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Anthony DAndrea

Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 87, Number 3, Summer 2014, pp.

935-942 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/anq.2014.0040

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anq/summary/v087/87.3.d-andrea.html

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SOCIAL THOUGHT & COMMENTARY COLLECTION:

Protest in Brazil

2013 Protests in Brazil:

The Kite and the Byte in
New Forms of Popular
Mobilization
Anthony DAndrea, University of Chicago

actively participated in street protests of Rio and Braslia. But that was in
the late 1980s, and our collective experience was significantly different
from the recent 2013 events, as well as from former 1960s mobilizations,
all hallmarks in the modern history of popular movements in Brazil. 2013
was unique in organizational expression and ideological orientation, but
even stranger was the socioeconomic timing of the protests, during a
period of relative prosperity in the nation. The confusion is evident in the
multitude of recent analyses. While agreeing with the general claim that
2013 expresses a crisis of representation between society and state,
this analysis goes beyond, to argue that this crisis expresses a reemerging type of revolutionary subjectivity which, in turn, is being fueled by
the dissemination of digital flexibilities propelling a new media imaginary.
While partly singular, the Brazilian case also resonates with the current
wave of global popular protests, providing elements that suggest new
forms of popular mobilization in the making.
The following ethnographic recollection works like a film negative of
2013. Back in the late 1980s, we were middle-class college students involved in modest yet soon-to-boom street demonstrations orchestrated
by the National Union of Students (UNE), the nations strongest youth organization run by militants affiliated with left-wing parties. In the context

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 3, p.935-942, ISSN 0003-5491. 2014 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.

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2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization

of the gradual redemocratization of Brazilian politics taking place at that

time, our goal was specific and clear: to secure rights to free and universal public education against the ongoing specter of privatization. Just
as timely, the National Congress was drafting a new Constitution, and
its chapter on education was suffering a severe push and pull from various interest groups. An old-school member of the Communist Party, the
Rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Horcio Macedo facilitated a caravan of 20 buses to shuttle students and public servants to
Braslia, where we joined a myriad of other young activists from across
the country. Our role was to publicly express our stance on education
and, whenever possible, infiltrate and lobby Congress during the 1988
constitutional proceedings.
It felt like a historic moment, but we didnt want to rock the boat too
much. Following two decades of repressive military rule, political analysts
warned us in elegant fashion that the possibility of repression is determined by the speed of decompression. As in a chess game, our actions
were calculated, seeking optimal alignment across grassroots mobilization, public opinion, and media visibility, mutually influencing backstage
politics. Meanwhile, we wondered whether those photographers parading
alongside us on the streets were actual journalists or secret agents of the
National Intelligence Service (SNI), the data-gathering arm of the still lingering surveillance apparatus. Those demonstrations eventually escalated into the caras pintadas (painted faces) of 1992, a massive youth-led
movement that joyously pressured Congress to impeach President Collor
de Mello, whose demise was brought on by his own reckless dismantling
of large swaths of state bureaucracy.
Our collective experience was, in turn, quite different from that of our
teachers as students during the 1960s and 1970s. They had incisively
pushed for radical structural changes (reformas de base), embodied
in impressive mass mobilizations vertically organized by the left-leaning Peoples Mobilization Front (FMP) and main labor unions. However,
amidst Cold War tensions, the progressive push horribly backfired when
a full-blown reactionary military coup abruptly took power in March 1964.
President Goulart was ousted; the Congress pacified, and then shut.
Resistance fled the country, was silenced, or squashed during desperate
guerilla attempts ending in arrest, torture, or death. In this light, the caras
pintadas of the early 1990s gratefully recognized the much more favorable conditions to reinstate democracy in the country.
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Anthony DAndrea

It is along this historical arc of sociopolitical developments following a

class logic that the nations intelligentsia instinctively sought to understand
the 2013 protests at first. However, as it quickly became clear, in contrast to
the class conscious, ideologically oriented, and strategically organized protests of the 1960s and 1980s, what we recently witnessed neither followed
master narratives of social struggle, nor drew from the organizational expertise of specialized ideological machines. To use a Deleuzian metaphor,
2013 was neither chess nor checkers, but go (the ancient Chinese board
game of tactical territorial transfigurations). It represented a rupture from
conventional political categories of collective behavior and intelligibility.
This difficulty of intellectually processing the recent events was documented in a must-read compilation by scholars, journalists, and activists
published by Cultural Anthropology in December 2013 (Pinheiro-Machado
and Dent 2013). Beyond a descriptive baseline of chronology and basic
features, the diversity of analyses seems to provide more than a wealth of
topical angles. It also indicates a certain lack of consensus, derived from
the highly unusual nature of protests and surrounding circumstances, diverging across multiple issues and variables: the real nature of demands
and ways to interpret them; the role of class in forging a stance, charge, and
voice; the function of spatiality in constraining the concentration and direction of protests; and, as importantly, the rise of protests in a time of relative
socioeconomic improvements and the impact of digital media technologies in amplifying the possibilities of social affect.
With great surprise is how observers actually described their own
reaction to the unexpected intensity and resilience of street protests.
Framed as unpredictable, uncontrollable, and spontaneous, the popular
outcry was generally averse to formal encroachment from the organized
left or right. Although a historical inability of conservative partiesnow in
the oppositionto mobilize the youth probably contributed to their leaderlessness, popular protests were directed at federal, state, and municipal governments of all ideological hues. Also striking was the variety of
seemingly disparate demands being simultaneously upheld, including:
public transportation (the 20-cent fare hike that sparked and labeled the
movement), government pharaonic expenses (with soccer stadiums), political corruption (exposed in ongoing scandals and trials), police brutality
(against mostly low-income urban subjects), accessible healthcare (vis-vis budget cuts and its precarious quality), and indigenous rights (against
violent land grabbing in rural areas).
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2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization

While agreeing on the cacophonous nature of public demands, contributors to the Cultural Anthropology collection often diverged in their
prioritizing of events, banners, and outcomes. In fact, resonating with
the base location and topical expertise of social analysts, different banners stood out according to their relevance to each of the main urban
centers. To that measure, underneath the national layer of generalized
frustration, issues of police brutality were more salient in Rio de Janeiro,
public transportation in Porto Alegre and So Paulo, budget blowouts
and corruption in Braslia, and so on. Overall, as many have argued in
and outside academia, the intensity of protests was indicative that the
variety of disparate demands actually expressed a deeper issue of how
the population saw (and still sees) itself not being adequately recognized,
represented, and governed by the state. In other words, 2013 reveals a
failure in the state being recognized as the legitimate representative of
the popular will, unable to deliver real democracy, notwithstanding the
socioeconomic improvements that have benefited large segments of the
lower-income population.
Likewise, the role of class in the protests has remained open to debate.
Some analysts have argued for the centrality of the new middle class
as the main actor, this sizeable portion of economically emerging, aspirational consumers within the broader middle class strata. They now seem
to demand recognition for their arrival at the national scene of consumption, civic life, and representation. Quite differently though, urban experts
pointed to a much broader participation base configuring 2013 as a transclass phenomenon. This would, in part, explain the largely amorphous and
multivocal nature of the protests. Still, as both positions agree, the youth
played a pivotal role in spearheading the movement on the street and online. They operated as a vibrant amplifier of broader national sentiments,
creatively projecting these in a spontaneous debate with mass media and
public authorities.
Also at stake was the ontological status of the city in shaping the protests. Given that the majority of the new middle class resides in the periphery of urban and metropolitan areas, evidence suggests that the 2013
events didnt initially gain force at the city center. Although the latter ultimately became the main stage for the mass spectacle, the protests were
often ignited by conflicts in the periphery, and then spread inwards. This
brings to the fore issues of social exclusion, for economically marginalized
segments also actively participated. Often the victims of state violence
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Anthony DAndrea

over the decades, they introduced an element of ire and social fear, particularly felt by conservative sectors of the national establishment during
those moments of acute effervescence when images of urban skirmishes
with the police were widely circulated across media networks. And beyond the city center but still within the purview of exclusion, ethnologists
pointed out that indigenous rights protests had been taking place already
in rural areas of the country, Braslia, and Rios Indian Museum, adding to
the complexity of a phenomenon that refuses simple reduction to a single
explanatory cause.
Still, while expressing a crisis of representation between society and
state, the recent protests require closer examination, for evincing its apparent singularity, for example, in terms of tonality and intentionality. As noted
in the Cultural Anthropology collection, the performative nature of this era
of protests involved an interactive relationship with mass media, reflexively
updating responses by means of new banners and slogans shouted on the
street. One type of analysis highlighted the creative spark of hope and optimism embodied in the aspirational youth, nearly romantically characterized as the awakening giant. In this purview, final outcomes are yet to be
seen. Conversely, a more sobering view has instead emphasized the deep
disillusionment of the population with the stagnant, if not declining, quality of urban life in a period of socioeconomic improvement. In any case,
questions remain as to how this crisis of representation took the anomalous forms it did as acephalous yet synchronized, horizontal outbursts. Are
these instances indicative of a new Zeitgeist?
Schematically outlined, while the 2013 protests diachronically departed
from the caras pintadas and FMP cases in terms of class consciousness
and organizational structure, they synchronically resonated with the current wave of global protests in the ways that circumstance, imaginary, and
collective action have dramatically coalesced. It is not an accident that
the expression of collective frustration coincides with the popularization of
digital telecommunication devices under circumstances of relative socioeconomic amelioration. If commonalities can be ascertained, we may gain
additional insights into the Brazilian case, and possibly into other cases,
all indicative of potential emerging forms of popular mobilization. I thus
conclude this article with notes from two major thinkers of the revolutionary process, one from the past, the other from the future.
First, popular protests in times of relative prosperity should not be
necessarily seen as an anomaly. Tocqueville is insightful when proposing
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2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization

that social upheavals most likely happen not when life conditions are at
their worst, but rather when incipient improvements have been felt by the
populace. The average citizen takes to the streets when aspiration meets
calculation positively. When the hope for a better life has been rekindled,
the human spirit acts upon the belief that this dream can be actualized.
Yet, it is the perceived relaxation in state control, usually in the form of
minor concessions subjectively translated as a diminished risk of backlash, that propels the revolutionary process forward. As Tocqueville (1893)
metaphorically summarizes, societies evolve like kites in the sky, flying
upward against the winds of historical force, yet unleashing a vortex of
unexpected consequences.
It is interesting to note that Occupys first appearance (in September
2011) occurred after the economic recession had been declared over and
unemployment rates had just tipped downwards. As significantly, a series
of modest improvements preceded the mass protests of the Arab Spring.
Limited reforms introduced by waning autocratic governments along with
higher literacy rates, Internet access, and sectorial economic improvements (mostly in tourism and energy agreements with Europe) inspired
a largely frustrated youth, eager to benefit from these new opportunities,
to arise en masse. Both Brazil and North Africa saw individual victims of
state violence become martyrized symbols that galvanized action on the
streets: for every Amarildo da Silva, there is a Mohamed Bouazizi.
This is why the current wave of global protests has a Tocquevillean
undertone. According to the World Protests report co-released by the
Initiative for Policy Dialogue and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation
(Ortiz et al. 2013), the wave of protests began in 2006, a year before the
global economic recession broke out, and their frequency remained stable
for several years. It then spiked dramatically in 2010 (when post-recession
was met with austerity measures in many developed countries), and the
number of protests has been increasing since then in a period of meager
amelioration. A disproportionate number of protests has been taking place
in high-income countries, and only a minority relates to the most basic human needs, such as food prices and lack of jobs in sub-Saharan Africa. In
most cases, the new era of civil disobedience does not stem from a path
toward absolute misery, but rather from the demand for real democracy
in a time of perceived socioeconomic injustices. As individual experiences of hope and outrage meet at a collective level and become a driver of

940

Anthony DAndrea

contemporary protests, Tocquevilles social psychology provides invaluable lessons for rethinking the sociopolitical timing of popular protests.
Second, we must consider how popular experiences are being enabled
and even amplified by new technologies of information and communication. Popular upheavals have coincided nearly simultaneously with the
dissemination of cell phones and broadband Internet across the developing world. Becoming widely available during the late 2000s, broadband
Internet was quickly superseded by the mobile revolution, as affordable
cell phones with SMS and social media capabilities are dramatically altering the nature of social connectivity. As such, during protests, online social
media discussions are reinforcing emotional solidarity, keeping alive the
urge to actively participate in voicing discontent, while ongoing texting of
information and breaking news by means of cell phones is contributing to
the synchronization of infinite numbers of micro-groups into macro aggregates across urban spaces.
By flexibly amplifying the effects of public sentiment, synchronic communication is thus engendering a new media imaginary that potentially
destabilizes conventional modes of political representation. In this sense,
we are witnessing an epochal transition, in Deleuzes (1990) terms, from
disciplinary to control societies, where intensified flows of ideas promote
the simultaneous proliferation of surveillance and counter-surveillance
maneuvers, continuously updated across a space of deterritorialized
communications. On the one hand, Big Data embodies the ubiquitous
power of corporate and surveillance apparatuses to harness terabytes of
data for monitoring individual and collective bodies (and their desires).
On the other hand, the democratization of digital technologies accelerates and inflates economies of signs, enabling fluidic resistance forms that
can, in turn, evade those surveillance machines. By defying the arboreal
logic of state control, these forms of media-enabled tactical engagement
are characterized by a horizontality of rhizomatic connections that keeps
energizing a multitude of molecular aggregates incessantly. The mysteriously synchronic and amorphous nature of protests in contemporary
Brazil, Occupy, and the Arab Spring provides empirical instances of such
machinic assemblages of power, affect, and meaning.
In 2013, we witnessed the meeting of kite and byte in the streets of urban
Brazil, (re)enabling a revolutionary subjectivity by means of digital flexibility.
From the radical left, to moderate civism, to acephalous outburstswe

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2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization

have interpolated the multiple crises of representation that mark the countrys modern history of popular mobilization. Across three historical moments, attempts to resolve this crisis have evolved from an accidental trigger for the usurpation of democratic power, to the reinstatement of the
latter, to its reconfiguration under a new media imaginary. The point is
whether this imaginary can short-circuit in a political void, as it destabilizes
conventional modes of articulation between society and state. Insofar as
the nomadic machine evades and undermines the sedentary state, these
new types of social mobilization are probably here to stay, not necessarily
securing more democracy, but potentially destabilizing it, just like historical
action unleashes unpredictable, often unwanted consequences. n

References:
Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. Post-scriptum sur les socits de controle. LAutre journal 1(May).
Ortiz, Isabel, Sara Burke, Mohamed Berrada, and Hernan Cortes. 2013. World Protests 2006-2013.
Working Paper no. 2013, September 27. Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
New York: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana and Alexander S. Dent. 2013. Protesting Democracy in Brazil. Cultural
Anthropology Online Fieldsights - Hot Spots, December 20. Accessed from http://www.culanth.org/
fieldsights/426-protesting-democracy-in-brazil on June 24, 2014.
Tocqueville, Alexis. 1893 [1850]. Souvenirs. Paris: Calmann Levy.
F o r e i g n L a n g u a g e Tr a n s l a t i o n s :
2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization
2013 Protestos no Brasil: O Papagaio e o Byte nas Novas Formas de Mobilizao Popular
2013

2013 :

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