They\’re against a centre left government. One run by an ex-Marxist guerrilla (or at least sympathiser).
Odd that The Guardian et al haven\’t been mentioning this, isn\’t it? After all the praise that has been heaped on Lula and his acolytes and policies over the years. You know, that march of the left across the South American continent?
And look what they are protesting about – Big inefficient corrupt government wasting money on grand projects.
The positive view would be this is a bit like the Tea Party and one Latin American country is putting traditional clientalist politics behind them.
Needless to say I am not this optimistic.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, the state and local governments aren’t all left wing. There’s some locals posting in this slashdot thread. Most interesting one so far imho:
Not surprising at all really. The ‘Grauniad’ has always been selective when it comes to what it considers news…
Well the protesters have stated time and again they are above party politics.
This is about 500 years of the elite taking most of the cake and leaving Brazilians with f all.When i lived there i was frustrated and angered that they only went to the streets for carnival and football.
Remember its still mainly students so where are the other 150 milion
Hardly ar revolution is it
\
If the Graun should be pointing out that the protest is against a lefty, surely you and the Telegraph should be pointing out that under previous regimes the protestors would have been shot?
Matthew L
The governor of Sao Paulo (the state) is a right-wing almost tea-party-look-a-like.
The credibility of this source is let down when he says things like this. Sao Paulo State is governed by a member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, or PSDB). Which is best described as Blairite.
paulo
This is about 500 years of the elite taking most of the cake and leaving Brazilians with f all.
So basically the protesters are Brazil’s Tea Party. At least one hopes. I expect someone else is right and they are Brazil’s 68ers – pro-Mao rather than pro-(John Stuart) Mill
Luke
If the Graun should be pointing out that the protest is against a lefty, surely you and the Telegraph should be pointing out that under previous regimes the protestors would have been shot?
How far back would you have to go in Brazil before you found protesters being shot? Even under the Military protests were rarely repressed in that way. The current President, despite being a terrorist, was not actually murdered.
SMFS, my knowledge of Brazilian history is hazy, and my xomment was triggered by remembering my Brazilian friend telling me that he used to listen to outaide radio broadcasts in secret. But were there large scale demonstrations under the military regime? I rather suspect not, and it probably wasn’t because everyone was happy.
I think something similar happened to what is still going on in Turkey
An initial protest turned into a much bigger one, this time against police brutality. In Turkey, people have been arrested for possession of vinegar, lemon, gas masks and hard hats, whilst the police have fired tear gas canisters at people’s heads.
In a couple of weeks, the Turkish police use 130,000 tear gas canisters.
Luke
my knowledge of Brazilian history is hazy, and my xomment was triggered by remembering my Brazilian friend telling me that he used to listen to outaide radio broadcasts in secret. But were there large scale demonstrations under the military regime? I rather suspect not, and it probably wasn’t because everyone was happy.
I doubt my knowledge is much better but the Portuguese speaking world does seem fairly happy with dictatorship and they tended to get fairly moderate dictators who did not inspire a great deal of violence or resistance. Brazil was the only Fascist nation to fight on the allies’ side in WW2 – and Vargas was elected. Salazar in Portugal died in 1970, he retired two years before that, but his quasi-Fascist regime continued until a military coup in 1974. In Brazil there were a lot of strikes under military rule after 1974 or so – this is how Lula got his start in politics. And the military gradually handed over power starting in 1979 and not really ending until the new Constitution of 1988. But what is remarkable about it is how little violence there was.
Just because one person that was a terrorist wasn’t shot doesn’t mean to say that other people was, the reason people don’t know much about the history of Brazil is that nobody was allowed to know what was going on. It used to be a joke how many coup attempts were going on in South America until it was realised it was coordinated by the U.S. It’s good to know they’re still at it.
Sally Tipper
Just because one person that was a terrorist wasn’t shot doesn’t mean to say that other people was
Brazil has had a Truth and Reconciliation process. The figures produced by that is that the war started by the Terrorists killed something like 97 people while the military killed something like 339 in response.
Which for a country the size of Brazil is tiny. It is even more tiny when compared to Brazil’s smaller neighbours – it is one hundredth the death toll in Argentina for instance.
the reason people don’t know much about the history of Brazil is that nobody was allowed to know what was going on.
Well no, the reason no one knows much is that it is mostly not worth knowing. The military was not that repressive. They did not arrest or kill Marxists like, as he was then, Lula. They left them in the Trades Unions and in universities to get on with their lives. The exact opposite of what would have happened, of course, if Stalinists like the present President had won.
It used to be a joke how many coup attempts were going on in South America until it was realised it was coordinated by the U.S. It’s good to know they’re still at it.
Yeah. It is all a conspiracy. Military coups are a Latin cultural feature. Like bullfighting or drinking coffee. If anything the US has acted to limit the number. Otherwise Latin America would look like its former colonial masters in the Middle East with wall-to-wall military dictatorships.
But why not go on blaming everyone but yourselves? So much more comfortable to do that isn’t it?