{"id":619,"date":"2013-08-12T12:29:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T15:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/ingles\/?p=619"},"modified":"2013-09-04T16:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T19:48:41","slug":"why-i-like-mondays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/why-i-like-mondays\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I like Mondays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcelo Badar\u00f3 Mattos *<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Protest in Rio
Photo: Tom\u00e1s Silva \/ Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0And then the bullhorn crackles
\n<\/em>And the captain cackles
\n<\/em><\/i>with the problems and the how\u2019s and why\u2019s
\n<\/em>And he can see no reasons
\n<\/em><\/i>\u2018cause there are no reasons.
\n<\/em>Tell me why?
\n<\/em>I don\u2019t like Mondays
\n<\/em>Bob Geldof<\/p>\n

What an age it is
\n<\/em>when to speak of trees is almost a crime
\n<\/em>For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
\n<\/em>Bertolt Brecht<\/p>\n

Now you can feel the smell of spring in the air.
\n<\/em>Osvaldo Coggiola<\/p>\n

Monday, June 17, 2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in cities all across the nation this afternoon and tonight. Many are still out there as I write these lines. In Rio de Janeiro there were more than 100,000 demonstrators, the vast majority young people, but there were also some veterans of the days when marches of this size were more common. Another good number <\/b>\u00a0in S\u00e3o Paulo, many in Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Bel\u00e9m, Porto Alegre, Macei\u00f3, and several other cities. In Brasilia, the demonstration covered the roof of the National Congress, mirroring the \u201cElections Now\u201d campaign of 1984 and the protests against President Lula da Silva\u2019s so-called social security reform in 2003. Brazilians who are scattered around the world \u2013 in over fifty cities in Europe and North America \u2013 took to the streets yesterday and today to feel part of this same movement.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Protest in Rio de Janeiro.
Photo: T\u00e2nia Rego\/Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/p><\/div>\n

Why? The demonstrations began fifteen days ago, with S\u00e3o Paulo as their epicenter. Their top grievance was the call to cancel the hike on the price of mass transit tickets. Leading the protests was the Free Fare Movement (Movimento Passe Livre<\/i>), a struggle that has gone on for nearly a decade, championed by students. Its main players are college and high-school students, some of whom are organized in left-wing parties and movements; others are against traditional forms of organization while many shun any reference of this type, donning anonymous masks (from the film V for Vendetta<\/i>) in paradoxical tandem with Brazilian flags. But there were many workers there as well, unhappy about the price of bus fares and much more. What else?<\/p>\n

This is the time of rehearsal for the World Cup, with the Confederations Cup already here. Many folks have been evicted from their homes under the argument that new thoroughfares have to be opened for the Cup, the Olympics \u2013 and the appreciation of urban real estate values. And those who spend every day going back and forth to work on jam-packed buses and trains, donating hours of overtime for which they are not paid, have seen no improvement to their lives after all this \u2013 to the contrary. What they have seen are governments offering private transportation companies tax exemptions on the one hand while allowing fare hikes that will guarantee steep profits on the other. \u201cDa copa eu abro m\u00e3o, quero dinheiro pra sa\u00fade e educa\u00e7\u00e3o,\u201d the demonstrators sing \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ll give up the Cup, just give me health and education.\u201d\u00a0 All of this is occurring at a time of hyper-appreciation of real estate values and rents, along with across-the-board rises in food prices and the cost of other essential goods and services. So it was no surprise to hear President Rousseff booed at the inauguration of the refurbished Maracan\u00e3 Stadium.<\/p>\n

We can, however, analyze what else lies behind this sudden awakening and these mass mobilizations. One way to get at the heart of it is to pinpoint the main targets of the protests. On TV news reports \u2013 especially those broadcast by Brazil\u2019s largest media group, which practically holds a monopoly, that is, Rede Globo, whose reporters have to stay at a distance from protesters and remain anonymous to avoid their hostility \u2013 it is apparent that it has become extremely hard to hold to the editorial line espoused some days ago, which labeled the first protests as riots and vandalism. Now they\u2019ve been forced to tone it down and recognize the mass nature of these movements. This is because media monopolies are one of the clearest targets of the protests. People are reacting \u2013 albeit in contradictory fashion at times \u2013 to what they see as a clear-cut instrument for imposing \u201cconsensus\u201d around values that are not theirs if not actually hostile to theirs, like \u201cpacifying\u201d the conflicts through recourse to repressive force and conformity to the ruling order.<\/p>\n

The other focal point of dissatisfaction expressed at these rallies has been police repression. It would not be wrong to conclude that the rapid growth in the number of people on the streets today can be attributed to a reaction against the police violence that was used to repress demonstrations last week, especially in S\u00e3o Paulo. These demonstrations started out as protests against higher fares but they have expanded into protests in favor of the right to demonstrate. Some claim that the police used excessive force; others argue that the police are simply unprepared. They\u2019re wrong, or they want to muddy the waters. The mere fact that the Brazilian government maintained its military police forces even after the demise <\/b>of the dictatorship accounts for many things. And it is not a lack of preparation that police officers are displaying when they fire into a crowd of demonstrators at close range \u2013 they\u2019ve been trained to do this every day in favelas and on the periphery of large metropolitan areas (except that the bullets there are not made of rubber). They are also accustomed to applying this repressive force against any working class movement that dares to go beyond the role of government cheerleader.<\/p>\n

In short, in the ongoing counter-revolution that characterizes the bourgeois autocracy in Brazil (to recall Florestan Fernandes), the media monopolies engage in a steady effort to mold hearts and minds to the designs of capital and of the repressive police arm of a State that never relinquished its cruelest side. As such they have formed the secondary targets of these protests against fare hikes \u2013 secondary but more and more primary and also a new catalyst for the demonstrations now underway. These protests foreshadow a potential expansion of this dissent and an atmosphere of latent uprising against the two stronger sides, which work together to hold back class struggle and characterize bourgeois domination in Brazil today: the tremendous network of devices meant to forge consensus and the never-dismantled, always-augmented apparatus of repressive coercion.<\/p>\n

Of course, for this potential to be transformed into a true wave of change, much more is necessary. The generations now in their forties and fifties took to the streets in the 1980s to demand \u201cElections Now!\u201d and the end of the dictatorship, just as the generation from thirty-five to forty painted their faces and shouted \u201cCollor Out!\u201d in the early 1990s [calling for the impeachment of then-president Collor]. It is necessary for them to return to the streets now to fight for deep change, alongside their children. And this movement would surely grow if the unions called on their members to stop work and add their numbers to the next demonstrations. And if the homeless and the landless, impacted by upcoming mega-events and surrounded by armored vehicles and pacifying police units, would close ranks in unison with the discontent. And if the parties on the left, especially those that still believe that the National Congress is the stage for major struggles, would wake up and recognize that the streets play the central role. And if a coherent program of anti-systemic grievances would clearly show how fares go up, the police beat up, and the media chime in because this is how the sociability of capital works in our great \u201cemerging\u201d periphery.<\/p>\n

It is up to us now to plant the flowers of a Brazilian spring in the asphalt of the streets, for winter has lasted too long in these sunny tropics.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Marcelo Badar\u00f3 Mattos is a professor at the Federal Fluminense University<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Editor experiences history in the streets<\/a><\/strong>, by Jaime Benchimol<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Murilo de Carvalho: the Brazilian people have woken up from their lethargy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018More than narrating these events, we must live them intensely\u2019 an interview with<\/a><\/strong> Valdei Araujo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is up to us now to plant the flowers of a Brazilian spring in the asphalt of the streets, for winter has lasted too long in these sunny tropics,\u201d states UFF professor Marcelo Badar\u00f3 Mattos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}