indigenous Mapuche, whom Bachelet targeted) who have grown critical not just of the right-wing Pinera government, but of the post-Pinochet governments in general.

-Finally, in a bit of potentially good environmental news, Brazil’s supermarkets have agreed not to sell beef from cattle raised in the Amazonian forest. It is not clear how they will monitor this or prevent all Amazonian beef from reaching the shelves, but given that ranches are responsible for much of the deforestation in the Amazon, this is a not-insignificant step.