Social Movements in Brazil: From the 1970’s to the Present Day the Influence of Social Movements and their Relationship with Democracy and Party Organizations in the Last Fifty Years

Social Movements: Concepts and Historical Background

Gohn points out that there is no “proper theoretical paradigm” about Latin American social movements. The Marxist theoretical model was the initial classic model that aimed to formulate an explanatory reference and a project of action for social movements [1].

For Gohn an important category of analysis of social movements forged by Marx is that of solidarity. In the words of Gohn, by Müller [1], solidarity cited by Marx refers to a social relationship, with the same interests and should be focused on a given objective: the emancipation of workers. And it is this relationship of solidarity that we will find in the demonstrations that took place in Brazil between the years 2013 and 2020; this period clearly showed the influence of political ideologies in these social movements. It is noted, in0020 The CEBs are ecclesiastical communities that emerged in Brazil and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. They are inclusive communities mainly linked to the Catholic Church that spread through the encouragement of Liberation Theology.

Diretas Já was a political movement that aimed to restore direct presidential elections in Brazil. The movement began in May 1983 and lasted until 1984, having mobilized millions of people in rallies and marches. The movement brought together diverse elements of Brazilian society. The rallies for Diretas Já were the largest public demonstrations in Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship. these movements, not only the thought of Marx explained by Gohn with regard to solidarity in relation to common interests, but also the ideas of Touraine [1, 2] who sees in the social subject the transforming agent of the society in which he lives. It is emphasized that it is in this period, due to the ideological influence; and it could not be different; that polarization in Brazil reaches its peak.

Social Movements from the 1970’s to the 1990’s

According to Gohn [3] the understanding of participation processes, both in civil society and in public policies, leads us to the process of democratization of society; the rescue of participation processes takes us to the social struggles that have been waged by society to gain access to social rights and citizenship. In this sense, participation is also a struggle for better living conditions and the benefits of civilization.

The participatory scenario in Brazil from the 1960s to 2010 is subdivided into four cycles of political protests, Brazilian social movements and struggles, and forms of civil society participation [3].

The first cycle will be analyzed briefly with just a few notes, because the 1960s are not part of the analysis period covered by this work, but will serve as the basis for the protests that occurred in the 1970s and subsequent decades. It is known that the 1960s had three distinct moments in Brazil. First, the intense participation of students, workers and other social groups in strikes and demonstrations that preceded the 1964 military coup; second, after the coup, specific sectors of civil society participated in resistance struggles such as the strikes in Osasco and Contagem, the student movement in 1968, cultural resistance in the arts, the focal action of numerous leftist groups, etc. [3]. During the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1984), the Army created the strategy of Civic-Social Actions, to meet the needs of populations “marginalized” from economic development. The current term was civic participation, also the subject of a mandatory subject in the school curriculum, Moral and Civic Education [3].

From the 1970s onwards, a new cycle of social struggles and resistance to the military regime began. This resistance intensifies from the second half of the 1970s onwards, looking for loopholes to restore democracy. Movements for Amnesty for exiles and political prisoners, movements coming from the CEBs (Base Ecclesiastical Communities), movements of the new unionism of ABCD São Paulo and other regions, popular movements of women in peripheral neighborhoods for day care centers, or of residents for collective transport, or for health centers, all of this created the context of a new cycle of struggles in Brazilian society [3]. In this cycle, another category of participation emerges, completely opposite to that which was stimulated by public policies in the 1960s, in the field of civil associations, which was popular participation, in neighborhoods and regions on the outskirts of large cities, in search of minimum conditions of survival in the urban environment, fighting for basic social rights, in a totally unfavorable political situation [3].

Gohn [3] points out that, in Brazil, given the specificity of the military regime and the glaring survival conditions of the popular strata, the popular movements in the 1970s were analyzed more from a Marxist perspective, relying on Manuel Castells, these theories are described in this article.

The two cycles, from the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, have in common the vision of the struggle for basic rights, with an axis focused on the issue of equality or the recovery of seized rights, through the strengthening of civil society, through the construction /reconstruction of citizenship, recovering democracy. That’s why the fight for Diretas Já was so important and symbolic. Social movements, with their numerous fronts and demands, were also civil struggle movements [3].

The third cycle of movements in Brazil takes place from 1980 onwards in the period of transition to democracy, with changes in the political situation and the return of elections for state governments. In the first years of the 1980s in Brazil, the great highlight in the field of civil participation was the growth of urban popular movements, through grassroots organizations, which also included the CEBs (Base Ecclesiastical Communities), of the progressive wing of the Catholic Church, and the advancement in organization in the world of work, with the creation of union centrals [3].

The ABCD is an industrial region in Greater São Paulo, Brazil. It is formed by four cities: Santo André (A), São Bernardo do Campo (B), São Caetano do Sul (C) and Diadema (D). This region is considered one of the most important economic regions in the state of São Paulo and one of the most important industrial centers in the country. The region gained national prestige since the 1950s, a period of considerable industrial expansion in Brazil and the installation of automobile manufacturers in the region.

This conjuncture resulted in the emergence of numerous gender movements, of Afro-descendants, trade union centers and social movements, movements in the countryside with the creation of the MST (Movement of Landless Workers), the struggle for Diretas Já, in 1984, and the constituent phase of 1985-1988. In the Brazilian scenario, specific struggles were articulated – from neighborhoods, localized, and national struggles that called for the end of the military regime and the return of presidential elections. The Diretas Já movement is the culmination of this phase [3].

The fourth cycle of participation occurs after the approval of the new Constitution, in 1988, when the focus of many investigations shifts from the movement of civil society actors to the performance of multiple actors in public policies, and to the construction of new channels of participation institutionalized, provided for in the new Constitution [3].

Throughout the 1990s, the field of civil society expanded in practice and in the discourses about it. The decentralization of the subject and the emergence of a plurality of actors gave another concept, that of citizenship, the same relevance that the concept of autonomy had in the 1980s [3].

The issue of citizenship was already raised in the 1980s, both in the struggles for redemocratization, which led to the Diretas Já movement, the Constituent Assembly and the new Constitutional Charter of 1988, highlighting the issue of civil and political rights, and in popular struggles for improvements in the quality of urban life, where citizenship has gained a new outline as collective citizenship, and extrapolates the demand for civil rights to include other rights such as basic, elementary, first-generation social rights, already equated since the French Revolution, contained in the demands for home, shelter and food; as modern social rights, related to working conditions, education, health, etc. [3].

In the new scenario, civil society expands to intertwine with political society, contributing to the new contradictory and fragmented character that the State takes on in the 1990s [3].

The transition from the 1980s to the 1990s was the moment when different political forces sought to develop proposals for a new standard of relationship between State and society, each one of them stating how democratic construction should be in Brazil [3].

Gohn [4, 5] points out that the new social actors that emerged in Brazilian civil society after the 1970s, in spite of the State, and against it at first, configured new spaces and formats of participation and relationships social. For Gohn [4, 5], these new spaces were basically built by social movements, popular or not, in the 1970s and 1980s and in the 1990s by a special type of NGOs that we previously called citizens, that is, non-profit entities that are oriented towards the promotion and development of needy communities based on relationships based on rights and duties of citizenship [4, 5] points out that citizen movements and NGOs have proved to be structures capable of playing roles that formal, substantive structures have not been able to play as state, official structures, created with the objective and purpose of serving social area.

According to Gohn, [4, 5] the scenario of social struggles in Brazil, in the 1990s, was redefined. The urban popular social movements of the 1970s and 1980s changed substantially. Some entered an internal crisis: militancy, mobilization, and daily participation in organized activities, credibility in public policies and reliability and legitimacy with the population itself.

Social Movements: From Impeachment to Struggles for Education

From June 2013, demonstrations began to take place throughout Brazil, in protest movements against social policies in force in the areas of transport, education, health, priority given to spending on the World Cup, among other reasons. The crowd, absent from major demonstrations since the early 1990s, returns to the streets [3]. It is estimated that more than one million people took to the streets in Brazil during the month of June 2013 [6].

June 2013 is a milestone in Brazilian political and sociocultural life. This is when a new cycle of participation in Brazilian society begins, made up of different collectives and social movements, with different projects and proposals classified into three distinct types, namely: classics, new and brand new. The classics include unions, the landless, students, popular community movements in neighborhoods, the homeless, etc. The new ones include movements fighting for rights, identities, etc. created from the end of the 1970s; and the newest include current movements, most created or affirmed in the public scene in the 2010s, such as the Passe Livre Movement , on the one hand; and on the other, Vem Pra Rua and the Brasil Livre Movements [3].

The 2013 transformations generated new statements and new groups emerged. Conservative, reactionary and neoliberal groups gained space in social media calls for street protests [3].

Therefore, there are profound differences between the young people who initiated the first calls for demonstrations in June 2013, and other groups of young people who, from 2014 onwards, created other types of mobilizations and other repertoires, focused on the political level against the federal government and the process that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff [3].

In 2015, the focus of the main demand on the streets changes – no longer urban mobility, but the federal government, with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff as a goal. The largest public demonstrations in Brazilian history take place. Polarization is established in politics [3]. In 2016, demonstrations in the streets, for and against the president’s removal, dominated the repertoire of demands [6].

In 2016, the classic social movements and the old “new” social movements came together, forming “fronts” to retake the streets as a space of protest, after losing the hegemony of these territories to the countercurrents created from 2014 onwards [3].

In 2017, there was a reactivation of social struggles, which had been reduced after the impeachment, in August 2016. Trade union demonstrations with the support of social movements returned to the context of struggles. In this scenario, the struggles for education that were part of the context of social movements in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, resumed, with emphasis, their participation in mobilizations and demonstrations from the year 2017.

Social Movements and Identity Construction

The Passe Livre (Free Pass) is a social movement that fights for free public transport in Brazil. Vem Pra Rua is a right-wing political movement that emerged in 2014 during the protests against the Dilma Roussef government. Brasil Livre is a libertarian movement that advocates for free markets and limited government.

According to Gohn [7], the current context of the main social movements in Latin America is one of the backdrops for discussing their forms, demands, identity they build, networks that structure them, cultural and political manifestations social to which they are articulated. Gohn [7] observes, in this scenario, the educational character of the movements, their role in the public scene regarding the theme of social inclusion, political culture and its manifestations in the area of Education.

Touraine, quoted by Gohn [2, 7], highlights the characteristics of social movements such as: they have an identity, they have an opponent and they articulate or are based on a project of life and society.

Today, social movements are different from the movements that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which opposed the military regime, these movements fighting for social rights supported by the Catholic Church, based on the Liberation Theology and movements that sought the redemocratization of the country. It should be noted that many of the current movements have characteristics of the social struggles of the 1980s. However, what differentiates the current movements from those of the 1980s is that, in this decade, the movements fought to have the right to have rights. The social struggles of that decade aimed at universal rights, they did not look only at themselves, and they looked at the whole, even to be able to build their identity.

For Gohn [7] the social mobilization category, in previous decades, has always been subordinated to other larger categories in the analysis of the social, such as process, change, etc. In this new century, according to Gohn [7], the concept of social mobilization gains life, meaning and its own dynamics. There was a definition of identity, since the 1980s and which lasted until the end of the 1990s, which was based on the positioning of individuals in a given social group, not only in relation to the antagonism between capital and work, but also in relation to in relation to income and acquired status, which were collective representations accepted by society.

Identity is a tool under construction. Given this, Gohn [7] highlights that it is not about the identity built throughout a movement, but a modeled, granted identity, in which certain socio-political and cultural subjects are mobilized to be included. Gohn [7] states that the recognition of political identity is done in the struggle process, before civil and political society; this is not a bestowed, donated recognition, a top-down inclusion. There is an appropriation of the other’s image, which serves as a mirror. And once reflected, little by little the identity is being built.

Social Movements in the Marxist View

For Gohn [4, 5], the analysis of social movements from the perspective of Marxism refers to processes of social struggles aimed at transforming existing conditions in social reality, economic shortages and/or socio-political oppression and cultural.

Müller [1] points out that, when addressing social movements, Marxist theories have not completely abandoned the concept of social classes, which ends up placing the actors involved in the context of movements in the face of the social structure and inserted in it. For Müller [1] the social class, and the elements that compose it, end up defining parameters about the social conscience of the actor involved in the struggle for conquests of the class itself. It should be noted that the history of all society until now has been the history of class struggles [8].

According to Gohn, an important category coined by the author is that of social praxis, which is, for Marx, the capacity that the working social classes and dominated groups have to transform society through theoretical, political and cultural activities productive [1].

Gohn, quoted by Müller [1], states that another important category of analysis of social movements forged by Marx is that of solidarity. In Marxist thought, solidarity has a double meaning: on the one hand, it is a factor of group cohesion, indicating a consolidated level of commitment among those who share the same ideology, and, on the other hand, it brings together people who seek and share an emancipator proposal.

Marx, quoted by Gohn [5, 7] refers to the issue of social movements as follows: “It should not be said that the social movement excludes the political movement. There will never be a political movement that is not at the same time social”.

In a letter addressed to F.Bolt, cited by Gohn [5, 7], he also refers to the issue of social movements in the following terms: • Thus, in addition to the different economic movements of the workers, political movements, that is, class movements, arise everywhere with the aim of imposing their interests in a general way, in a way that has a general social-coercive force. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of prior organization, on the other hand they also mean means of developing this organization.

Marxist ideas make it clear that social movements are confused with political movements, developing both their own class ideology and an individual and collective identity within these movements.

Network Social Movements and the Search for Legitimation

In the words of Fernando Henrique Cardoso [9], it may be insufficient and imprecise to speak of citizenship or even a civic culture, nowadays, with the internet and signs of the formation of a “planetary civil society”.

Castells [10] points out that, the real world of our time is a hybrid world, not a virtual world or a segregated world that will be separated from online from offline interaction. And it is in this world that social movements are born in a natural transition for many people, who go from sharing their sociability to sharing their indignation, their hope and their struggle.

For Castells [10], networked social movements, like all social movements in history, bear the imprint of their society. In large part, they are formed by individuals who easily coexist with digital technologies in the hybrid world of real virtuality. Its values, objectives and organizational style make direct reference to the culture of autonomy that characterizes the young generations of a young century. They couldn’t exist without the internet. But its importance goes much deeper. They are adapted to their role as agents of change in the network society, in sharp contrast to obsolete political institutions inherited from a historically outdated social structure.

The Social Subject as a Transforming Agent of Society

In the 1970s, Touraine states that social movements are always, ultimately, the expression of a class conflict [2, 4, 5]. Touraine also states that every Fernando Henrique Cardoso is a Brazilian sociologist, professor and politician who served as the 34th president of Brazil from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2002. He was the first Brazilian president to be reelected for a subsequent term. Social movement is geared towards critical action, which rests on contradiction and not on conflict [4, 5].

According to Alain Touraine [2], a social movement is not just a set of goals; it also assumes the participation of individuals in a collective action. Touraine [2] points out that, The formation of movements, at the same time weak, because they are dispersed, and very strong, because they are determined to manage themselves, to define their ends and means by themselves, without being subordinated to parties or theorists, must create new forms of collective action. In the words of Touraine [1, 2], society is a set of rules, customs and privileges against which individual and collective creative efforts must continue to fight. For Touraine, the social subject is the transforming agent of history and the society in which he is inserted, shifting the axis of attention from State actions aimed at certain objectives. In the words of Touraine [2, 11], The new contestations do not aim to create a new type of society and, even less, to free the forces of progress and the future, but rather to “change life”, to defend human rights, both the right to life of those to whom hunger or extermination threatens the right to free expression or the free choice of a personal style or life story.

According to Touraine’s theory, postmodern society represents the opportunity for the emergence of the subject, for the transformation of the subject into an agent of society, that is, one who acts and transforms the society in which he lives. It is now about transforming the subject into an agent [2, 11].

The Construction of Social Movements from Ideologies

It is a fact that every social movement has an ideology. However, certain ideologies build, over time, a utopia, an ideal, a goal, a purpose that mobilizes social actors for the struggle; they are endowed with a set of beliefs that deny the instituted and restore a new paradigm for action and thought [4, 5].

In general, we know that ideologies helped shape the history of the modern world and, even today, are part of the imagination of some societies, which create utopias and ideals that serve as the basis for their movements and mobilize people to fight for their rights, purposes and also against the rights of third parties. Socialism, social democracy, Nazism, fascism and liberalism are some examples of ideologies that influence and mobilize social actors for the fight, based on the ideals acquired over time. Left ideologies are associated with the principles of equality and social justice and right ideologies are inclined to the ideas of freedom and the guarantee of private property. For Gohn [4, 5], these ideologies were, and still are, capable of sensitizing thousands of people. They generated specific social movements; fed, as a reference paradigm, several social movements.

Final Considerations

This article demonstrates the evolution of social struggles that have taken place in Brazil since the 1970s, including demonstrations against the military regime and movements fighting for social rights with a strong influence from the progressive wing of the Catholic Church and which took shape in the 1980s, and 1990 with the movements for redemocratization and popular participation, in favor of Diretas Já.

In this sense, one can see a clear and progressive influence of ideology on social movements and party institutions, promoting a strong and growing demand for public policies, observed in the twelve consecutive years of leftist governments in Brazil.

It is clear and evident that there is a significant growth in polarization in Brazil due to the ideological influence of the right, which began in 2013, with demonstrations in favor of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. This polarization reached its peak in 2018 with the election of a conservative government, bringing to the fore against right-wing movements and movements that incited hatred and intolerance in Brazilian society, putting democratic institutions at risk and causing ruptures in the democratic state of right.

And what draws attention, and which is somewhat impressive, is that today we have a strong influence from conservative sectors of a religious nature, while in the 1970s the influences coming from the Catholic Church originated in the progressive wing in favor of the social and collective rights.

The distance between the 1970s and the year 2020 is expressively noted, not temporally, but in opposite directions and polarized mainly by religious sectors of Brazilian society. And the distance is so significant that we started the 1970s with demonstrations against the military regime and in favor of collective social rights, with full support from the progressive wing of the Catholic Church, through the CEBs (Base Ecclesiastical Communities) and we reached 2020 with the influence of conservative sectors of a religious nature, aiming at the right not to have rights, which goes completely against what is expressed in the Federal Constitution.

Social struggles in Brazil have been marked by the influence of party ideologies from the 1970s to the present day, sometimes passing through progressive ideologies, sometimes more to the right, with a more conservative bias. It is noticed that the ideological influence more to the right, with more conservative characteristics, clearly leads to polarization; and this, in turn; to the hatred and manifestations of intolerance seen recently in the Brazilian streets. It is important to remember that the construction of social movements over time, based on ideologies, carries with it not only the search for legitimacy, but mainly the construction of individual and collective identities.

It should be noted that social movements are essential for the construction of collective identities, as well as for the demand and formulation of public policies, as well as for strengthening the democratic rule of law and the principle of freedom of expression, basic assumptions of a consolidated democracy. The divergence of points of view, different interests and conflicts between social movements are indispensable to the democratic process and the construction of public policies.

Finally, we reinforce the importance of social movements for the Brazilian democratic process in recent decades, as well as we address the divergences of point of view and the different interests essential to democracy and freedom of expression, while we consider as a negative point the high degree of polarization verified in the street demonstrations between the years 2013 and 2020.