Black blocs are isolated and submerged after the 2013 peak – 06/11/2023 – Politics

The appearance of masked youths looting stores, banks and vehicles during protests against the increase in public transport fares in São Paulo surprised the police and divided demonstrators in June 2013.

Supporters of the black bloc tactic replicated a behavior that had been happening for decades in protests in Europe, where the targets of vandalism were symbols of capitalism, such as banks. In Brazil, they are also available for parked vehicles and small businesses. In some cases, police officers were injured.

This type of action ended up leading to a violent reaction by the Military Police of São Paulo, in a game of cat and mouse that lasted for the following years in demonstrations against the World Cup, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and the departure of Michel Temer (MDB) of the Presidency.

The groups were the target of investigations and lawsuits in several states of the country, but, in most cases, they ended up without punishment or with mild sentences. Isolated by sectors of the left, this type of practice ended up losing strength in recent years.

“Black bloc is a form of protest, but not an organized group”, says sociologist Esther Solano.

“In 2013, they were young people of different profiles, from different places in the city, who did not have a cohesive, centralized organization, but who joined in demonstrations with the aim of protesting with the depredation of heritage with the aesthetics of the mask, which has to do with the idea of ​​anonymity,” she says.

Solano is co-author of the book “Masked: The True Story of Black Bloc Tactics Supporters” (Editorial Generation, 2014), with Bruno Paes Manso and Willian Novaes.

One of the episodes that helped to define the June Days was the attacks made by demonstrators, some of them masked, against military police officer Wanderley Vignoli. The agent had tried to stop graffiti near Praça da Sé, in the center of São Paulo, and ended up being attacked with stones and hearing shouts of “kill, lynch”.

The image of the injured MP is seen as a factor that helped to drive the violent reaction of the police in the following protests.

Unlike this emblematic case, most of the time the action of the black bloc tactic supporters took place at the end of the protests, when groups of young people covered their faces and went out smashing windows.

While this group of protesters threw objects like stones and bottles, the PM used rubber bullets and gas bombs to repress the protest – in this case, it was also left to those who demonstrated peacefully, journalists and even people passing through the streets.

The acts continued even after the ticket increase was reversed. In October 2013, in one of them, Colonel Reynaldo Simões was attacked by about ten people and his weapon was stolen.

Student of international relations, Paulo Henrique dos Santos, then 24 years old, was denounced by the Public Ministry in January 2015 accused of trying to kill the colonel. His defense claimed that he was at the demonstration, but did not attack the police and that there was no image to prove the accusation.

With no evidence of the accusation, the TJ-SP (São Paulo Court of Justice) ended up extinguishing the process, in a scenario that was repeated with several other suspects in 2013 and in the following years in São Paulo.

In 2016, after around 300 testimonies, the main investigation into the destruction tactics of the black blocs during the 2013 and 2014 demonstrations in São Paulo was concluded without a single indictment.

Other specific cases even advanced in court. In July 2015, in São Paulo, driver João Antonio Roza was the first supporter of the tactic convicted in the first instance of criminal association. The one-year prison sentence was converted into community service.

In 2017, Justice condemned Pierre Ramon Alves de Oliveira to pay BRL 100,000 to the City Hall of São Paulo, for vandalism. He became known when protesters surrounded the headquarters of the São Paulo administration and he was filmed attacking the gate repeatedly with a metal grid.

Most, however, ended up acquitted, like two accused of attacking PM Wanderley Vignoli.

Protesters Fábio Hideki Harano and Rafael Marques Lusvarghi were arrested for 45 days accused of possessing explosives in protests against the World Cup in 2014. But the artifacts were not explosives, as the report found, and they ended up acquitted.

People close to Harano claimed he was a peaceful protester, and his defense said he was assaulted by police.

Lusvarghi, on the other hand, is perhaps the most notorious protester identified as a black bloc, with a cinematic history full of twists and turns.

After 2014, he fought in Ukraine alongside separatist forces linked to Russia and was arrested there. In 2021, he was arrested again, this time for illegal possession of ammunition and drug trafficking.

In Rio de Janeiro, more than two dozen protesters have been convicted and are appealing.

Among them are also Caio Silva de Souza and Fábio Raposo, who respond freely for the death in 2014 of cameraman Santiago Andrade, from Bandeirantes, hit by a rocket. The popular jury in the case was scheduled for December.

Journalist and researcher at the Center for the Study of Violence at USP, Bruno Paes Manso assesses that the black bloc tactic underwent a process of delegitimization after a peak in 2013.

In the June demonstrations, he says, supporters of the strategy sent the message that violence could produce political results.

With the decrease in the increase in tickets, the acts started to receive less politicized supporters of the black bloc tactic who use violence as an end in itself, in protests with the most varied claims.

As a result, assesses Paes Manso, the strategy loses legitimacy.

Added to this is her rejection by movements such as the MTST (Movement of Homeless Workers), which veto depredations in their acts because they see violence as counterproductive. Also weighing, says the researcher, are the suspicions of police officers infiltrating the black blocs.

The coordinator of the Popular Movements Center, Raimundo Bonfim, who has organized several left-wing protests in recent years, says that avoiding depredations is a constant apprehension.

“We were always concerned that there was no provocation on our part, as a democratic and popular demonstration. Including, not to make a pretext for the police to repress the acts”, he says, who stated that the appeals were made by sound trucks and also personally.

In 2021, in a major left-wing act on September 7 against then-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), the organization decided that the demonstration would be static to avoid depredations.

“When we noticed a group, we would touch them, prevent them from getting close to the police”, says Bonfim, recalling one of the big events on Avenida Paulista in which they organized a commission to go in front of the sound car and managed to contain acts of vandalism.

Researcher Bruno Paes Manso also points out that, after losing legitimacy on the left, the practice of using depredations ended up being used by another political spectrum.

“The most ironic thing is that the black bloc tactic is now being hijacked by the coup-mongering right”, he says, citing the blockades of roads by truck drivers and Bolsonarists and the acts of January 8.