The protests are small and I hope the rest of the world is
not disappointed. There are many contradictory forces that have kept the middle
class protesters of 2013 off the streets. I’ll try to put a bit of perspective
on them here before trying to get a plane to the waterpark of Natal for USA x
Ghana.
Police violence. The police are under very clear
instructions to tolerate nothing and to react with maximum force. We saw this
on the opening day in São Paulo and it was repeated again last night in Rio. A
group of 200+ protesters was met with twice as many police, helicopters, dogs,
mounted police and live ammunition. The videos are frightening. There is
nothing more likely to keep disenchanted middle-class people off the street
(and to keep their kids at home) than the imminent threat of injury.
It´s the World Cup. We´re all on holiday, there is a party
raging and Brazilians are very hospitable. As with everyone else, Brazilians
have been waiting for the World Cup for four years and despite the corporate
sabotage of FIFA and the Brazilian elites, it´s still the World Cup. Brazilians
want to enjoy what will certainly be the last World Cup in South America for
many years. While the distance between the World Cup as culture and World Cup
as corporate spectacle has never been greater, it is important to reclaim the
former and to being the process of re-appropriating football as the people´s
game.
The media. OBobo controls the tv, internet, and print media
to such a degree that the counter-narratives to the World Cup are very
difficult to find. Brazil is still very much a visual and oral culture and the
critical media presence is limited to a few programs and newspapers. When such
a powerful media force drives the discursive framing of the event, it keeps
public opinion moving in the direction they want.
There is a lot of protesting to come. The social movements
behind the protests in 2013 have a long road ahead. When the police are out in
such force and with such a mandate to repress, it doesn´t make too much sense
to go out with the same message. The politicians won´t be listening until after
the Cup, if then. The years of protest have had some positive results, but
there are times to get the message out louder and more forcefully and it
doesn´t make sense to try to compete with the circus.
Tiredness and the existential condition of the left.
Combined with all of the above, it would appear that a certain organizational
fatigue has set in amongst some of the social movements. The big gatherings end
up being organized by a handful of people, time after time, and that gets quite
tiring. In the face of the Cup, the typical organizational practices yield less
and it appears that everything is more difficult than normal. Added to this is the
slight ridiculousness of saying “Não Vai Ter Copa!” when the ball is rolling.
Add the traditional fragmentation of leftist movements and the difficult of
putting together a unified front and a clear message and the protests are
smaller and smaller.
While it is dispiriting to see that the protests are so
small, it is important to check one´s disappointment against the perspective
one is bringing. Just because there were massive protests last year and smaller
ones this year does not diminish the value of what happened or signify that
Brazilians are no longer furious with the state of the country.
We are seeing that the fires of discontent are still very
much alive but that the forces of the state, capital and the pull of the circus
are keeping the flame on a lower burn. Those who are out on the streets are
further to the left or right of the political spectrum than those who were out
last year and are risking their lives for the right to confront the spectacle.
