SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's reluctant revolutionaries are struggling with success.
The
Free Fare Movement, which advocates for the elimination of all transit
fees, didn't expect to become the focal point of what some Brazilian
media are calling the most important mass demonstrations in the nation's
history. Nor did they imagine they'd be tapped as one of the few
groups, if not the only one, to decide whether the protests grow or fade
away in the coming days and weeks.
But
that's the rapid evolution facing this "horizontally" organized wing of
mostly young university students, who have been calling for the
elimination of bus and subway fares since 2003. They've already won the
cancellation of fare hikes that triggered the explosion of mass protests
more than a week ago. Now, even after meeting with President
Dilma Rousseff on Monday, the movement is sticking to its original platform: the complete zeroing out of transit fares.
More
than anyone in this formless protest movement, the group has the power
to extend the unrest that has shaken Latin America's biggest country and
since wrapped in a litany of grievances, from woeful health services to
the sky-high cost of hosting next year's World Cup and the 2016
Olympics.
"Look, we're not the owners of these protests across Brazil nor are we the only group behind them," said
Caio Martins,
a rail-thin 19-year-old university student helping orchestrate a
Tuesday protest supported by the Free Fare Movement. "That said, we are
one of the most organized groups involved in what's going on. I think
that's why people have looked to us."
Outside
watchers said now is the time for the group to press its demands, while
it has the Brazilian government back on its heels. Doing that, however,
will mean becoming an actual movement capable of expanding beyond its
single-issue base, said
Guillermo Trejo, a professor at the
University of Notre Dame in the U.S. whose research focuses on social protests in Latin America.
"This
is a crucial week for the movement because they're so strong right
now," Trejo said. "The height of the power of the movement is this week.
Whereas the leaders of the movement initially represented the
transportation issue, they're now in a position to represent a much
larger constituency."
Before
police cracked down on a June 13 rally, the Free Fare Movement was a
relatively obscure group — carrying out protests but not gaining much
national traction. Its first transport protests did manage to briefly
paralyze the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador a decade ago, and
its cause spread to the city of Florianopolis in the south the following
year. In 2005, a national movement was born at the anti-capitalist
World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre.
That
low profile officially ended when Sao Paulo police fired rubber
bullets, canisters of tear gas and stun grenades at the group's protest
last week in a congested central area of the country's biggest city. One
of Brazil's top newspapers had suggested the police crack down after an
earlier Free Fare action destroyed buses, shattered storefront windows
and blocked traffic.
More
than 100 group members ended up injured in the police sweep, along with
several newspaper reporters, two of whom were shot in the face at close
range with rubber bullets. National outrage over the violence, fanned
by social media, opened a Pandora's box of Brazilian discontent.
With
the whole country now up in arms, some question the group's ability to
continue winning concessions, like it did this week from several city
and state governments that reversed public transport fare hikes.
For
one thing, Free Fare's insistence on eschewing any leadership structure
while encouraging the direct participation of all members has made it
more difficult to put out a unified message. As a result, on Friday, one
member had said the group was calling off all future protests, only to
be contradicted two days later by another in the group, who insisted the
demonstrations would continue.
When
asked whether the organization's unconventional structure works,
Martins stifled a laugh as he stood at the side of the small march in
Sao Paulo.
"We
reversed the fare hike! It works, it works," he said. "Well, at times
some members have presented themselves to the media as if they were
leaders of the movement when they're not. We don't have leaders. That
aside, we have few problems."
Mayara Vivian,
a member who met with Rousseff, showed no signs of backing down on
pressuring the government despite Free Fare's structural challenges.
"It's
one thing to talk, but we've got to see concrete action," she said.
"Dialogue is an important step, but without action that guarantees
improvements for the population, there will be no advances."
Street vendor
Edmundo Pereira da Silva
watched Tuesday's protest crawl down a main Sao Paulo road while
peering from a hole in the wooden door of his tiny, disheveled concrete
shack.
Like
most people in the metropolitan area of 20 million people, he spends
several hours and a large chunk of his disposable income on bus and
subway fares. For that reason, he said he backed Free Fare's campaign.
"I
hope for a better Brazil, of course. I want a different Brazil, with
more quality, more confidence, with honest politicians and people who
cast conscientious votes," he said, the stench of sewage strong at his
door. "That's their fight — and we've got to at least try."
As
a cold rain drenched the few hundred marchers, Martins skirted in and
out of the crowd, quietly conferring with other group members at the
front of the march before moving back into the mass.
"We've always maintained that we are solely focused on the issue of free transport," he said.
But now, after the mind-blowing protests of the past week, that is already changing, he said.
"Our fight is for the transformation of society."
___
Associated Press writer
Marco Sibaja in Brasilia contributed to this report.
Connecticut Post. 26/06/2013
