June 2013 and the bankruptcy of the political system – 06/11/2023 – Camila Rocha

Even today, many people still don’t understand June 2013.

At the time, an interview with the then Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, Gilberto Carvalho, was announced with the following headline: “Dilma’s Minister Says He Still Doesn’t Understand Protests for Brazil”.

In the interview, held on June 18, when the sixth act organized by the Movimento Passe Livre took place, Carvalho stated that the acts were based on “new forms of mobilization organization that we still do not understand”.

Accustomed to dealing with what he classified as traditional demonstrations, equipped with sound cars and clear leadership, the minister could not understand how it was possible that acts could take place in any other way.

He pointed out that everyone in the government had been taken by surprise and, when trying to receive demonstrators who were protesting in Brasília, he was faced with the presence of only two people, a 21-year-old student, who had been attacked by a policeman, accompanied by her father.

In addition to decentralization and horizontality, the growing ideological ambiguity of the demonstrators as the protests stretched over time made the task of discerning what was being protested even more difficult.

The acts initiated by the Movimento Passe Livre on June 6 had a very clear agenda: zero fares on public transport. However, over time, the most diverse demands have been growing in the streets and digital networks.

On the 18th, for example, the same day that Carvalho gave his interview, the group Anonymous Brasil released a video entitled “The five causes” on social networks.

The video, which quickly reached 2 million views, demanded: “no to PEC 37”, “immediate departure of Renan Calheiros from the presidency of the National Congress”; “immediate investigation and punishment of irregularities in the World Cup works, by the Federal Police and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office”, “for a law that makes corruption a heinous crime” and “end of the privileged forum for politicians”.

On June 20, when more than 1 million people took to the streets in 388 Brazilian cities, a public opinion poll conducted by Ibope sought to map, after all, what the demonstrators wanted.

The survey revealed that the main motivation of 37.6% was related to public transport, among which 27.8% were in favor of reducing the fare.

Then, 29.9% of respondents said they were on the streets because of demands related to the political system, especially against corruption (24.2%).

The rest protested for improvements in health (12%), education (5.3%), against PEC 37 (5%), against World Cup spending (4.5%) and against police violence (1.3 %), among other reasons.

Thus, it is possible to conclude that, regardless of ideological color, the demonstrators gathered in June 2013 protested, in their large majority, for a deepening of rights provided for in the 1988 Constitution.

However, as Dilma Rousseff points out in the book “June 2013: The Phantom Rebellion”, they were faced with a bankrupt, undemocratic political system that “serves as a containment of popular sovereignty”.

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