A Call from the Streets

What happened on Sunday March 13 in Brazil was unprecedented and largely underestimated. In São Paulo a stretch of two kilometers on Paulista Avenue was absolutely packed with people. So were several of its crossing and parallel roads. Some came by subway. Endless lines of people climbed the hilly ways leading to Paulista at the city’s summit. An astonishing number of parked cars jammed the streets for dozens of blocks from the demonstration area.

The Guardian newspaper correspondent, for instance, grossly erred in linking the movement to a specific race or social class. That was just not true. The crowds instead consisted of a myriad of families with children, youngsters, elderly, men and women, a legitimate representation of the Brazilian society’s spectrum. It is also notable that, despite the huge agglomerations that formed, the acts were ultimately void of conflicts or incidents.

Another mistake is to interpret the present situation as a clash between left and right wings. To start with the current regime is anything but socialist. Doubtful short-lived welfare policies only served the creation of hordes of captive voters for an indefinite maintenance in power. Disruption of fiscal soundness and corrosion of the country’s once most favorable finances would subsequently shatter the pretended prosperity.

Worse yet is the now substantiated creation of a scheme to raise party funds by means of fraud, corruption and extortion. At some point some officials finally succumbed to petty bourgeois desires and used the same methods for self benefit. Thanks to some lower federal courts, prosecutors and police issues like those keep being investigated and brought to light.

Back at capital city the Executive remains in complete standstill, plagued by political inability and administrative incompetence, while still flirting with populist would-be solutions that could only exacerbate the present economic distress.

What the country is going through is surely not an ideological dispute. This government failed to improve education, the one proven means of effective social ascension. It equally failed to provide good public services, to seize the favorable circumstances of the 2000s and invest in infrastructure which would have spared the country from today’s worries. That is why people demonstrate.

In the meantime Justice gets slowly, gradually served and that is enough reason for celebration. So is freedom of speech. Both those elements shall eventually contribute to the rescuing of the country from turmoil.