For people who have been following the forced relocation of between 1500-10,000 residents of Pinheirinho in the Paulista town of São Jose dos Campos, things have been tense. Protests have been held all over Brazil in favor of the residents and against the owner of the land, who let the property lay fallow for ten years but now wants to build condos, and against the state and the police, who have been using rubber bullets, tear gas and batons to evict residents. And residents have fought back:
Here is a picture of pineirinho:
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| Source: Estado de São Paulo |
But the image I really want to talk about is:
This picture was taken a couple days ago at an re-inauguration of the museum of contemporary art in São Paulo. A group of protestors who were critical of the state government's role in pinheirinho staged a protest outside that ended in a shouting match between them and the Secretary of Culture, Andrea Matarazzo (pictured here with a protestor). There are accusations and counteraccusations about whether egg-throwing was involved, who was the agressor, etc. But I want to focus on what Matarazzo said about the event.
Matarazzo was quoted after the event as saying "essas pessoas (manifestantes) não têm a mínima noção do que é cidadania". [These people (the protestors) don't have the slightest clue about what citizenship is.] This evaluation/accusation of the protestors reminded me of something that the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin said about another controversial protest against military police overreach. In December, the military police began instituting what looked like a stop-and-frisk policy for university students on the campus of the University of São Paulo (USP). The PMs had been banned from the campus since 1972 as a part of the redemocratization process, and people were hesitant when the current chancellor invited them back onto campus in May 2011. After the police tried to arrest three students on marijuana possession, the student body resisted and students in the social sciences blocked the police from leaving campus with the three arestees. This led to a movement to, once again, ban the military police from USP campus. In reaction to these events, Governeror Alckmin said "Eu entendo que os estudantes precisam ter aula de democracia." [I understand that these students need a lesson in democracy.] Alckmin's implicit critique was two-fold, that these students were not in class (i.e. they were more interested in smoking pot and protesting), and that they cried wolf against being undemocratically dealt with.
There's an important, if not contestable, logic behind both Matarazzo's and Alckmin's statements. Both older politicians, who lived through the dictatorship and participated in direct-election movements, are claiming that they have the cultural purchase on what it means to be a citizen and to live in a democracy. Their not-so-subtle accusation is that the protestors are spoiled children who don't know the meaning of true political repression. I have been somewhat struck by the way that "citizen" and "democracy" here are used to culturally police the correct uses of politics. And I don't want to single out either Matarazzo or Alckmin. I hear this logic used a lot by people who were against either the USP or the pineirinho protests. This logic, that there is a correct way of practicing democracy and that this way has been learned through historical struggle against which some would burlesque by unruly protests, begs an extremely important question. What are the parameters of this correct democratic process? And (ok two questions), what is the mode by which society will decide upon these parameters?
In the future, I may write more about generational conflict over who has the definition and practice of democracy, the role of historical memory in Brazilian politics etc. But I hope that this quick post paints a picture of the new challenges to democratic practice posed by a generation who are still politically oriented through the history of the dictatorship, but oriented differently than their predecessors.
