Manifesting Democracy?. Группа авторов

in Brazil is R$880.00. According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – IBGE), 27.5% of Brazilians with an income earn up to one minimum wage, in other words, 44,484,811 people. Working five days a week, workers end up spending R$260.48 per month, only taking into consideration their commute from home to the workplace and back.

      4 4 Casacata and Leonel Azevedo (1937/1938). ‘Não pago o bonde’. This carnival song can be listened to in full at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vcw-Ne-M0E.

      5 5 For a description of the events that took place during the Revolt of the Vintém (the Tram Revolt) see, for example, Jesus, R.P. (2006). A Revolta do Vintém e a Crise na Monarquia. História Social, Campinas, 12: 73–89.

      6 6 The documentary by Carlos Pronzato, Revolt of the Buzú (The Bus Revolt), can be viewed in full at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQASaJ3WgTA. The documentary features press coverage of the protests, meetings with the public authorities, interviews with demonstrators and representatives of the State, dissension and disputes involved, and, principally, a series of images of the street protests.

      7 7 1. Aracaju (Sergipe); 2. Araraquara (São Paulo); 3. Belém (Pará); 4. Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais); 5. Campinas (São Paulo); 6. Campo Grande (Mato Grosso do Sul); 7. Carapicuíba (São Paulo); 8. Curitiba (Paraná); 9. The Federal District (Brasilia); 10. Florianópolis (Santa Catarina); 11. Fortaleza (Ceará); 12. Goiânia (Goiás); 13. Guarulhos (São Paulo); 14. Itu (São Paulo); 15. Londrina (Paraná); 16. Maceió (Alagoas); 17. Mauá (São Paulo); 18. Nova Iguaçu (Rio de Janeiro); 19. Osasco (São Paulo); 20. Palmas (Tocantins); 21. Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul); 22. Rio Grande (Rio Grande do Sul); 23. Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro); 24. Salvador (Bahia); 25. Santos (São Paulo); 26. São Luis (Maranhão); 27. São Paulo (São Paulo); 28. Sorocaba (São Paulo); 29. Tubarão (Santa Catarina). See Camarada, D. (2005). Plenária avança a construção do Movimento pelo Passe-Livre. O independente, Jornal do CMI Floripa, Florianópolis, 3: 3.

      8 8 The Caracol took place in parallel to the World Social Forum and was organized by autonomist groups close to the Argentine piqueteros and the Mexican zapatistas.

      9 9 The Free Trade Area of the Americas was a free trade agreement proposed in 1994 by President George W. Bush between the United States and 34 countries in North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean. The exception being Cuba. Although the countries worked on it for a decade, it was never finalized.

      10 10 In 2005 the MPLP organized a seminar where one of the invited guests was the municipal transport secretary during the administration of Mayor Erundina (1989–1992), Lúcio Gregori. This was a fundamental meeting for the movement to extend its demand from a free student pass to free public transport for the entire population. We should remember that Luiza Erundina’s municipal administration, then a member of the PT, presented a bill to the council chamber of the municipality of São Paulo in 1990 to create a municipal transport fund to cover the cost of Fare Free Public Transport. The bill met with resistance from the council chamber and from within the PT itself, and was not voted in. However, a Fare Free pilot project was implemented in the district of Cidade Tiradentes and the bill to place public transport under municipal control, which proposed the transport system be managed by public authorities and a change in the way contracted companies were paid, was approved by the chamber.

      11 11 The words of José Luiz Datena, presenter on the TV programme Brasil Urgente, delivered live during a public opinion poll on 13 June 2013.

      12 12 In São Paulo the municipal administration is responsible for public transport by bus and the State administration for public transport by train and metro, via the Metrô and CPTM companies. The centrality of buses in São Paulo, to the detriment of rail transport, is the result of years of lack of investment on the part of the PSDB, the party that has governed the State of São Paulo since 1995.

      13 13 Brazil experienced one of the largest waves of strikes in world history in the 1980s, which began with the metal workers strikes of 1978 (the movements that brought Lula to prominence, and subsequently helped him become one of the most important leaders of the PT, founded in 1982, and president of Brazil between 2003 and 2010). This large-scale mobilization process provided not only the basis for the formation of the PT, but also secured a series of extremely important workers’ rights during Brazil’s re-democratization process (such as unemployment benefit and a 44-hour working week, enshrined in the 1988 constitution). Whereas many countries in the world had already entered a process of deepening social inequalities, with the adoption of neo-liberal policies, Brazil was moving in the opposite direction in the midst of the rise of the workers’ movement. The growth in unemployment and the stabilization of the currency caused by neoliberal policies in Brazil in the 1990s led to a lull in strike action. After June 2013 the country again witnessed a huge growth in this type of workers’ political activity, with strikes that caused major upset in big cities, such as those held by refuse collectors in Rio de Janeiro (2014), those involving bus drivers and metro workers in São Paulo (both in 2014), to cite just a few important examples. The number of strikers is still not comparable with that of the major industrial strikes of the 1980s, but the estimates of the Inter-Union Department for Socioeconomic Studies and Statistics (Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos – DIEESE) already indicate that the number of strikes since 2014 has reached the same level. For more see Noronha, E.G., Gebrin, V., and Elias, J., Jr. (1998). Explicações para um ciclo excepcional de greves: o caso brasileiro. Chicago: Latin American Studies Association (LASA). http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LASA98/GarutiNoronha-Gebrine-Elias.pdf.

      References

      1 Botelho, M. (2009). Participação Juvenil na conquista do passe livre na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. In: Protagonismo da Juventude Brasileira: Teoria e Memória (ed. B. Espindula), 92–102. São Paulo: Instituto Arte Cidadania e Centro de Estudos e Memória da Juventude.

      2 Folha de São Paulo (2013a). Retomar a Paulista. Folha de São Paulo, 13 June 2013, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/opiniao/2013/06/1294185-editorial-retomar-a-paulista.shtml (accessed on 1 August 2016).

      3 Folha de São Paulo (2013b). Haddad defende ação da PM para tirar protestos de vias. Folha de São Paulo, 10 June 2013, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2013/06/1292474-haddad-defende-acao-da-pm-para-retirar-protestos-de-vias-em-sp.shtml (accessed 1 August 2016).

      4 Folha de São Paulo (2015). Tarifa de ônibus em SP e Rio está entre as mais caras do mundo, diz estudo. Folha de São Paulo, 16 January, https://m.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2015/01/1575811-tarifa-de-onibus-em-sp-e-rio-esta-entre-as-mais-caras-do-mundo-diz-estudo.shtml (accessed 1 August 2016).

      5 GI (2012). Gasto de famílias com transporte quase iguala alimentação, diz IBGE. GI, 14 September, http://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/2012/09/gasto-de-familias-com-transporte-quase-iguala-alimentacao-diz-ibge.html