Manifesting Democracy?. Группа авторов

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Название Manifesting Democracy?
Автор произведения Группа авторов
Жанр География
Серия
Издательство География
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119331247



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Revolta do Vintém (the Tram Revolt), as it was dubbed, was victorious. After eight days of protests, the population forced authorities to cancel the fare increase.5 In 1947, 30% of the entire fleet of trams in the city of São Paulo were rendered useless due to protests against a fare increase – this was the first of many well-known, recurrent demonstrations, which today are a constant feature on the routes of the São Paulo Metropolitan Train Company (Companhia Paulista de Trens Metropolitanos, CPTM) when there are breakdowns and when the system grinds to a halt. Even during the military dictatorship, between 1964 and 1988, the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (National Liberation Alliance, ANL), an urban guerrilla movement, set fire to buses as a political act protesting the increase in public transport fares. And, prior to June 2013, Florianópolis, Vitória, Natal, Goiânia, Porto Velho, Teresina, Porto Alegre, and Brasilia all witnessed large-scale organized demonstrations against public transport price rises; at the beginning of this century they succeeded in freezing fares.

      The Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement, MPL), the key social movement that organized the demonstrations of June 2013, is linked to this history of urban struggle over public transportation. There are two specific moments that were important for the movement’s appearance: the Revolta do Buzú (the Buzú Revolt) and the Revoltas da catraca (Turnstile Revolts). The Buzú revolt took place in 2003 between August and September in Salvador, when thousands of people, mainly high school students, took to the streets to protest against the increase in bus fares in the state capital of Bahia, although they did not succeed in overturning it. The Turnstile revolt occurred in Florianópolis in 2004 and 2005. It involved thousands of people who were successful in reversing fare increases over two consecutive years. These particular demonstrations in Florianópolis were precipitated by the city’s Campahna pelo passe livre or Free Fare Campaign. This campaign was initially launched in 2000 by the group Juventude revolução (Revolution Youth) – then linked to the O trabalho (Labour) group within the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT) – after a referendum in the city’s schools. From options that included political causes related to drugs, access to cultural facilities, and more, the city’s students chose to fight for free transport and embarked upon an intense process of organization around that cause.

      At the turn of 2002–2003, the Revolution Youth broke ranks with the PT and became the Juventude Revolucionária Independente (Independent Revolutionary Youth). This split coincided with the formation of closer links with anarchists who acted in collectives such as Rádio de Tróia – a free radio based at the Federal University of Santa Catarina – and, notably, the Independent Media Centre (also known as Indymedia), as well as the Centro de Mídia Independente. In addition to helping to publicize their actions and create several collectives organized around the free-fare agenda across the country, these links were fundamental to the organizational structure that the MPL would adopt. Founded on principles such as a decision-making process based on open meetings, the Florianópolis Campaign soon attracted followers from a wide political spectrum, which resulted in a variety of different groups and tendencies that willingly gathered and were unified in a common goal: free fares on public transport.

      These historical revolts against the fare increases and the failings of a faulty transport system show that the free fare battle is not a stunt that emerged in the 2000s. Indeed, in March 1990, just two years after the demise of the military dictatorship in Brazil, student demonstrations successfully secured a free student pass for high school students in Rio de Janeiro (Botelho 2009). Throughout Brazil countless mobilizing committees and campaigns for free transport were established, many of them initially linked to left-wing political parties. These saw the free-fare cause as an effective way of gathering the young, given the importance of public transport to their urban life.

      Figure 2.1 Demonstrations on the National Day of Struggle for the Free Fare. São Paulo, October, 2005. Source: Reproduced by permission of Douglas Belome.

      The role played by the Peoples’ Global Action Network (PGA), an association which brought together different groups locally and globally, was also significant, as was the Independent Media Centre. Both were fundamental for their influence on the organizational model, and also with regard to publicizing activities and communicating with social movements, at a national and international level, at a time when social networks did not exist