Brasil

Brazil: The message from the streets

Frei Betto

06/07/2013

Opinión

^-A ⁺A

The demonstrations in the streets of Brazil mystify analysts and political scientists, while party chiefs and political leaders wonder who is leading this movement if we are not involved?

I recall when I left gaol towards the end of 1973. When I went into gaol, four years before, the student movement was dominant in opposing the dictatorship. On getting out I found a social movement – grass-roots church communities, trade union opposition, groups of mothers, the struggle against scarcity -- that surprised me. From the loftiness of my elitist vanguardism I wondered: how is this possible if we, the leaders, were in gaol?

It was the same perplexity that was felt by Marx at the Paris Commune in 1871, by the French left-wing in May of 1968; the world left-wing at the fall of the Berlin wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989.

"Life goes beyond the idea", said my Dominican brother Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. And now, here in Brazil all the political leaders look with confusion and envy at the recent street demonstrations. They ask the same invidious question with which they looked at the rise of the Workers' Party (PT in the Portuguese) in 1980. What kind of history is this if now the proletarians want to be the vanguard of the proletariat?

Historically the leaders of the Brazilian left were men from the middle class (Astrogildo Pereira, Mario Aves and João Amazonas), from the military (Prestes, Gregorio Bezerra, Apolonio de Carvalho) and from the ranks of intellectuals (Gorender and Caio Prado Junior). Marighella was one of the few leaders who came from the popular classes.

The message from the streets is very simple: our governments have distanced themselves from their social base. To use a Marxist category, political society has divorced itself from civil society, a danger to which I had already alluded in the book: “A mosca azul – reflexão sobre o poder”(The Blue Fly. Reflection on Power), (Rocco 2005).

Political society – the executive, legislative and judicial -- has convinced itself that they in fact represent the Brazilian people and maintain control over the representative movements of civil society, as happens today with UNE and CUT (workers’ unions).

"Man does not live by bread alone", said Jesus. Even though ten years of PT government have improved the social and economic conditions of the country, the people had not been able to satisfy their hunger for beauty (education, culture and political participation).

The PT government opted for governability assured by the National Congress, in which we still find the "300 rascals" denounced by Lula. They disdained governance upheld by social movements, such as was successfully achieved by Evo Morales in Bolivia.

In this way our government, little by little, lost their rings to keep their fingers. They thought that everything would go on as business as usual, whether because the opposition is undermined by their internal squabbles, or because they regard Eduardo Campos and Marina Silva as mere trial balloons.

What not even Albin (the secret eyes and ears of government) had foreseen was the sudden popular tsunami flooding the streets in the midst of the Confederation Cup, when it was expected that everyone would have their attention fixed on the games.

Now the government has come up with the notion there can be neither politics nor democracy without political parties. Yet any middle school history class is enough to learn that democracy originated in Greece centuries before the Christian era and long before the appearance of political parties.

Today the majority of political parties deny democracy when they prevent a government by the people with the people. It is not enough to claim to govern for the people, and then consider themselves democratic. The people in the street call for new mechanisms of democratic participation, even as they demonstrate their lack of confidence in the political parties. These parties are being called upon to renew their way of doing politics or they will be bowled over by civil society.

This is the message from the streets: participatory democracy, not only delegated democracy, that is to say, government by the people, with the people and for the people. This is not a utopia, from the moment that a plurality of parties can no longer be considered a perpetual model and it is recognized that a democratic regime can and should generate new styles of popular participation in the spheres of power.

(Translation from the Spanish: Jordan Bishop, for ALAI)

- Frei Betto is a writer, author of “Calendario del poder”, and other books.

www.freibetto.org/ twitter: @freibetto.

https://www.alainet.org/en/active/65428