With many Brazilian schoolchildren already enjoying their summer holidays, thousands of pupils in São Paulo have been protesting to save their schools from closure. Their efforts have provided a welcome break from the unseemly behaviour of the country’s adult political leaders in Brasília.
Arquivo - Tag: Protests
Dilma’s approval rating
President Dilma Rousseff’s performance in the polls has been absolutely disastrous recently. At the same time, it is misleading to say, in English, that her “approval rating” is 10%. That is because unlike polls done on American presidents, Brazil’s Datafolha polling system is tripartite. Respondents are given three options. They can rate the government “good/great,”(…)
Who’s who in the battle for Brazil?
Why do ‘pro-government’ protesters battle cops, while pro-impeachment protesters hug them? Which team are these guys on, again? A guide to the current crisis Vincent Bevins São Paulo I just spent a month away from Brazil, which served to remind me of just how inscrutable the struggles currently rocking this country are to foreign observers. They may know(…)
Brazil protests in 2015 – very different from June 2013
Brazilians are back on the streets protesting, denouncing water shortages, budget cuts, and price rises – but in a more politically divided nation, the mood this time round is very different. By James Young Brazil may never have talked as much about protests as it has over the last two years. First, there were the huge(…)
Brazil’s five election surprises
Sunday was full of surprises, and most of them dispiriting for the groups that thought they’d made gains during last year’s protests. Here’s the five biggest. By Mauricio Savarese 1 – Marina Silva out of the run-off From presidential front-runner to the falling star of Brazil’s politics. The former environment minister was a bad player from(…)
Cup weeks 3 and 4 – actually about football
The Cup went well enough that we finally got to focus on the soccer for a few weeks. Now, it’s back to the real problems. Vincent Bevins Rio de Janeiro Since early May, and really, since June 2013, we’ve seen the meaning of the World Cup shift radically, many times. Before it all started, the(…)
Protests, and the World Cup – Changing attitudes
Increasingly, Brazilians are blasé about two things most everyone used to be excited about – the FIFA World Cup and a wave of protests. We’ll see which way the pendulum swings again come June. Above, last year’s protests become the theme of a small ‘bloco’ at this year’s Carnaval. By Mauricio Savarese Attitudes went from(…)
Brazil does not have apartheid, exactly
“Apartheid” is too strong a word to describe Brazil’s serious class and race problems, says Mauricio Savarese. But it comes closer to describing the truth than the often-repeated claim that Brazil is a country without racism. Here, it’s not the state which is prejudiced. Above, youth at a planned ‘rolezinho’ in Rio de Janeiro. By(…)
Brazil 2013, in stories
In deference to what now seems a rule mandating publications to ‘wrap up’ the past year, this is a list of some of the articles, in English, that told the story of Brazil in 2013. For this we turned to Sergio Charlab, a Brazilian journalist who maintains a very active Twitter with updates on pieces written(…)
Life in São Paulo’s occupied buildings – photos
Photos Juliana Knobel Text Vincent Bevins Take a walk around the center of São Paulo, South America’s largest city, and you’ll see a number of buildings covered in graffiti and revolutionary red flags. They’re abandoned structures occupied by left-wing social movements, and serve as living protests to pressure the government to provide for the millions(…)
