By Alessandro Fernandes – Alternativa Socialista/ISL, Brasil
On Monday, April 16, 1984, 37 years ago, about one and a half million people attended a demonstration in the Anhangabaú Valley, in the capital of São Paulo, demanding direct elections for President of the Republic. Days before, one million people attended the Candelaria mass demonstration in Rio de Janeiro. The “Diretas Já” (Direct Now) campaign reached its climax and entered history. It was difficult to foresee even at the first official act, in June 1983, the strength that the campaign would gain.
While the dictatorship was dying, the masses occupied the streets to the shouts of “Diretas Já”; “One, two, three, four, five thousand, we want to elect the president of Brazil”; “Out with Figueiredo”; “No, no, no to João College”; “Against the IMF”; “The people are not stupid, out with Rede Globo”; “One, two, three, Maluf to jail”, among others. Far beyond the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC nº 05/1983) for direct elections, articulated by federal deputy Dante de Oliveira (PMDB), or the rallies “carnivalized” by the bourgeois parties, the people were fed up with two decades of Dictatorship.[1] The period of João Figueiredo’s term of office, during which João Figueireiro was elected, was a time of great political and social change.
The period of João Figueiredo meant the acceleration of the senility of the dictatorship. All the objective elements for the end were present, it only remained to light the fuse. The Diretas Já ignited it. Figueiredo, who received the presidential sash at the Planalto Palace (government house) in Brasilia from Ernesto Geisel in 1979, a bet for the reproduction of the Dictatorship and the “self-reform” project, was the same Figueiredo who left through the back door in 1985.
The senility of Figueiredo’s government advanced at different moments: the historic strike of workers in the ABC Paulista, cradle region of the PT, in the first half of 79; the campaign for the Amnesty Ampla, Geral e Irrestrita which had been accumulating forces since the mid 70’s, maneuvered by Figueiredo with the Amnesty Law benefiting torturers; the explosions carried out by the uniformed porons in Riocentro on Labor Day, further isolating the ultra-reactionary sector; the falls in the composition of the government; the 1982 direct elections for governors where the Dictatorship’s party, PDS, lost the administration of the main states – SP, RJ and MG. The defeat in the 1982 elections marked a new moment of weakness for the government.
Between 1981 and 83, recession knocked at the door and, with wages strangled during the dictatorship period – one of the factors that guaranteed the “Brazilian miracle” -, misery and instability served as a strong wave that deteriorated the Dictatorship’s conservation plans. At that time, Brazil was already an assiduous client of the IMF since the Geisel government, intensifying year after year. The scenario of debt, inflation and deficit was set.
The struggle against authoritarianism intensified. Between June 1983 and April 84, approximately 5 million people were present at the various rallies of the Diretas Já. January 1984, with 300,000 people present at the Praça da Sé in São Paulo, was the confirmation of the popular campaign, the largest in Brazil. Figueiredo’s desperation and political lack of control, in a corner, oscillated between the elevation of the tone in interviews and statements, and the official pronouncements on Radio and TV “reaching out” and appealing for dialogue.
The pact of the bourgeois autocracy
On the same day of the historic rally in Vale do Anhangabaú, Figueiredo made an official statement on radio and television calling for “conciliation” and presenting a parallel PEC (Constitutional Amendment Proposal) for direct elections only in 1988. Figueiredo’s intention was to contain the division of the PDS, necessary for its approval in Parliament. In addition, he declared a state of emergency, laying siege to Brasilia on the day of the vote and censoring television and radio coverage. The General Strike called by the pro-Diretas Committee for the 25th had already been betrayed. Tancredo Neves, more than ever, wanted to negotiate.
The PEC for direct elections was rejected in the House of Representatives for not reaching the minimum number of votes (22 votes were missing). The vote, on April 25, was followed massively in several cities: 298 deputies voted Yes, 65 No, 3 Abstentions and 112 absentees. There is no doubt that the rejection was a setback, but Figueiredo was not victorious. The vote deepened an already existing division in the Dictatorship’s party. 55 PDS deputies voted in favor of the amendment and many of the 112 were absent for fear of popular pressure. With the rejection, the PMDB secured more political ground with Tancredo at the head for the indirect election by the Electoral College.
The Diretas Já and the Indirect Election by the Electoral College are part of the same conjuncture but, contrary to the officialist interpretations, they are also different. The first was the real popular possibility of changing the course of history; the second marked the operation from above, the true face of bourgeois autocracy. The PMDB of Ulises/Tancredo and the PDT of Leonel Brizola sustained Figueiredo and prevented his fall.
It is important to distinguish the two moments, otherwise the analysis will be chained by the bourgeois operative and will erase the popular mobilization. The result is to put the whole process in the same bag of “self-reform”. It is true that Figueiredo, at that time only a specter, managed to complete his “mandate”, but it is also known that he intended to remain in office until 1989 and pass the sash to one of his predecessors. This did not happen.
The Dictatorship did not fall in the first round. It was wounded in the crash and was rescued. The bourgeois opposition was torn between a weakened Figueiredo and mass mobilization. It opted for Figueiredo because it considered him safer and negotiated its own exit with Tancredo -which did not happen due to his unexpected death-, carefully substituted by his vice-president José Sarney, Arenista (ARENA – Aliança Renovadora Nacional) of the last minute.
In a letter to the Morenoist current in Brazil, Nahuel Moreno characterized the moment of the massive demonstrations of April 10-16 as a “revolutionary crisis.”[2] Figueiredo had already lost overall control of the situation and the government was suspended in mid-air. After the rejection of the PEC, Moreno responded that the negotiation of the “Multipartidary” would come, giving as an example the final experience of the Argentine dictatorship.[3] In spite of the open crisis, the government was suspended in the air.
In spite of the open crisis, the Brazilian “Multiparty” managed to operationalize the situation and pushed to the alley of the Indirect Elections. A large part of the Brazilian left accepted the Electoral College, or it swallowed dryly. The PT correctly decided to boycott the illegitimate Electoral College that gave victory to Tancredo’s Democratic Alliance against Paulo Maluf, nobody’s candidate. Despite the PT’s position, a minority of the party’s deputies voted for Tancredo.
There is an important debate on whether the PT had a concrete possibility to contest the Diretas Já movement. The party had a fundamental presence in the campaign, especially Lula, but could not reverse the hegemony of the PMDB/PDT. In the event organized by the PT and the CUT in November 1983, 15,000 people attended, it was the largest of that year. That moment was a message to the bourgeois opposition. Either they would take the reins, or they would be left behind. They have opted for the former. Moreno stressed his doubt about the advance in the consciousness of the masses: “We believe that they have made an important leap, but not to the degree of massively repudiating the parties and institutions of bourgeois democracy.”
The bourgeois autocratic operation following the dictatorship guaranteed the continuity of the dictatorial remnants. The validity of the Amnesty Law that benefits the torturers still alive, the National Security Law that persecutes the political opposition, the military presence and tutelage in the post-democratization governments. We are talking about a scenario that today only benefits Bolsonaro as president. In 2011, Dilma’s government opened a National Truth Commission to investigate human rights violations in the period from 1946 to 1988, a stone in the military boot. The Commission identified more than 400 cases of deaths and disappearances under the responsibility of the State and listed 377 agents directly or indirectly responsible for cases of violations, however, without prosecuting a single torturer, with impunity prevailing.
What came in the period after 1984 – the chronic crisis of the Sarney government, the 1988 Constitution, the 1989 elections with a massive vote for the candidacy of Lula, the impeachment of Collor and the reordering with the government of Itamar Franco in part still expressed the class struggle between the mass mobilizations of the Diretas Já and the transition from above. Florestan Fernandes, who managed to make one of the most brilliant analyses of the Diretas Já in an article published in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo[4], on the April 16 demonstration, wrote: “Today, what we are seeing is that the working classes, both in urban and rural areas – but mainly in the big cities – repudiated this regime of oppression. These classes have put an end to the regime. The great change that took place is that the victim of the repression of ’64 demands today a situation of freedom, demands that Brazil attributes importance and political voice to the working classes, for the first time in its history”.
The task of democratic mobilization for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the Armed Forces and the trial and conviction of all the military and civilians involved in the Dictatorship is still pending. In addition to this, the historical reparation of the memory and the struggle of our people to make effective the Nunca Mas persecutions, tortures and deaths by State terrorism.
1] Reorganization and important mobilizations of the working class between 1983-84: protests and waves of sackings to stores and supermarkets in SP and RJ (April/83); general strike against the IMF’s arrochos (July/83); creation of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores – CUT (August/83); creation of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST (January/84); workers in strike occupy the Companhia Siderúrgica Paulista – Cosipa, in Cubatão/SP (February/84); strike of 10,000 rural workers in intermittent situation, in the cold-browns (May/84); strike of professors of the federal universities (May/84); strike of more than 400,000 canavieiros workers in the states of PE, PB and RN (September/84). Access: http://memorialdademocracia.com.br/timeline/21-anos-de-resistencia-e-luta
2] “Começou a revolução brasileira?” was written by Moreno on May 11, 1984 for the direction of Alicerce da Juventude Socialista. In the same year, Alicerce took again the name of Convergência Socialista. Read the letter at: http://www.geocities.ws/moreno_nahuel/36_nm.html#_Toc535167243
3] “Multipartidária” was a pact of the Argentinean organizations Unión Cívica Radical, Partido Justicialista, Partido Intransigente, Partido Demócrata Cristiano and Movimiento de Integración y Desarrollo, responsible for containing the final crisis of the dictatorship in Argentina.
4] The articles written by Florestan Fernandes in the period 1984-86 were republished in the book “Que tipo de república?”, launched in 1986 by the Brazilian publisher.