From A
World to Win News Service;
By AWTWNS correspondents in Latin America.
Like a welcome fresh gust of wind,
Brazilians took to the streets in large numbers during the month of June in a
way that hadn't been seen in twenty years. The protests came to a peak on 22
June when in Rio alone 100,000 people joined the upsurge, while more than a
million total were counted in about one hundred different cities and towns
across the country.
Youth from the Movimento Passe
Livre (movement for free public transport) accelerated protests back in March in various parts of the country to
demand a reduction of public transport fares, at times with the slogan
"Tarifa Zero" (Zero Fare). São Paulo, the country's economic hub of
11 million people, was the site of the first large protest on 6 June, in the
elegant central bank district of Avenida Paulista. Police tried to stop the
demonstrations with repression, using rubber bullets, gas, clubs and detaining
some of the participants. The frustration of many people over the 20 cent hike
for both bus and metro transport quickly moved towards a questioning of the
billions of dollars being spent on the upcoming soccer World Cup in 2014 while
large numbers of people struggle just to survive. The movement grew rapidly and the thousands turned into
hundreds of thousands, broadening to resentment over police violence and
government corruption.
In the beginning mainly youth
demonstrated, but as the protests grew in size, they drew in older people as
well. The majority who participated in the marches and meetings were from the
middle classes, but more oppressed sections of the people also joined in. This social mix of
people from different classes made clear to the youth the connection between
police brutality in the demonstrations and the systematic repression by the
military police that has been intensified for years against the oppressed in
the favelas (shantytowns in Brazilian cities). Although the fare increase kicked
off the June protest movement – people earning minimum wage already had to pay
a big chunk of their 700 RS$ salary (about $340) to get to and from work –
other problems such as access to good health care and public services, as well
as the violent response of the police who killed several demonstrators during
the month, and the widening gap between rich and poor became part of their demands and some began to question on some
level the whole system they had lost faith in.
The protests ruptured the apparent
social harmony and the supposed agreement of the people with the government,
putting on the table that in Brazil, as in so many other countries dominated by
imperialism, the masses carry the weight on their shoulders of keeping a
parasitic minority that feeds on their blood and sweat, a tiny group that
appropriates the general wealth of the labour of millions. Many people in
Brazil consider that the demonstrations showed that the time had come to say
Basta! and to express their discontent with the current order of things.
Over the past months leading up to
the upsurge of mass protest the ruling class had unleashed repressive attacks,
detaining, beating and torturing hundreds of demonstrators and charging them
with crimes. The "disappearance" of Amarildo de Souza one month ago
is very telling. He was a construction worker living in the Rocinha favela in
Rio who has not been heard from since he was seen entering the station of the
Pacification Police Unit (Unidade Policial de Pacificacao, UPP). Since June,
several smaller protests have been organized under the banner, "Where is
Amarildo?", denouncing state repression, including the targeting of black
and indigenous people in particular. The state created these special forces a
few years ago in order to take back control of the favelas from drug dealers,
yet in reality they have systematically criminalised the poorest masses living
there. (Human Rights Watch has denounced
what they say are more than 11,000 homicides carried out by police between
2003-2009 alone.) The violence, the deaths and
the disappearances have generated a growing hatred of the different police
forces and have unmasked to a certain extent the nature of the state and the
government.
Some people report that there are
thousands of "Amarildos" and so have shouted, "the police who
repress in the streets are the same ones killing the youth in the
favelas!" Mainly it is the lowest section of society condemned to live in
ghettos that regularly faces the repression. Some among the people came to
recognise that the police repression in the favelas is not fundamentally for
combatting organised drug crime, but rather is part of the containment of a
potentially rebellious sector that could destabilise the state. And from the
initial resistance among the oppressed, the rulers may have some reason to
worry.
Long before the protests had broken
out the state had already scheduled and paid big money for administering a mass
dose of sleeping medicine to young Catholics who came from all over Latin
America (and the world) to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day and see the new
pope last month. This display was meant to bolster the church as well as the
state and to brighten and "purify" the face of a society known
worldwide to be violent, in preparation for the coming world sport events. The
pope spent a week in Rio, blessing the poor in the favelas and staging a
gigantic rally on Copacabana Beach. Although the huge June demonstrations had
wound down significantly by that time, various feminist groups, LGBT and
intellectuals protested against the intervention of the church in a secular
state, as well as against the pope's opposition to abortion and homosexuality.
They also targeted recent reactionary laws making abortion illegal and the
"bolsa estupro", a fund to compensate rape victims so that they won't
abort.
The role of the PT in the
government
In January 2003 the Worker's Party
– Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) – took control of the government when Luiz
Inacio "Lula" da Silva was elected president, coming to power on a
reformist and social democratic platform. The PT had pulled together back in
the early 1980s various professional associations and trade unions that had
moved away from Marxism and communist ideas while maintaining a socialist face.
Appealing to the people on the basis of a socialist and seeminglyracial equality "socialist" discourse, the
PT tried to bring the whole left under its wing, including thePartido
Comunista do Brasil. The PC do B of today arose out of a split within the
original Partido Comunista do Brasil in 1962 during the struggle in the
international communist movement between the Soviet Union and China, taking a position opposing Khrushchev. They
launched a guerrilla war in 1971 and after heavy losses in the leadership in
1975 stopped the armed struggle and abandoned any pretence of Maoism in favour
of a more openly reformist approach. Today the PCdoB occupies positions in the
PT government and continues to refer to itself as Marxist-Leninist. Thus in
2003 leaders of different "people's" political organisations joined
the government and began to occupy important positions, with the effect of
attenuating the struggle of the people against the state. Lula's rise to
stardom came about thanks to his party absorbing
the people's demands for more democracy and the questioning of the
social order, while building itself as a force capable of taking the lead in
meeting the needs of the ruling class and of imperialism.
In this framework the promises for a more democratic and
egalitarian society by the government have been welcomed by a section of the
people, especially by the middle classes, whose numbers and standard of living
have both increased over the past decade.
The language of social democracy
goes hand in hand with the deepening of imperialist domination and with the
fuller integration of Brazil into the capitalist-imperialist system. For
example, vast stretches of Brazilian land have been turned over to export
production, while basic food crops are grown less and less often. The Brazilian
government has been stepping up efforts to attract foreign investment as a good destination for
capitalist-imperialist capital. To the extent that
capitalism tightens and transforms its grip over various sectors of the
economy, the suffering of poorer sections of the people worsens, while social
policies have served as a palliative. However,
this process has limits and the illusions of the petty bourgeoisie are
disappearing as their social and economic ascent has slowed down. This
situation has led to the disgruntlement and mobilization of these strata,
mostly around the demand that the government fulfil its promises.
Accelerating urbanisation
in a wide range of oppressed countries has been pushed forward by the workings
of capital itself. Rural land use has changed to prioritise crops for the
production of biofuels in Brazil. Such crops often require a smaller labour
force and peasants are displaced towards the cities. On the one hand this
change in land use generates the shrinking capacity for food production,
raising the price of basic foodstuffs and, on the other hand, it results in a
larger number of urban consumers.
At the same time as it carried out
a repressive rampage against the protesters, in the face of growing anger the
state rescinded the transport fare increase and promised to take into account
their demands. In addition, the reformist left in power argued that the
demonstrations were only playing into the hands of the rightist parties, in an
effort to destabilise and de-legitimise the revolutionary process it says the
PT is leading. Using twisted logic, they tried to show that the demonstrations
were basically fuelled by the right and by Yankee imperialism. This facilitates
the reformists' aims of stopping more people, including from among their base,
from joining the protest movement. While spreading these rumours and arguments,
the PT and PCdoB parties try to channel and co-opt the struggles in such a way
as to incorporate them into their structures, recognising that some of the
demands are just. As if that weren't enough, in the height of cynicism they
proclaim that these demonstrations are really the result of the democratic
process begun when Lula took power, since he is seen to have educated the people politically and to have broadened
democratic freedoms.
This type of strategy is frequently
used by other reformist and social democratic governments in the region such as
Venezuela, Ecuador or Argentina in order to justify repression and control
popular discontent that threatens to spread.
The de-legitimisation of the PT
government and traditional and reformist parties
In rejecting the harmful role that
organisations calling themselves socialist, communist and "people's
parties" have played for decades, but in fact have been vehicles for
imperialism and serve its interests, a section of the people have promoted the
idea of a movement without parties, without leadership or a leading structure.
This idea has been accepted by many
youth who are trying to break away from the control of the reformist parties
and to build an independent people's movement. This righteous intention has led
to arguments for a different, "horizontal" form of organisation
without leadership, in which the collective consensus determines everything.
While many within the popular movement in Brazil are not aiming to totally
transform the capitalist system, some people within are asking how it is
possible to fight a highly structured social system without organisation,
leadership and a clear programme. Bitter experiences of the people have shown
that there is a material need for organising themselves, for taking in
political and ideological nourishment both from the struggle of the people and
from the synthesis of communism.
What is certain is that the people
can never free themselves and break away from the chains of imperialism under
the leadership of the PT and the PCdoB or any other reformist party. Because of
their nature and the class interests they defend, these parties promote
illusions in bourgeois democracy and orient the people's struggle towards
electoral ends. These kinds of strategies do little more than make minor
changes so that things remain the same (or sometimes get worse). At no time and
in no country has a reformist conception such as this succeeded in radically
transforming society, but has served simply to maintain the bourgeoisie's
control, containing popular uprisings and sowing confusion by putting up a
social and democratic facade.
The current movement is
encountering the effects of illusions about democracy and the state. For
example, some people demanded the demilitarisation of the police and demanded
that it defend the interests of the people. This case makes plain the confusion
that exists over the class character of the state that fundamentally protects
the interests of the ruling class.
Other sections of the movement are
trying to focus the struggle on getting rid of individual authorities such as
the state governors of Rio and Sao Paulo. In accordance with the wrong idea
that the people's problems are due to corruption of certain individuals, the
demand to sack them has become popular and the focus of several smaller
demonstrations since June, particularly in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Corruption is in fact a sharp problem in Brazil and there are more than a few
individuals and economic sectors that are profiting from public money. But this
doesn't mean that the people's problems stop there. Some sections of the ruling class and its communication structures are
encouraging the struggle against corruption, sending the message that it gets in
the way of the normal functioning of the system. They argue that to the degree
that the system works well, it is capable of improving the living conditions of
the people.
As can be seen in all this, the
path for the masses of people who have awakened in Brazil is presenting
opportunities to fully grasp the link between
their situation and the imperialist system. It will be decisive for a group of
people to come to see in this upsurge the broader horizons of the struggle and
direct its aims towards a communist revolution striving for the emancipation of
all humanity.
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