I guess there’s some kind of riot? It’s on Reddit, but the links are in Spanish. So a journalist was arrested because of … vinegar? That can’t be right? And now hundreds of thousands of people are rioting? All around the country?
Clue me in, somebody.
I haven’t been paying much attention, but I thought it was about bus fares. And I think their economic bubble has burst.
From Wikipedia: 2013 protests in Brazil
It is basically a taxpayer revolt. The middle and lower classes have been hammered by inflation (the bus fare went up by 40%, food staples like rice and beans are up more than 300%. Dilma Roussef (Brazil President) is spending like a drunk on crack, and salaries have not increased.
The government just announced the bus fare increases have been rescinded.
We need a revolt like this in the USA.
No we don’t. :rolleyes:
Brazil has way different set of problems then we do.
It is interesting to see how these things are played differently in the media. From the Dutch news sources, the main story is ‘the people are in difficult times, while the state spends billions of dollars on investments for the upcomming World Cup and Olympics’. The link with these events is always there.
In addition to what polar bear said, Brazil is becoming very rich and powerful as a country, while the wealth has not yet trickled down to many of the poorer people. It looks to me like this is really starting to rub.
Corruption is still huge, though there have (from what I’ve heard) been efforts to reduce it.
Also, I’ve heard education mentioned in connection to the riots: basically Lula (pres before Dilma) started a huge programme to get kids in school. He created the “bolsa familia”, money for people with school-going kids, and kids got proper meals at schools. He also created lots of schools from nothing. The problem when you do that, in my experience there, is that if you stamp thousands of schools out of the ground you end up with shit schools. And I mean: shit. The teachers I knew couldn’t spell to save their lives, the kids had 1 hour of actual lessons a day. They learnt fuck all, because the school was plain crap. So it’s fantastic he started the programme, and he really did manage to get a lot of kids into schools, but a quality education system can’t be created overnight. And that’s just primary education. There was a great surge to get to where they are now, but they’re aren’t nearly done. And I guess that’s what people are saying: keep going, don’t sit back now thinking it’s fixed!
The same might be said for healthcare: there are free clinics almost everywhere, and they will help you. But you might have to wait hours, and your family usually needs to stay around and perform nursing duties.
The government has been doing a great job tackling the gangs in the favelas, but of course they have only been doing that to clean up because of the WC & Olympics. So how does that come across to people? You were actually able to solve this problem all along, you just couldn’t be bothered before?
Here is a blog by a guy who mentions about a million reasons for the protests, including LGBT rights, indigenous rights and environmentalism! (The blog is in Portuguese, but there a chrome extension that translates it automatically for you if you want.)
He says it’s all connected to the government respecting the people. And I get that. With Lula they started on a new path that really was about the people, and he made some spectacular changes. Now the limits of these changes are being felt, but also the government has found some new hobbies besides healthcare and education, such as looking cool internationally by organising big events. And people are saying: wait a minute, we were still working on fixing us, can we do that first before we start showing off? Because the talk, internationally, is all about how Brazil is growing, how powerful they are, BRIC and all that, but internally there are still a lot of problems. There is a discrepancy there.
There is also the matter of a road or two needing to be built to get everyone to the World Cup and/or Olympics. This will mean bulldozing a favela (slum) or two but nobody has described the route of such a road, so many favela-dwellers are living in a heightened state of anxiety.
I have family down there, and my Facebook feed is now full of political arguments from family and friends.
I think that a large part of it is that people are fed up with the status quo. Taxes are high and a chunk of that is on consumer goods. A car that costs $20,000 here, can cost $40,000 in Brazil. Even items such as clothing are quite a bit more expensive, and not just designer luxury brands but everyday items such as t-shirts and flip flops. Every relative I’ve had come to visit, has come with emptly suitcases and has loaded up not just on electronics like they used to, but also on clothing which is unusual. My cousin mentioned that he can’t buy dress shirts in Brazil for less than $60.00.
People are pissed about how much the government is spending on the Cup and the Olympics. They are also pissed about how much the tickets are costing, and they are questioning the need for building all these stadiums that aren’t going to be used. I think that they are also seeing that most of the profit from the Cup and the Olympics won’t be trickling down, but rather will go into the pockets of a few rich people.
Brazil’s twin curses are extensive corruption and an extensive bureaucracy, which probably go hand in had. Getting any kind of permit or doing anything with the bureaucracy is an exercise in frustration and since a lot of the workers are paid very little, they are looking for a handout to move the process along. When my dad got his license about 16 years ago, his office sent one of their runners with a bunch of chocolates for the DMV workers to “grease” things along. As a result, dad’s license was processed in a few weeks as opposed to months like other people we know. When I was trying to get my CPF, ( Their tax payer ID) assigned, the process took several months despite the fact that I was doing it up here with the consulate who are generally faster, and don’t need bribes.
One issue that has gotten attention is PEC37. This is a constitutional amendment to remove investigative powers from the Public Ministry and give sole investigative powers to the police. People fear that this will make it easier to cover up corruption.
From what I recall, there has been a public educational system but it has been crap for a long time. Since there was not much of a social network, the very poor needed their kids to work and couldn’t afford to send them to school. I think that the public schools may have had fees but they weren’t too high at lest compared to the private shools that my cousins went too. Most public school students had no chance of passing the vestibular which is what gets you into the universities most of which had been practically free.
If it’s anything like '92 in Spain: we were promised the Olympics and Expo would bring jobs, but then those jobs were mostly held by foreigners. This was back before everybody and his mom got tats; we went to see the works at the future Villa Olimpica and there were a lot of super-tattooed guys waiting outside, chatting in English (and I do mean a lot, eventually they were picked up by several buses). I asked them where were they from: New Zealand. Now, maybe they had some skill no tradesman in Spain did, but that sounds like one damn huge maybe! Everywhere you looked, any of the big construction work was being done by foreigners.
Meanwhile, our jobs kept going down, prices were going up, transportation was disrupted day in day out… and in Brazil, many of those things are likely to happen at a much bigger scale than they do here. All I know is that, having lived through the works leading to Barcelona 92, my feelings about Madrid’s candidacy are “hell no!”
Thanks gracer and Caffeine.addict for explaining what is going on from your perspectives. Question - does Brazil still have cheap fuel made from sugar cane? That is always held up as an example of energy independence.
Nava - I do always wonder when "jobs’ are promised for these types of events - the construction jobs are temporary, as are the event jobs, which can be filled easily and cheaply by hiring transitory workers. In the end, how many long-term local jobs are really created from hosting a big international event, I wonder?
They still use ethanol fuel, and while it is cheaper than gasoline in Brazil, it is still not cheap. Gas is taxed a bit more in Brazil than in the U.S. According to an website I just checked which gave me the prices from a gas station in Rio. Gas there is R 2.97 per liter so roughly $4.95 per gallon. Alcohol is R 1.98 per liter so roughly $3.29 per gallon. I recall when I was younger that ethanol had worse fuel economy but I think that there is less difference than before. Prices there seem to vary state to state so take this with a huge grain of salt.
I live in the states so I don’t have first hand knowledge of whats going on. All of my information is from family and friends down there.
Thanks for the info, peoples. I live in the states, too, and this is the first I’ve heard about any of this.
I wonder how much longer the Olympics are going to be able to inflict their special brand economic misery on unsuspecting countries …
I think that you’d have to be nuts to want to host an Olympics. You waste a bunch of money, and I don’t think that the economic benefits if any are worth it. I also don’t think that building massive sports arenas for professional teams is worth it for a city, but I am a minority opinion on that as well.
No prob, like Caffeine.addict, my facebook wall is plastered full of protesters politics. “YOUR PEPPER SPRAY IS ONLY SEASONING TO US!!” But also plenty of eloquent and reasoned arguments. Many have also asked me to tell people in other countries about what is going on, mainly to explain why they don’t want the WC and Olympics right now. Brazilians are such lovely hosts, and they worry that other countries won’t understand.
Basically, they keep saying “the Cup isn’t the actual problem”, it’s just one thing they are rallying around, as a symbol of the spending problem. They say the international media is focussing too much on that as the problem.
Caffeine.addict mentioned PEC37
[Sorry, posted half way through by accident!]
and I think a related issue is legislative immunity which (apparently?) extends further in Brazil than in other countries, bolstering opportunities for corruption.
Dilma spoke yesterday, saying she wants to listen to the leaders of the riots. Of course, there are no leaders to the one million people who took to the streets in different cities across that enormous country, so this, according to my facebook wall, is going to present a problem.
Construction jobs are always “temporary” in the sense that you have a job so long as whatever is being built. Working in construction has always been a matter of having one job then another then another; apprentice plumbers and apprentice bricklayers and apprentice electricians may have “permanent contracts”, but the master plumber, bricklayer or electrician? It’s always a job and then another and then another, and when you’re between jobs, you fix your mother’s shower or work on smaller jobs, such as home repairs for people who, not being related to you, actually pay.
And locals still would like to know why are foreigners being imported for jobs which a local can do. The public relations people at each booth in an expo? Sure, makes sense they’ll be from wherever the booth is. But the plumbers? The people selling tickets?
Plus you end up with a white elephant structure that goes to seed while the real estate underneath goes undeveloped.
Hello all,
I was planning on posting an “Ask the guy participating in the protests in Brazil” thread, but haven’t had time. Because of protesting 
Maybe soon.
I’m a foreign permanent resident in Rio de Janeiro.
To quickly summarise what’s going on: the protests started because of a hike in public transport prices in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. However, this was just the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
What’s actually going on is an economic slump - inflation is fairly high (in May, 6.5% over the previous 12-month period), yet economic growth is near zero. Inflation figures are manipulated by cherry-picking the products in the consumer price rise index - the price of milk has tripled since I arrived 3 1/2 years ago. So, inflation is far outstripping economic growth, and wage rises aren’t keeping up with inflation for most people. The famous economic growth over the Lula period is bullshit - it was a rise in GDP because of commodity exports to China (metals and such). Now China is importing less, and oil production isn’t really taking off because Brazilian oil fields are difficult and expensive to drill, plus there are very few refineries (and ones that were built recently went over budget and under target production - a long story involving Venezuela). Even domestically-produced goods built with tax breaks, such as cars, are absurdly expensive - for example, the cost of an entry-level piece of shit Gol (stripped-down VW not sold elsewhere because it’s built to be as cheap as possible) in Brazil is twice that of the same Gol shipped to Mexico and bought there, and the same as a Camaro in the US.
So, people are feeling they are getting poorer. Increased living standards are fueled by debt, which has skyrocketed, and is loaned at usurious rates. Recently a shop tried to sell me on a credit card with a more than 100% annual interest rate, not counting monthly fees.
If this was all, people would grit their teeth and bear it. But while this is happening, the public health system simply doesn’t work; politicians talk up the public health care system, but if you want health care, you effectively have to have private insurance - which, again, costs more than citizens can afford. My parents-in-law wouldn’t be able to pay the monthly premiums for the cheapest plan even with their entire salaries+pensions, and that’s without preexisting conditions. Other government services are almost as bad.
What then really tipped the scales is that the government is tossing absolutely absurd amounts of money on sports events - the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. The World Cup in Brazil will cost more than the last 3 Cups together. New stadiums are being built specifically for the Cup. The stadium in Brasília alone has cost well over a billion reais - that’s over a half billion dollars - but the existing stadium in Brasília doesn’t have more than 200 spectators on a good day. That’s far from the only example. So, building projects will effectively benefit noone except the contractors and middlemen - who have ties to the politicians. Supposed infrastructure developments haven’t happened - the infrastructure only gets worse.
Then there’s the endemic corruption - the recently-installed Senate president Renan Calheiros has been convicted of three crimes by the supreme court. Consequences? None. Ex-president Fernando Collor, impeached and removed from the presidency for corruption, is now a senator. The Lula government used party funds to, quite literally, pay a monthly bribe to huge numbers parliamentarians in exchange for supporting them in congress - the “Mensalão” scandal. The government then obstructed the subsequent investigation, and Supreme Court judges sat on the paperwork on purpose so that the vast majority of charges passed their statute of limitations. Consequences for the majority of criminals: none. Now the parliament is passing PEC37, a constitutional amendment to obstruct the investigation of crimes in government - legislating impunity. There’s also work on complete immunity & impunity from prosecution of sitting politicians.
Not to mention salaries. Base salary for a congressman is R$26,700 IIRC, plus an absurd number of benefits. Base salary for a teacher in Rio: R$870 IIRC, plus virtually no benefits. Comparative studies show that Brazilian politicians cost more than basically any other politicians in the world - more than 3 times that of Italy, well over 10 times that of Spain, for example.
So, for all these reasons, people are pissed. But the trigger? A rise in bus fares. In Rio, the governor’s father-in-law owns 30% of the buses/bus companies (I forget which). If this price rise was an economic necessity rather than a way of a politician lining the pockets of himself and his friends, I will eat my own ass.
As for what’s happening now - I was on the streets of Rio on Thursday. The protest was completely peaceful. The crowd was actively preventing activists from defacing monuments or damaging property. When they reached the police, the crowd was all chanting “no to violence”. The police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas - totally unprovoked. They continued firing tear gas at the retreating crowd, who were unable to get away - including myself. The violence has been started by police, and any vandalism after this is a response out of righteous anger. There’s also the certainty that some of the vandals are agents provocateur - paid by the government or police to raise havoc so that state repression will seem legitimate. There’s one video out there, for example, showing Rio police standing idly by and watching as a small group (a dozen or two) vandals damage a public building in front of them; can’t arrest your colleagues, doncha know.
This is the biggest uprising in recent Brazilian history, and I support it 100%. This time it may actually bring results.