The night before Brazil’s September 7th Independence Day celebrations, Marcelo D2, one of the founding fathers of Brazilian rap and a widely recognized figure in his country, posted a picture of himself on Instagram wearing a ski mask and threatening look captioned “September 7th”. The post was the latest in a series of pictures on his feed featuring masked protestors with captions accusing the police of alleged incursions on Brazilian democracy, and criticizing the ‘pacifists’ who have begun condemning the protestors for their acts of vandalism and disorder.
D2’s mentality is indicative of how the nature of the movement has changed over the past months, taking a turn for the combative. Ever since the protests erupted in mid-June, violence has become a polarizing factor, causing many to refrain from taking to the streets. The focus of media coverage in Brazil has shifted from the motivations behind the movement and its wide reach to the confrontations, which now occur in almost every demonstration taking place in major urban centers.
On September 7th the police clashed with crowds in 11 cities across Brazil. Over 500 people were arrested, some of which have yet to be released, and many were seriously wounded. The violence has caused many to reject the movement, fostering the general sentiment that the initial motivations behind the demonstrations are being lost amid the chaos. The numbers on the streets have dwindled – only 17 thousand people came out on Independence Day, compared to roughly 2 million at the movement’s peak in June.
The protesters who do show have, to an extent, changed as well. Many wear dark clothes and cover their faces, and attend protests expecting to clash with police. These groups of masked protestors have come to be known as the “Black Block” – self-described anarchists who organize via social media and show up to demonstrations in the hundreds. The group targets private property, namely stores and banks, in their acts of vandalism. Broken storefronts and destroyed ATMs have become common sights on the morning after a protest. There have now been several court rulings against protesting in dark clothes or masks in an attempt to break up the Black Block, which in turn has generated more opposition and accusations of government overreach by protestors. There have also been accusations that police officers may infiltrate the group with the intent to instigate violence and drive down public support for the movement as a whole – a sign of escalating factionalism between the parties involved.
That is not to say that everyone who took to the streets on September 7th was looking for trouble, but the combative strain within the movement is eroding what began as a diverse group with an expansive list of legitimate grievances. One can imagine how things like D2’s Instagram feed, with hooded protestors flipping off the camera and captions like “Let’s go get them” or “Never back down from a fight” can dissuade people from going to demonstrations.
The blame for confrontations does not fall solely on the shoulders of the protestors however. The police have become increasingly more violent, using teargas and rubber bullets at will, at times even when unprovoked. Those that side with the protestors claim the police act arbitrarily and in clear violation of Brazilians’ constitutional rights. Countless videos of police abuse during demonstrations have been uploaded to Youtube and Facebook, most of them by a group called “Midia Ninja.”
The traditional media were one of the many initial targets of the movement, resulting in established news outlets being kicked out of the protests from the beginning. This led to the rise of Midia Ninja, a nation-wide network consisting of about 2,000 people who have taken citizen journalism to a new level, blurring the lines between reporting and activism. Midia Ninja has provided the majority of images and videos that come out of demonstrations and have quickly become protagonists in the overall movement. Their Facebook page has become the go-to place for up-to-date information on the latest demonstrations. Midia Ninja’s content is much more instant and raw than traditional news outlets. The mainstream Brazilian media acquires much of their material from them, and important political figures, like the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, have felt the need to grant them interviews.
Midia Ninja focuses coverage on police abuse. The group constantly uploads pictures and videos of wounded protestors during demonstrations. Their coverage follows the narrative that protesters are victims of organized state repression and that the police act unconstitutionally. Leaders of the group admit that their journalists do side with protestors, but argue that they do so in order to prevent abuse through reporting, protecting democracy in the process. Still, Midia Ninja fails to assign any blame to the protestors, do not condemn acts of vandalism, and vilify the police in their coverage.
From the outside, it is difficult to assign blame for the violence. Are the police actively infringing on democracy? Or are the protesters instigating the violence? Though the protesters have certainly been instigators to some extent, the Brazilian police do not have a great human rights record. Abuse in slums has been common for decades, bringing death to poor communities on a weekly basis as a result of conflicts with drug gangs. The police have for decades treated people that live in favelas as second-class citizens. The poorest in Brazil are usually considered guilty until proven innocent, and that comes with constant searches and police aggression. This state of life in the favelas is a result of Brazil’s long drug war. The middle and upper class, however, don’t suffer the same police abuse. The police in Brazil have always been violent, but that violence has up to this point been selective. It only receives media attention now because it is affecting those that do not inhabit slums.
On the other hand, the Black Block are definitively disturbing the peace, and attend protests with the intention of breaking the law and getting into scuffles with the police. Combine that with a badly trained police force with no crowd control experience and with a history of abuse, and you have the foggy situation that can be observed now, in which no one and everyone is to blame at the same time.
Regardless of who is instigating conflict; the violence has discouraged many from taking part in the demonstrations. The small size of recent protests means that they are no more than a nuisance for those not taking part in it. People can chose to participate, risking injury or arrest, or continue living their lives as normal. Media coverage, showing militia-like protestors clashing with police passes the impression to outsiders that cities like Rio resemble Cairo during the revolution. In fact they look more like New York during the Occupy protests. Previously a major happening, the protests have now faded to the background. The momentum that led to the largest public demonstrations in decades is gone and the millions-strong crowds are no longer mobilized. Some are thankful that groups like Midia Ninja and the Black Block are maintaining the pressure and keeping the spirit of June alive, but others feel that amidst the chaos the message has been lost, and that protests have become more of a media spectacle than a legitimate, enduring political movement. As the protests have faded out, so has their message, and with that, the political establishment that was under massive pressure just a few months ago to enact major political reforms can slowly return to its cushy position in Brazilian society.
The violent degeneration of Brazil’s protests. Who’s to blame? Black Boc anarchists, or the police? Lines are blurred http://t.co/ClrW4tdib5