Right after the fascist attack to the humor group “Porta dos Fundos” (The back Door), last December, a person named Eduardo Fauzi was found as one of its authors, an obscure figure that wallows in the hosts of the far right-wing. It soon came across a statement of Elisa Quadros expressing sympathy to Fauzi, in 2013, after his being arrested because of a question with a Rio de Janeiro city hall employee. This has been the password so that the whole political field linked to PT could pour on the papers its visceral hatred to the June Journeys as if “it had been finally comproved” its organic link to CIA, the far right-wing,etc. (By the way, in the face of a detention, one cannot ask an ideological certificate but if it has been arbitrary or not). Some examples: Lula, in an intervew to the TV channel Telesur, said that “the demonstrations started as part of the coup, encouraged by the Brazilian media, encouraged , I think, including from outside to inside. I believe there was the arm of the USA in the demonstrations in Brasil”. The PT Chairman, Alberto Cantalice, twitted: “June, 2013 was like the Family March in 1964”. Luis Nassif, in the blog Brasil 247 affirmed that “probably even without an external boosting, June 2013 would have protests”. He has doubts. Joaquim de Carvalho, at the same place, is sharper: “Brasil will host two events that are the main showcases for the countries: the World Cup and the Olympic Games, events for important countries. It was almost gigantic but the protests turned the country into nearly a dwarf, under the administration today of the “Baixo Clero”. And concludes using a witty pun, saying that the journeys were, in fact, the “burradas of 2013” (2013 rubbishes/NT)
From the action made by a small fascist gang in the dead of the night to the conviction of a mass movement of million persons and that still rebounds, in just some small vulgar phrases with sleazy conspiratorial airs. An admirable logic, as one can see, whose fantastic connections have so much compromise with the truth as the ones that Olavo de Carvalho distributes everywhere. The target changes but the cheap Manichaeism is the same.
As a matter of fact, the only conclusion to be drawn is that June 2013 has not left the political Brazilian agenda. PT is everything it has represented – the alliance with figures like Sarney, Maluf and Edir Macedo ( just to cite some), the maintenance of the unarchived secrecy of the military regime, the shameless option for the landownership, its harmful role of co-optation and depolitisation of great part of the working and people’s movement – a legimitate target of the protests of that time as it is the present government of Bolsonaro and generals.
At this point I would like to remember two emblematic images. One, 2009, that participates actively in the context “June 2013”: on October 2nd, 2013, the International Olympic Committee (COI) announced Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 Olympic host city ( two years before Brasil won the candidacy to host the 2914 World Cup). Lula, Sérgio Cabral, Eduardo Paes, Carlos Arthur Nuzman and Orlando Silva come up before the cameras, touched and euphoric, celebrating victory. It was the peak of patriotism, the portrait of an epoch. But this victory disclosed itself as a bitter truth, mainly for the thousands of families that lost their houses for opening room for the buses and cable car corridors. For them the “ convenient country” to which refers Joaquim de Carvalho measured itself by the size of the tractors that destroyed their homes. (This would serve the peasants and indigenous people as well dislodged by the “agrobusiness” or by the hydroelectric power plants, illustrated by Belo Monte chapter, but not the only one).
The other image is from June 20th, 2013, PresidentVargas Avenue, around 9pm. The angry crowd does not retreat before the gas bombs, rubber bullets, spanking, arbitrary arrests and fusil fire ( yes, in Rio, Sérgio Cabral police uses fusils against the protests). The Governor sends, then, his most remarkable emissary, the Caveirão. Before Sambódromo (Samba School exhibition place/NT), the combative youth expelled the armoured murdering police car, a police that kills more than any other in the world, in a authentic carnaval out off of the time, epic, historic, militant, sweating shirts around the face and barricades instead of carnival costumes. In front of the cameras of the whole planet, that gadget, the Caveirão, was useless, somewhat ridiculous. It only makes sense where there is license to kill.
Let us get the two images: which is the centre for freedom and which for rascism? By the weird logic of the character above mentioned, the Caveirão would be safeguarding “democracy”, the poor and precarious young people that deterred its passage would be the “fascists”. Similar to Lula, Cabral, Paes and Nuzman who would mean the “people” while those who denounce the dislodging and the mega events would be the agents of the “elites”, such is a conceptual imposture fabricated by the PT sociology never mentioning, under any circumstances, classes and class struggles.
Would it have been “orchestrated” by the far right-wing the campaign “Where is Amarildo?” which took to the worldwide headlines the criminal policy of disappearance and torture and socio-spacial segregation implemented by the Unidade de Polícia Pacificdora (Unity of the Pacifying Police- UPP/NT) that when created was praised by many “progressive intellectuals” with promises of nationalization from Lula? That meant at the peak of the working strikes which surpassed from 877, in 2012, to 2050, in 2013? Now, conversely, the hardening of the criminal laws as, for instance, the new law for criminal organizations ( Starting in October, 2013, arresting 70 people from the stairways of the Rio de Janeiro Town Hall to prison, in Bangu). And mainly the anti-terrorist law, very useful and functional instruments to the far right-wing for the battles that come near?
It is important to recognize here a fact when, in several protests in June, the so-called left-wing parties were rejected and this is because they were identified like government parties. There is no place in the world the rulers are welcome with sympathy by those who are in the streets protesting against their measures. The demoralization of the left-wing and its red colour, its association with a corrupt party – firstly ideologically corrupt –has been one of the best services that PT paid to the right. It was really a job one could label a “FIFA pattern”.
The year of 2013 determines, indeed, the aggravation of the class struggle in the country, raising it to another stage, but would it be so absurd to responsibilize it by the “right-wing rise” as to blame the youth who marched in the streets in 1968 against the AI-5 decree? Anyhow, the PT reproaches to the mass struggles are not only hysterical but equally sterile ones. They sound, we would say, like the bitter regret of an old unmasked impostor which old-fashioned tricks are unable to obtain some coins from the public, as in the old times. If, as an institutional worker-bourgeois force, PT will go on existing, the belle époque, in which it had a broad hegemony on the people’s movement in general and the youth mobilization in particular, is over. The spell was broken, cry and scream as much as you wish. However, the extending of its dawn can still provokes many damages to the people’s struggle, at least, by the institutional illusions that feeds and incorporates. Any underestimation about it would be mistaken. That is why it is necessary, in the next years – as Marx would say -, to let the dead bury the dead. To hell with them!
Just in time: it has been affirmed that June 2013 has not left the Brazilian political agenda yet. It would be better to say that the whole Brazilian politics has not left June 2013. An enlarged 2013, a complex year, staged in slow motion that continues to be waiting for an outcome.
