Kicking Off in Brazil: Manifesting Democracy

On 6 June, nine days before the Confederations Cup was due to kick off in Brasília, the first of a series of public protests – ‘manifestações’ – began in São Paulo. They quickly swept across Brazil, rippling through at least 70 cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Belem, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and Brasília. The largest protests that the country, and indeed Latin America, has witnessed in more than twenty years, the manifestações have received widespread media attention and critical commentary both within Brazil and overseas. This dispatch reflects on these recent protests, signposting and discussing a number of issues that they raise in Brazil's current conjuncture and more broadly, such as urban and class politics, state violence, political mediation and representation, and the uneven developmental politics of Brazil's so-called ‘emerging economy’ identity. It suggests that the manifestações pose challenging questions for all of these issues.