(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
They are located in a tent on the messanine in the historic building in downtown Rio. The Gustavo Capanema Palace was designed by celebrity architect Oscar Niemeyer and decorated with tiles and artwork by Candido Portinari.
Between 50 and 100 people – musicians, artists, students, actors, a little baby under a thick duvet in a stroller – has since 16. May occupied the messanine and the second floor of the building. They survive on donations from unions and other sympathizers, asking for everything from water, mattresses, dope paper and toothbrushes on Facebook.
"Our goal is to govern Michel Temer's government. We do not want any dialogue with a government that takes us so many steps back in so many areas, "Rachel Dias and Júlio Barroso, two of the occupiers, told Ny Tid. Barroso was one of the initiators of the action, which started as a spontaneous protest against the interim president Temer closing down the Brazilian Ministry of Culture when he took over.
All over the country, protesters have occupied public buildings. Several famous artists have joined the movement. On weekends they organize workshops, lectures and concerts. In Rio, the concert with Caetano Veloso pulled full house. And the interim president had to give in to the pressure pretty quickly: 21. in May, he turned and upgraded the fresh culture secretariat in the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Culture.
“It was a win, but this is about so much more than the Ministry of Culture. We are angry. Michel Temer also closed down ministries for racial equality, for women and for human rights, and many have joined our movement. Our most important issue is to overthrow the government, which we believe are coup makers. Occupations like this take place in all 27 states, and we stay here until the judicial process ends and Dilma is back, says Barroso.
Dirty game? It was on May 12 that the Brazilian Senate, with 22 to 55 votes, decided that a trial should be opened against incumbent President Dilma Rousseff of the Labor Party PT. Congress now has 180 days to decide whether Rousseff should be deposed or whether she can return to the presidential palace and continue her mandate. But in the meantime, it is Vice President Michel Temer of the PMDB party who governs the country. Earlier this year, the party chose to break with the government and move from position to opposition, although it had several ministers in Dilma Rousseff's government.
It is not so easy to understand what Dilma Rousseff is accused of. Whether she has been guilty of offenses so serious that they are worthy of a Supreme Court case is uncertain, but this is about trickery with figures in the national accounts, and depends on how one chooses to interpret the law. There are several interpretations, and the occupiers of the Capanema Palace have a quite different understanding of reality than the majority of senators in the capital.
The Norwegian author and Brazilian connoisseur Torkjell Leira is among those who believe that it was a very dirty political game that squeezed Rousseff out.
"I do not hesitate to call it a coup, in the sense of a well-planned, fast, dirty and illegitimate takeover. To call it something else is to let the map stand in the way of the terrain, to let legal intricacies overshadow political realities, "he writes in an article in Manifest magazine on 26 May.
"What happened was a coup, and we demand that Temer resign. Our fight is for democracy and justice in Brazil, "said the occupiers of the Capanema Palace in Rio.
"A government made up entirely of white men does not represent us."
24 white men. As early as 13 May, Vice President Michel Temer presented his new government, and also in Norway it attracted attention when he presented his new ministers – a group dressed in suits consisting of 24 white, rich and to some extent older men.
"A government made up entirely of white men does not represent us. It's completely misogynistic. The majority of the occupiers here are women, for example – how can this government represent us? " says Rachel Dias.
The occupiers believe they represent the people in a far better way.
"Diversity is important to us, and here you will find white and black men, white and black women, heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, rich business women and people living on the streets. We want the government to practice the same respect for diversity. I would like to have an openly gay minister, a black minister, and many female ministers, both black and white. It has not happened since the military dictatorship that there have been no women in the government, "said Júlio Barroso.
Demo against Dilma. On March 13, a popular march against Dilma Rousseff and against the corruption that permeates Brazilian politics gathered one million people at Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. A total of 3,3 million people took part in the demonstrations against Dilma in 250 Brazilian cities.
The occupiers believe that these are Brazilians who voted for the losing candidate Aecio Neves in the presidential election in the autumn of 2013, who now want revenge.
"This is the rich, white and oppressive elite – the middle class who have always had privileges, who are against the social programs that NPT has introduced in government, who are against gay marriage, against racial quotas at universities, and who are furious that Lula has given the poor greater purchasing power. The Brazilian elite is unable to accept this. They do not want to share everything they have. "They do not respect the election result, and the opposition has systematically sabotaged Dilma's government so that it has not been able to govern the country since it took up its second mandate in 2014," said Júlio Barroso.
Many Brazilians will not recognize themselves in this description. On March 13, Marisa Mendes (70) had taken on the clown nose and demanded Dilma's resignation during the demonstration in Copacabana.
"PT is a bunch of bandits, and I have fought against them for 30 years," she told Ny Tid at the time.
According to the occupiers, the deep political crisis is helping to make the fronts steeper and the contradictions clearer. It has been boiling on Facebook for the past few months. Many are angry.
"We live in a country that has been without governance since Dilma's second term began, and we have to simplify to make the picture clearer to people," Barroso and Dias said.
There is still no doubt that Rousseff has been involved in driving Brazil into the ditch, but it is a little harder to say how much responsibility Rousseff must take on his shoulders. The fact is that inflation is rising, a record number of Brazilians are unemployed, and in 2016 the country will run a deficit of 170 billion reais – over 70 billion more than Dilma's finance minister operated with. Again, Rousseff's government is accused of making up the accounts.
Bargain media. The occupiers of the Capanema Palace are categorical in their coverage of the major national newspapers and television channels, calling them the coup media – media coup. The fact that the same newspapers and television channels have now been central to the revelations that ended with two of the ministers in Temer's government having to resign does not change this view.
"Corruption was a pretext they used to blackmail Dilma, and now the big media must camouflage their real agenda in the fight against corruption. It is not the case that the media has changed sides, "say Júlio Barroso and Rachel Dias.
They also point out that "a united international press has called the takeover a coup", and that "only the Brazilian media" do not want to see it that way. International coverage of the events of recent months has been more nuanced than that, but the international press has undoubtedly been very critical of the entire Supreme Court process due to the weak legal basis.
The two ministers had to resign after they in audio recordings that were leaked to the press, discuss how the corruption investigation can be stopped and how they can dribble the investigation so as not to join the tug of war.
"It is a victory that they had to resign, since it helps to show that we are the ones who actually defend democracy, while they just wanted to grind their own cake. Dilma has not done anything illegal, and the takeover was a coup. They can no longer hide that, "says Rachel Dias.
They believe that civil society, NGOs and autonomous communities have great power in Brazil.
"I believe that the people have all the power and all the opportunities to influence. But we are banging our heads against the wall here in Brazil because of the media. We have shown that we are strong – in 2013 we managed to mobilize millions, and we managed to prevent the bus ticket from being set up. That was what it all started with. But the mobilization boiled over when the media began to portray the demonstrators as thugs who were only out to vandalize public property. We are strong, but our strength is not so visible because the coup media here in Brazil will not show this, "said Rachel Dias and Júlio Barroso.
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