June 2013: Are later crises to blame for the protests? – 06/03/2023 – Celso Rocha de Barros

This week we will celebrate ten years since the beginning of the demonstrations in June 2013. Since the protests, Brazilian democracy has gone through a huge crisis, amending Lava Jato, impeachment and Bolsonaro. Was it June’s fault?

It is good to be clear: the Movimento Passe Livre did not force Dilma Rousseff to mess up the budget to be elected in 2014. No black bloc forced the right to impeach the 2016 impeachment. Moro and Dallagnol did not tamper with Lula’s trial at the request of militant Sininho. It was not Mídia Ninja that elected Bolsonaro.

Whatever the faults of this whole gang, Dilma could have preserved the public accounts in her first term. That certainly would have cost him the loss in 2014, but losing is part of the game. The right could have waited 2018 to win the Presidency. There was some risk of not winning, but again: it’s in the game. And even if all that had gone wrong, the 2018 outsider need not have been a fascist who loved Ustra and hated vaccines.

On the other hand, in 2013, a feeling against the institutional policy exploded, which certainly influenced the way we dealt with Lava Jato and, after hope turned to despair, we elected Bolsonaro.

Why weren’t we able to manage this feeling of dissatisfaction better? Maybe it was really difficult.

In “Three – The Street Policy from Lula to Dilma”, recently released by Companhia das Letras, the sociologist and columnist of Sheet Angela Alonso argues that there was a lack of dialogue with the right-wing street in 2013.

Alonso points out that right-wing protests had grown in the previous ten years, and were already there in early June. The right on the street would have been “the blind spot” and “the vanishing point” of 2013. The Dilma government would have been unable to understand these protesters and call them into dialogue to isolate them from the extremists.

Would the street on the right have accepted this dialogue?

What is notable is that no one on the left profited politically from 2013. The autonomists and anarchists, as you would expect, did not invest in building parties or large organizations. The small leftist parties that helped organize the 2013 protests, such as PSOL and PSTU, did not gain many votes for this. As the right-wing street grew, the PT became increasingly critical of the Jornadas de Junho.

Marina Silva’s Sustainability Network was perhaps the political force that most tried to summarize 2013. As Roberto Andrés said in “A Razão dos Centavos” (Companhia das Letras, 2023), Marina was already speaking to the average protester of 2013 since 2010. However, the Network has not yet managed to consolidate itself as a major party. Perhaps because it is really difficult to make this synthesis.

What is not discussed is that the centrão, the old physiological right, is the big winner of these ten years of systemic contestation. It commands more than before, and the only concession its members had to make to 2013 was to adopt “no party” in the baptism of their subtitles: now they are called Patriotas, Republicanos, Cebola, Armando, anything that has not “party” in the name.

As part of the festivities for the ten years of the June Journeys, the center spent May 2023 dismantling Marina Silva’s ministry.

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