People against the billions spent on the next World Cup are taking over the streets to ask for investments in what the country really needs
It all started on Facebook.
With the help of social media, students from Porto Alegre, in South Brazil, organized a serie of protests because of an increase in the price of the bus fare. Then, the same happened in São Paulo, the largest city in the country. The Brazilian police wasn’t nice with the protesters, and using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse them, caused indignation in a lot of people.
Because of that, what has started as a complain because of the bus fare became something huge. People decided to take over the streets to protest against this violence. To protest for the right to protest. And there are reasons enough to protest in my country, believe me.
Monday, June 17, was a historic night for Brazil. People from 11 capitals took over the streets to ask for a serie of things. The biggest demonstration was in Rio de Janeiro, where 100,000 people marched. In Brasilia, the capital of the country, protesters breached security at the National Congress building and scaled the roof. The images of the protesters invading the Congress ran throughout the world.
The Congress probably represents everything is wrong in this country. Here, it’s quite normal to watch news about corruption and embezzlement. Our politicians gave themselves the benefit of receiving three extra months of salaries after December every year. These salaries are about R$ 17,000 a month (more than $ 2,000 a week). We can compare this amount with how much other professions make in my country: a professor, for example, makes R$ 800 a month (thats $100 a week).
Other reason for the protests is the high taxes we pay here. Each Brazilian needs to work around 150 days a year only to pay for taxes. We wouldn’t even care that much, if this money from taxes was actually invested in good things for the country, like health education, public transportation. It’s not.
And thats leads us to the main cause that is motivating these protests: The World Cup. The biggest event of soccer, which is going to happen in Brazil in 2014, is making my country spend R$ 28 bilions. We are building billionaires stadiums in a country where illiteracy reaches 21%, where 13 million of people don’t have what to eat everyday and where the majority of them depend on the health public system, which has severe problems - people here die waiting for an appointment with a doctor. The situation isn't funny, but became motivation for a joke: Several people are protesting with posters that say: “Next time your son gets sick, take him to a stadium”.
In Brazil, there are no room for all the sick people on the hospitals, there are no room for all the kids on schools and kindergartens. We definitely didn’t need more stadiums. We need food, education, health.
Something is clearly wrong here and people are sick of it. This has became a lot bigger than an insatisfaction posted on social media. This is not only on Facebook anymore. People are taking over the streets. Finally. Last time that happened here - in the beginning of the 90’s, for the impeachment of a very corrupt president - I was too young to protest. Not this time. My friends and I were part of the 20,000 who were on the streets of Porto Alegre last Monday, and we are going to all the other protests that have been organized for the next days.
Nobody knows how this is going to end. What we do know is that Brazilian people are tired of living in a country we are ashamed of. Now, it’s time to live in a country we helped to change.
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