LAUSR

Scholars, activists, and politicians are still debating the meaning of the June 2013 mobilization in Brazil that began as a series of small street protests in São Paulo against a 20-cent increase in bus fares and exploded into national demonstrations without a clear agenda and with a social composition that ranged from the far left to the reactionary right. The initiators of the São Paulo protests had some of their origins in the World Social Forum gatherings in Porto Alegre and sought to encourage democratic, horizontally structured organizing that emphasized a decentralized decision-making process and relied on social media for communication and mobilization. In many ways, the demands that they made sought to expand the promises of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) government coalition led by former labor leader and president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and his successor Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), who had been a guerrilla fighter in her youth but had later become active in the Partido Democrático Trabalhista (Democratic Labor Party—PDT) and then the PT. Scattered throughout the marches were signs calling for better transportation, health, and education, as well as a questioning of government spending priorities of building stadiums for the 2014 World Cup soccer championship matches instead of investing those resources in solving the country’s outstanding infrastructural or social deficiencies. At the same time, other forces joined the mobilizations in their second week that were unfamiliar to those who had been active in Brazilian social movements over past decades. These seemingly novice protesters objected to the participation of left-wing party banners and flags in the marches and denounced the corruption of Brazilian politics as a whole with a focus on the PT. Some even called for the return of the military to power. As the demonstrations grew nationally and took on an antigovernment tone, the mainstream media, which by and large defend a conservative political, social, and economic agenda, suddenly switched their coverage from criticism of the protests to informing the public where the next demonstrations were to be held. Something strange was taking place. The June 2013 protests dissipated over the next month, but a clear polarization had developed in the country that was reflected in the 2014 elections. As in the previous