In the days that followed, the corporate media collectively began to construct a new narrative. They began differentiating between peaceful demonstrators and a minority group of vandal infiltrators who were distorting the aim of the protests (Figure 2.4). This discourse criminalizing the mobilization intended to frighten the population, and to make it therefore turn its back on the demonstrations. Fewer questions were asked about the demand for the fare reduction or the ‘unrealistic nature’ of a zero fare. What was deemed ‘impossible’ from then on was that thousands of people would take to the streets simply because of 20 cents. The attempt to deconstruct the agenda of the fare reduction principally took the form of an insertion of a series of generic and abstract demands. As a headline in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper on 18 June 2013 stated, ‘Thousands take to the streets “against everything,”’ and placards subsequently announced that protests were not just about 20 cents. The media thus sought to dilute the conflict and its specific causes; since generic causes do not have agents and targets, they involve no-one.
Figure 2.4 Demonstration against the fare increase, São Paulo, June 2013. Source: Reproduced by permission of Luiza Calagian.
The MPL’s proposed debate regarding transport proved to be unpalatable. The fight against corruption and for quality health and education, subjects always mentioned by candidates running for political office in Brazil without any concrete proposals, were very welcome by those who wanted nothing to change. By bringing the fare increase to the fore, the MPL raised the issue of the profits of private companies, the use of public money to maintain these profits, tax reforms to subsidize people’s rights, social inequality, and access to the city. In other words, they raised disturbing subjects for Brazil’s political and economic elite. Saying that the protests were not ‘just about 20 cents’ obscured just how much the transport fare prevents a major part of the working class from having the right to move around the city and, thus, to access other rights.
The efforts to bury the transport issue can also be understood as an attempt to hide the MPL movement itself and its popular organization. The slogan ‘the giant has awoken,’ much repeated at the time, implied the awakening of the population, as if countless people had not been organizing for years, as if Brazil did not have countless examples of popular organizations and revolts, as if June 2013 was an aberration. The discourse of spontaneity, of a revolt in reaction to everything, ignored the daily efforts of organizations that have clear goals and are linked to different traditions and histories of social struggle regarding the right to transportation.
Alongside this narrative shift, there was a surge of protests throughout the country. The radical escalation of events that followed the demonstration of 13 June was attributed by the press and intellectuals to excessive police violence. The disproportionate repression was said to have harnessed the general population’s support for the demonstrators, which would explain the increase in the protests and the victory that was to ensue. This interpretation overlooks the fact that historically social movements are repressed, that the police in Brazil always deal violently with protests, and that, rather than boosting activism, the police action suffocates it. Once again the narrative shift obfuscated the existence and historical experience of popular organizations and their role in forging social activism, just as it concealed the problem of transport costs, which exclude people from taking part in the city. The question is, therefore, how to understand the growth of the protests in spite of the repression that took place?
It is also necessary to understand the local political context in which these demonstrations took place in São Paulo (see Chapter 3). With the PT at the head of city hall, organizations, social movements, and a section of the population hoped that there would be greater opportunities to discuss and revoke the fare increase. Here, the PT city councillors’ opposition to the 2011 fare increase during Gilberto Kassab’s administration (2006–2012), as well as Haddad’s campaign to be São Paulo’s mayor in which he declared himself as a candidate more open to popular demands was still fresh in people’s memory. However, what was witnessed in 2013, instead, was Haddad as an intransigent mayor who, on the very same day he was obliged to reduce the fare, standing beside Governor Geraldo Alckmin, who made the announcement about overturning the fair increase, had stated to the press that very morning that he would not back down.
Another factor to bear in mind is that due to the centrality of bus travel in São Paulo, the bus fare increase sparked the indignation of the population.12 Taking advantage of this indignation, the press, which to this day continues to situate itself in opposition to the PT and in favour of more right-wing administrations, gave greater visibility to the 2013 protests. They compared them to the struggles against fare rises in previous years expecting that they would weaken Haddad’s administration, whilst not offering significant popular support to precipitate the fare’s actual reduction. But, the fare was brought down.
The legacy of the events of June 2013 continues to be disputed. Some try to strip the protests of their meaning in terms of conflict and confrontation, whereas others attempt to deny them their popular meaning. The PT condemns the June protests for having brought the right wing onto the streets, for letting them out of the closet. Undoubtedly, Brazil witnessed a subsequent large-scale mobilization of the right, which has only strengthened since. But we should ask ourselves whether that uprising is a continuation of the June 2013 protests, or a response to the popular mobilization that threatened the elite’s privileges, demanding a right to the city? If we look back over recent history, we see that the dominant classes have never silently accepted any kind of initiative on the part of their subordinates. The PT’s argument reveals little more than the belief that there is no left beyond their own party so that any movements that are not organized by them, must be right-wing movements. In the PT’s view, social movements must be satisfied with the policy of what’s ‘possible,’ in what they propose, based on what is supposed to be class conciliation. They do not accept the criticism that they have adopted the elite’s agenda and have been defeated within it.
Anyone who happened to be in São Paulo in June 2013 would have realized that the main topic on everyone’s lips was public transport. Inside buses, trains, offices, factories, bars, restaurants, and shops, people were talking about the fare increase and about something that had previously been unimaginable: free public transport. The general diffusion of this demand, combined with the generalized demonstrations throughout the city, forced those who had continually stated it was impossible to revoke the increase to do precisely that. Significant victories were obtained without the support of any of the country’s traditional institutional political forces: the reduction in fares in over 100 cities over the country, the inclusion within the constitution of transport as a social right, policies to prioritize collective transport (like exclusive bus lanes, and more funding for the construction of metros, trains, and bus routes), the school pass in São Paulo, and an enormous gain in the public debate around the subject of transport, opened up the possibility of free transport in people’s minds and its effective implementation.
It is important to note that these tangible gains are policies in the popular classes’ interest, and that they reduce urban exclusion. So while the right wing intensified its activities after the presidential elections of October 2014, the left wing and social movements have nevertheless grown a great deal since the reduction in the transport fares. To give a few examples, the housing movement, and the indigenous movement to regain their lands, have grown stronger. Public schools have been occupied by high school students opposed to the closure of schools and budget cuts in education, and strikes have broken out in Brazil, hitting numbers not seen since the 1980s.13 As well as achieving concrete policies, the June 2013 revolts reconstructed an important memory, that only struggle changes peoples’ lives.
