As Brazil's Protests Continue, the Ghosts of Mexico City Must Be Heard Dave Zirin - The Nation
go to original June 20, 2013

Brazil protest that began over increasing cost of public transportation continues to draw tens of thousands to the streets. (TheRealNews)

One has to hearken back to 1968 in Mexico City, when thousands of students and workers marched against the Olympics, to find a sports-related demonstration that compares to the size and militancy of the mass anti–World Cup/Olympic uprising taking place in Brazil.

As in Mexico City thousands of people in Brazil are in the streets - and outside stadiums hosting Confederations Cup matches - raising slogans that connect the spending and austerity that surround these mega-events to a much deeper rot in the nation’s democratic institutions. As in Mexico City the central question is one of priorities: spending for sports while other vital needs - health, education, transportation - go unheeded.

As in Mexico City, the spine of protesters is disaffected youth, educated beyond their parents’s generation because of expansions in higher education, but without jobs or opportunity when leaving the academy. As in Mexico City, the ruling elites feel a desperate need for the events to go as planned as a way to demonstrate to the world that Mexico is a leading player in the game of nations.

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