Brazil President Dilma Rousseff said that demonstrations should not be ignored in the South American state. The country is stronger because of the protests she said., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Analysis: Brazil's protests: Not quite a 'Tropical Spring'
6:59pm EDT
By Brian Winter
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's blossoming protest movement is a coming-of-age for what had been one of Latin America's most politically disengaged youth populations, but does not appear to constitute a major threat to governability or established political parties.
The protests, which gathered steam last week and saw some 200,000 Brazilians demonstrate in a dozen cities on Monday, are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Their broad rallying cry, which includes opposition to corruption and recent bus fare increases, has appealed to virtually any Brazilian with a grievance - and there are plenty of problems to go around.
Yet, at least for now, the movement appears to be far more "Occupy Wall Street" than "Arab Spring" in terms of its motives, demographics and likely outcome.
That is, the protests are a noisy sign of discontent among a swath of the population that is on average richer and better educated than average Brazilians. A survey of demonstrators in Sao Paulo on Monday by polling firm Datafolha indicated they were three times more likely to have a university degree than the rest of the population.
The protests have spread quickly, and generated perhaps outsized buzz, in a country that has one of the world's highest usage rates of social media - 81 percent of respondents told Datafolha they heard about Monday's protest via Facebook.
Their novelty has also been important, as Brazil does not have the recent tradition of political protest seen in Argentina, Venezuela or even Chile. The use of teargas and rubber bullets by police inexperienced in crowd control has added to the shock value and pushed even more sympathizers into the streets.
As such, the protests have become a nationwide phenomenon and could lead President Dilma Rousseff and other politicians to make limited concessions on relatively small issues, such as bus fares, and bigger ones, such as the quality of public spending.
They may continue to grow in numbers and disrupt daily life in Brazilian cities - perhaps for months to come. The protests also add to the sensation that Brazil, after a decade in which seemingly everything went right, has become bogged down in rising inflation, crime and social unrest.
But the movement is just as notable for what it is not.
Unlike the unrest that swept the Arab world earlier this decade and Turkey more recently, the protesters are not targeted at a specific leader - or even the federal government.
Just a quarter of demonstrators told Datafolha they were protesting against politicians - behind bus fares (56 percent), corruption (40 percent) and police repression (31 percent).
Brazil is a vibrant democracy with a variety of parties, most of them left of center. The country's current leaders - many of whom cut their teeth protesting a military government in the 1970s and 1980s - appear eager to compromise with the protesters and, eventually, try to co-opt them.
Rousseff, herself a former guerrilla, made a carefully crafted statement this week praising the protesters for their "greatness." One senior official in Sao Paulo told Reuters on Wednesday: "We have to learn from this.
We'd be stupid not to listen to what these people are saying."
IT'S NOT EUROPE
But the numbers have not been as large as they may seem to outsiders, considering Brazil's huge size.
To use one comparison, Monday's total nationwide turnout, the biggest so far, amounted to about 0.1 percent of Brazil's population of nearly 200 million people.
Tuesday's follow-up protest in Sao Paulo rallied about 50,000 people in a metropolitan area of some 20 million.
The movement is also not a sign of massive, European- or Arab-style discontent with the economy. Unlike countries where protests or alternative social movements grew big enough to deeply shake the established order, Brazil does not have a problem with unemployment among youths or the population at large.
In fact, Brazil's problem is the opposite: Near-full employment and rising wages are driving inflation of about 6.5 percent a year, which is the root cause behind the bus fare increases that originally triggered protesters' ire.
If Brazil's recent economic boom is responsible for creating the bottlenecks that have enraged so many of the demonstrators, it will also likely limit their movement's appeal.
A nationwide poll released on Wednesday showed Rousseff's popularity, while down sharply from March, remained very high by global standards. Fifty-five percent of respondents rated her government as "good/great," while 32 percent rated it as "average." Just 13 percent said it was "bad/terrible."
Recent polls have shown similar results.
Financial stability and innovative social programs helped pull some 35 million Brazilians, or about 17 percent of the population, out of poverty during the past decade. Brazil was one of the only countries in the world that matched high economic growth with falling inequality during that period.
Perhaps for that reason, the rising lower-middle class has so far shown few signs of participating in the protests - even if its members support some of the motives, particularly the cry for better public transport.
There are several wild cards that could transform the movement into something more threatening to the status quo.
One of them is violence. Although the marches have been mostly peaceful, clashes between police and protesters have injured more than 100 people, and isolated looting broke out in Sao Paulo on Tuesday. A confrontation that resulted in deaths would likely bring many more Brazilians out onto the streets in support.
The other is the economy. Brazil's currency has slid sharply in recent weeks, and its stock market is down 20 percent this year, reflecting rising pessimism among investors.
That could, in turn, result in greater unemployment - in which case, the popular unrest would likely build.
(Reporting by Brian Winter; Editing by Todd Benson and Peter Cooney)
June 18, 2013
Protests Widen as Brazilians Chide Leaders
By SIMON ROMERO
New York Times
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Shaken by the biggest challenge to their authority in years, Brazil’s leaders made conciliatory gestures on Tuesday to try to defuse the protests engulfing the nation’s cities. But the demonstrators remained defiant, pouring into the streets by the thousands and venting their anger over political corruption, the high cost of living and huge public spending for the World Cup and the Olympics.
In a convulsion that has caught many in Brazil and beyond by surprise, waves of protesters denounced their leaders for dedicating so many resources to cultivating Brazil’s global image by building stadiums for international events, when basic services like education and health care remain woefully inadequate.
“I love soccer, but we need schools,” said Evaldir Cardoso, 48, a fireman at a protest here with his 7-month-old son.
The demonstrations initially began with a fury over a hike in bus fares, but as with many other protest movements in recent years — in Tunisia, Egypt or, most recently, Turkey — they quickly evolved into a much broader condemnation of the government.
By the time politicians in several cities backed down on Tuesday and announced that they would cut or consider reducing fares, the demonstrations had already morphed into a more sweeping social protest, with marchers waving banners carrying slogans like “The people have awakened.”
“It all seemed so wonderful in the Brazil oasis, and suddenly we are reliving the demonstrations of Tahrir Square in Cairo, so suddenly, without warning, without a crescendo,” said Eliane Cantanhêde, a columnist for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. “We were all caught by surprise. From paradise, we have slipped at least into limbo. What is happening in Brazil?”
Thousands gathered at São Paulo’s main cathedral and made their way to the mayor’s office, where a small group smashed windows and tried to break in, forcing guards to withdraw.
In Juazeiro do Norte, demonstrators cornered the mayor inside a bank for hours and called for his impeachment, while thousands of others protested teachers’ salaries. In Rio de Janeiro, thousands protested in a gritty area far from the city’s upscale seaside districts. In other cities, demonstrators blocked roads, barged into City Council meetings or interrupted sessions of local lawmakers, clapping loudly and sometimes taking over the microphone.
The protests rank among the largest outpourings of dissent since the nation’s military dictatorship ended in 1985. After a harsh police crackdown last week fueled anger and swelled protests, President Dilma Rousseff, a former guerrilla who was imprisoned under the dictatorship and has now become the target of pointed criticism herself, tried to appease dissenters by embracing their cause on Tuesday.
“These voices, which go beyond traditional mechanisms, political parties and the media itself, need to be heard,” Ms. Rousseff said.
“The greatness of yesterday’s demonstrations were proof of the energy of our democracy.”
Her tone stood in sharp contrast to the approach adopted by Turkey, where similar demonstrations over what might also have seemed an isolated issue — the fate of a city park in Istanbul — quickly escalated into a broad rejection of the government’s legitimacy from a vocal section of the population.
But while Turkey’s prime minister has dismissed the protesters as terrorists, vandals and “bums,” Ms. Rousseff seemed acutely aware of the breadth of frustration in Brazil over the gap between the nation’s global aspirations and the reality for many millions of its people.
The protests in Brazil are unfolding just as its long and heralded economic boom may be coming to an end. The economy has slowed to a pale shadow of its growth in recent years; inflation is high, the currency is declining sharply against the dollar — but the expectations of Brazilians have rarely been higher, feeding broad intolerance with corruption, bad schools and other government failings.
“These protests are in favor of common sense,” said Roberto da Matta, a leading cultural commentator. “We pay an absurd amount of taxes in Brazil, and now more people are questioning what they get in return.”
One of Ms. Rousseff’s senior aides said Tuesday that tax measures already adopted by the authorities would allow São Paulo to lower bus fares considerably, though it was unclear whether the concession was too late and too limited to derail the protest movement.
One of the major complaints among demonstrators is government corruption, as evidenced by the trial involving senior figures in the governing Workers Party in one of Brazil’s largest political scandals in recent memory.
None of the officials sentenced in the trials has yet gone to prison, despite the prosecution’s contention that they should have begun serving their sentences immediately after the high court announced them in November.
“We’re furious about what our political leaders do, their corruption,” said Enderson dos Santos, 35, an office worker protesting in São Paulo. “I’m here to show my children that Brazil has woken up.”
Some of the stadiums being built for the World Cup soccer tournament, scheduled for next year, have also been criticized for delays and cost overruns, and have become subjects of derision as protesters question whether they will become white elephants. One in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, will have capacity for 43,000, but it is in a city where average attendance at professional soccer games stands at fewer than 600 fans.
Government institutions seem prepared to continue plowing public funds into the projects. A Brazilian newspaper reported Tuesday that the national development bank had approved a new loan of about $200 million for Itaquerão, a new stadium in São Paulo that is expected to host the opening match of the World Cup.
“When you see the investments in health and education and then you compare that to the massive investments to carry out the World Cup, it is clear that this provokes a certain indignation,” said Adão Clóvis Martins dos Santos, a sociologist at Catholic University in Porto Alegre.
But near Avenida Paulista, São Paulo’s most prominent thoroughfare, the scene was festive. Some protesters sipped cans of beer. Marijuana smoke emanated from parts of the crowd. Many painted stripes on their faces with green and yellow paint, the colors of the Brazilian flag.
“People are going hungry and the government builds stadiums,” said Eleuntina Scuilgaro, an 83-year-old pensioner at the protests here in São Paulo. “I’m here for my granddaughters. If you’re tired, go home, take a shower and return. That’s what I’m doing.”
Paula Ramon contributed reporting from São Paulo, and Taylor Barnes from Rio de Janeiro.
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