June 2013 is part of global protests, says Gomes – 06/23/2023 – Politics

One cannot dissociate the outbreak of huge demonstrations in Brazil in June 2013 from the international context under high temperature in the early years of the 2010s.

This is the opinion of Wilson Gomes, professor at the faculty of communication at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and author of books such as “Chronicle of an Announced Tragedy: How the Extreme Right Arrived in Power”.

According to him, “the set of popular movements that took place in several countries from 2011 was a kind of frame” for the wave of protests that became known here as Jornadas de Junho.

“Many must remember the Arab Spring. They were pro-democracy movements, with mobilization based on social networks,” says Gomes, also a columnist for Sheet.

On December 17, 2010, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the city of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, as a protest against police authorities. He died a few days later.

The gesture spurred demonstrations in the country, which led to the fall of dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and the feeling of dissatisfaction spread to other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, hence the name Arab Spring.

“Then there was still the wave of outrages in Spain [em 2011]Occupy Wall Street, USA [também em 2011]demonstrations in Türkiye [em 2013]among so many other movements”, he recalls.

In most of these episodes, including in Brazil, the protests began under the influence of causes more associated with the leftist booklet, but there was later a strengthening of extreme right groups, according to Gomes.

“2013 leads to 2018 [eleição de Jair Bolsonaro]after successive internal mutations.”

For the professor, “there are two phenomena that started practically at the same time, the digital transformation and the advance of the world extreme right. The Trumpist right, for example, emerged digitally, with the use of bots and fake news”. However, he considers “that one thing [a transformação digital] does not necessarily lead to another [o fortalecimento dessa direita mais radicalizada]”.

Marcos Nobre, professor of political philosophy at Unicamp, also argues that 2013 should be seen as part of this global context of the democratic revolts of the early years of the 2010s.

According to the researcher, these were revolts that expressed structural changes in sociability that occurred throughout the 2000s and that coincided with a severe global economic crisis.

June 2013 “it wasn’t a ‘lightning bolt from a blue sky’ because there was a lot of movement at the base of society throughout the 2000s, both in Brazil and in the world. Why wasn’t it so visible? Because it was mostly digital movement And that was off the radar”, Nobre writes in “Limits of Democracy – from June 2013 to the Bolsonaro Government”.

Not all analysts, however, agree with this view. in column on SheetMarcus André Melo, professor of political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco, says that several factors led to June 2013, but “we can rule out at least two”.

“The first is the economy. It is unreasonable to associate the demonstrations with the end of the commodities boom: the inflection began in 2012. Unemployment only exploded from the last quarter of 2014”, writes Melo.

“The second would be the diffusion effect of an international wave (Arab Spring, Turkey, Occupy Wall Street). Here the unanswered question is why do protests occur only in certain countries?”

Brazil in 2013 and 2023

Amid the debates about the effects of June 2013, one of the recurring questions is: has the country improved from an economic and social point of view since then?

Economic data show that very little has changed since then, which is not a good sign. The average Brazilian income, according to the IBGE, was R$ 2,783 in the quarter from February to April 2013; was R$ 2,946 in the same period this year. The unemployment rate for the first quarter of a decade ago was 8.1%; the same period this year registered 8.8%.

At least inflation is lower considering the 12-month accumulated IPCA in May of each year. It reached 6.5% in 2013 and now it does not reach 4%.

Among socioeconomic data, there is a positive change in relation to infant mortality. In 2013, there were 14.4 deaths per 1,000 births; in 2021 (year of the most recent data), the country had 11.2.

In the HDI (Human Development Index), calculated by the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), Brazil walks sideways. The index fluctuated from 0.750 in 2013 to 0.754 in 2021.