Transport fares in Brazil’s large cities are among the highest in the world, and have some of the lowest subsidies (Folha 2015). Each time fares are increased, exclusion and urban inequality are aggravated, leading to numerous protests that have marked the history of Brazil’s cities. To cite a few examples, in 1879 there was a revolt in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the then capital of the Brazilian Empire as it was known, in protest against an increase in the tram fare. The 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.
One of the materials used as part of the activities organized in schools was Carlos Pronzato’s film about the Buzú revolt in Salvador.6 That particular revolt became a source of inspiration for the militants in two ways. First, it demonstrated the importance of public transport in Brazilian cities and its ability to mobilize people. The revolt was a process that involved the large-scale participation of students from the working classes and brought the city to a complete standstill for ten days. Second, the revolt showed the importance of having a strong organization committed to the cause and to achieving its demands, something that was not a feature of the revolt in Salvador and which, therefore, contributed to its lack of success. This revolt in Salvador, in which the population did not manage to overturn the fare increase (although they did achieve some benefits for students), ended when groups of students who had not taken part in the protests, and were alien to the demands from the streets, met with public authorities to bring the protests to an end by negotiating concessions. They announced the cessation of the mobilization, thereby undermining its legitimacy, and began actively taking steps to demobilize the movement. Critical assessments by those involved in the revolt centred on the lack of any organization with commitment to the struggle, in other words, the lack of any autonomous social movement steadfast to its cause.
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.
It was in this specific historical context of the struggle for right to public transportation and the awareness of the importance of constructing an independent organization for this, that in January 2005, after an invitation from Florianópolis, militants and groups from 29 cities7 met at the Caracol Intergaláctico 8 to demand the introduction of the free fare and to oppose fare increases (Figure 2.1). They founded the MPL. So, just as the Florianópolis Campaign linked together a series of groups and organizations, the MPL too was made up of various groups of people with distinct political views. Within the principles of independence, horizontal organization, and non-partisanship, the emergence of the MPL sought to create an autonomous movement to fight for public transport.
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 organizational form of the MPL is not hegemonic within the Brazilian left. In fact, the existence of independent, horizontal, and non-partisan movements is nothing new. The MPL was born in the context of the surge of anti-capitalist movements that opposed economic globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, notably the Zapatista uprising in Mexico and the protests in Seattle, which had a significant impact on the left, principally in organizations that sought to strengthen social struggles beyond the State, and included a series of autonomist and organized anarchist groups. Many of those who joined the MPL took part in the Encontro de Grupos Autônomos (Meeting of Autonomous Groups), which was held in São Paulo in 2004 and brought together 53 groups from different Brazilian states. The aim of this meeting was to unite groups and individuals from all over Brazil who were participating in the anti-capitalist struggle in an autonomous and horizontal way so that they might exchange ideas and experiences. Although the groups knew of each other’s existence, they had no physical forum in which to meet. It was agreed that such a forum was important in order to oppose the notion that political action was restricted to political parties or bureaucratic, hierarchical organizations. This meeting took place in the year that the Área de Livre Comércio das Américas (Free Trade Area of the Americas, ALCA), which these groups opposed, was scheduled to be established and some participants actively
