Brasil’s Prescribed Revolt: A story of two protests in São Paulo
Brasil’s right-wing march under a banner of anti-corruption but the protests of the past weekend illustrated what is actually a fresh manifestation of Brasil’s ongoing class conflict, with an undercurrent of racial tension and a dash of anti-communist hysteria. The Petrobras scandal is a primary concern of many Brazilians today, across the political spectrum, but nebulous innuendo of corruption has long been used around the world by the extreme right in order to frame the left, it is certainly not unique to Brasil, but now far more acute.
We explore the background to current events in more detail here.
Straight comparison of numbers between different protests, with different aims, on different days, is quite futile, especially in São Paulo, a city with a massive right-wing majority, in a country of very diverse social realities and 203 million inhabitants. However there are are other details of interest about these two opposing demonstrations, for example, the coherence of their messages, and in particular the enormous disparity in how estimates of attendance were arrived at & subsequently reported.
There were other smaller parallel demonstrations in other cities on both days, but we will focus on São Paulo, where we had sources present on both days, for the purposes of this analysis.
ORGANISERS
13/3 CUT – The largest Trade Union in Brazil, close to the Workers Party, plus other left-wing social movements such as MST, the landless workers movement, & FLM, a housing organisation. Relatively minor use of social media.
15/3 Movimento Brasil Livre, a young libertarian group with reported links to the Koch Brothers Atlas Institute, plus other smaller right-wing & extreme-right groups. Massive presence on social media.
Read more:
http://www.brasilwire.com/brasils-prescribed-revolt-a-story-of-two-protests-in-sao-paulo/
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