Mass Struggles Break out in Brazil

We give below a statement issued by the MST (Landless Rural Workers' Movement), in Brazil on the struggles taking place there.

Yesterday, June 20, over one million people took to the streets in 15 state capitals of the country.

There is a bit of everything. In each city there is a dispute for hearts and minds. In Sao Paulo and Rio, right wing forces have taken the lead, attacking left militants and provoking violence and generate chaos. But in other cities the left is setting the tone.

Summarizing:

1. The mobilization is social, from a sector born after neoliberalism. They are young people from middle and lower classes. Workers, however, remain silent. They are a sector that communicates solely through social media an dare not influenced by mass media.

2. It is the result of 12 years of class conciliation (as in Chile) which excluded the youth from political participation. And they want to participate somehow, even if it is just to walk on the streets, without repression.

3. It is a consequence of the grave structural urban crises, established by speculative financial capital which resulted in rising rents, massive car sales financed by the banks and a chaotic traffic, without public transport, where people spend 2, 3 hours to go to work, school...

4. Nobody can control them. They have no political direction.

5. For the moment, traditional politicians are the most affected, bourgeois politics and of course the method developed by PT in the years it has been in government; all of them from right , centre and left....

6. The right infiltrates and tries to generate a climate of violence, blaming PT and Dilma.

7. Dilma's government is paralyzed in its politics. It only wanted to manage and now it does not know what to manage.

8. Social movements are trying to generate a political platform, to move on (refer to the letter to the President) and to expand the demands in order to advance towards a political reform, a reform of the media, a tax reform and the agrarian reform.

9. Nobody knows what is going to happen: we are going in the same direction as Spain (where the right capitalized at the ballot box -- what could happen in 2014) or we are going in the direction of Argentina (2001), with advances. Or we will remain in Greece, in a situation of deadlock? Probably none of them, we will find a Brazilian formula, that nobody know at the moment...

10. But, it is certain that we need changes of all sorts!

Warm regards

National Secretariat of the MST

Translation: Ana Amorim

Images Courtesy: flickr.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick