Some years ago I was on the subway talking to a new co-worker from Egypt. When we learned that we both shared a passion for Politics, the topic changed to his and my impressions of the so-called Arab and Brazilian Springs (2011 and 2013). 

After we both gave our accounts, we came to the same conclusion: yeah, it didn’t really go the way people expected.

Of course, when I say “the way that people expected” it depends on the people you’re referring to. But let’s just say that the initial intent of those popular uprisings and the final results were very distant from each other.

I don’t have that much insight into the Arab Spring and what happened in Egypt, so I’ll stick with the Brazilian one since I was in the middle of it. I briefly described the beginnings of it in this post. I wrote that back in October 2013, four months into the events. It was a time full of hope, and we had no idea of what would come after. 

Well, this is what came after that.

The Aftermath

The protests that sparked the Brazilian Spring in June 2013 were triggered by the rise in bus fares in São Paulo. But in reality, they were only the catalyst for a feeling of disconnect between the politicians and the people that had been boiling over the decades.

During the whole month of June, tens of thousands of Brazilians went to the streets to protest in several cities across the country. It had been a long time since Brazil saw massive protests like that and the fear that things would get truly out of control made the political class spring into action.

In the aftermath of the protests, the Mayor of São Paulo went to the TV to say that he was revoking the raise. But the protests didn’t stop and in turn became more generic, demanding better access to education, health care and the end of corruption. Then the President went on to the TV to announce new resources for schools and hospitals. The Congress also started to approve anti-corruption bills.

People still wanted to continue protesting, but now there was an aimless feeling in the air – as if part of the population realized that they had the power to change things – but change into what?

I felt this energy very clearly on September 7th, Independence Day. I was working with the independent media to cover protests against police violence in downtown São Paulo when another group arrived to occupy the same space. This time they were asking for military intervention in the Congress. I started worrying that things would get tense when we heard a lot of whistles. It was the Deaf Association protesting because the president didn’t translate her last announcement into sign language.

This was the general vibe of São Paulo at the time. A lot of new movements (both on the left and the right) started to emerge, and I decided to join the fight against police violence. Having just seen what the police could do to middle-class journalists on the streets I started to learn what the police would do to poor people in the favelas – and this could be the topic for a whole other blog.

The anti-corruption rallies

Another big topic on the streets was corruption. Brazil has always struggled with a political class that takes more than it gives and there’s the generalized sense that no public work gets done without someone receiving a bribe.

So this sentiment wasn’t new, but over the past years, with cases like the Mensalão gaining a lot of attention in the media, the population started to link corruption with the Worker Party itself. The leftist party had won the last 3 presidential elections and it’s needleless to say that the right was very unhappy with 12 years on the sidelines. So a lot of sectors started to encourage this view that the Worker Party was the source of all corruption.

Then came the 2014 presidential election. On one side you had Dilma Rousseff, from the Worker Party, running for re-election. On the other, you had Aécio Neves, a former governor from the right. 

It was one of the first times I saw polarization dominate the country and witnessed friends and family members fighting over politics. Dilma won by a slight margin, only 3 million votes more. I think there was a real sense for people on the right that the Worker Party would lose in the ballots this time.

When the result was announced, the new movements that were formed on the right continued with the rallies against corruption, but now with a new goal: Impeachment. In March 2016 protesters gathered 500,000 people in São Paulo alone, dressed in the yellow jersey of the national soccer team and asking for the impeachment of the Worker Party to rid the country of corruption.

As someone who both always voted for the left and also took part in the movement to propose new anti-corruption bills, my stomach was in knots. Because I knew we could accomplish so much if we actually had half a million people protesting on the streets to end corruption. We could force Congress to pass new bills, such as the one that ended privileges for politicians, or tougher punishment for corruption crimes. 

But instead, the population decided to focus on toppling the president, as if that would change the whole system. Of course, there were special interests and even funding for locking the fight against corruption in a single party. If I were a corrupt politician and the population started to revolt in mass against corruption, my best bet would be to pin it on someone else’s party. I not only get to hurt my opponents but I avoid having to pass bills that would prevent me from stealing more. They could not ask for anything better.

A Congressman from Rio

So a lot of politicians became very vocal in this fight against corruption and the Worker Party. The loudest of them was a Congressmen from Rio, named Jair Bolsonaro. He would often be seen on TV squabbling with leftist politicians, especially the members of the LGBT community. He didn’t measure words, he didn’t try to make concessions, he didn’t try to be diplomatic. He would just shout whatever insult would come to mind, the more shocking the better.

And the people, who were tired of the traditional politics that always led nowhere, who rejected party flags in the rallies, who wanted for once a tough punishment for a political class enriched with the money of the people, well, they loved it. Bolsonaro seemed to be not only an anti-establishment politician, but also radically opposed to whatever the Worker Party seemed to embrace, including civil rights.

There was one moment in the impeachment process that really defined Bolsonaro for me. It was during the final vote in the lower chamber. Each congressman had to openly declare their vote, and many of them were using those few seconds to dedicate it to an important cause (God) or a loved one (their granddaughters or family). 

Bolsonaro dedicated the vote to Colonel Carlos Brilhante Ustra.

During the dictatorship period in Brazil, Ustra was head of the Department of Operations and Information, the unit responsible for most of the torture and assassinations that happened in those years. The president being impeached, Dilma Rousseff, was a survivor of those times, having endured torture sessions when she was 19. It was believed by some that Ustra physically tortured Dilma himself. 

Bolsonaro knew this. So much so that stated: [This is] ”in memory of Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dread of Dilma Rousseff!”

The president was impeached at the end of 2016, and Bolsonaro started to gain more and more projection. The right and far-right wing movements that had sprouted in June 2013 had now gained national traction after the feat that was the impeachment. They embraced Bolsonaro as their sacred option against the Worker Party’s evils.

In October of 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president.

Conclusion

So this is how a popular uprising from left-wing student organizations on June 13th, 2013 set the chain of events that would elect one of the most aggressively conservative politicians the country has seen. Of course, Bolsonaro didn’t get elected because people protested over the bus fares, but this was the catalyst event that led to a change in the political scene in Brazil and created the conditions for impeachment and the election of an anti-woke-establishment populist.

I’ve seen people on the left say that what started as legitimized popular revindication (when they protested for cheaper transportation) was co-opted and used by the right-wing political forces to overthrow the left by any means (when they protested for impeachment). But I think this is a simplistic analysis. I do think there was some dose of political manipulation, but the feeling of dissatisfaction in a country in which nothing seems to work is legit. And the discontent with the old politics is a phenomenon happening all over the world.

People on the left have this romantic idea of who “the people” are. As if any spontaneous popular protest will always fight for the fair and just. Well, the people asking for the impeachment of the Worker Party are also “the people”. Even the people asking for military autocratic intervention are also “the people”. 

Maybe that’s just how things are, and a lunatic in power is what we get when “the people” take charge.