If there are two Brazils, then one of them is here, in a café by the Praça São Salvador, a few blocks from the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Wearing a gray T-shirt, sunglasses and a ring in the shape of a human skull, Alan Fragoso, 27, takes a sip of his caipirinha. Fragoso used to be a sort of Brazilian Don Draper, an advertising man selling products to the nation's emerging consumer class. Then one day he quit. "What I really want is to work with projects I believe in," he says, "not to invest in consumption."
So Fragoso joined a start-up that took off faster than Facebook: the Brazilian protest movement. The demonstrations last June began small (and largely nonviolent), in response to a hike in public transportation fees. But the military police overreacted, using tear gas, rubber bullets and excessive force in front of news cameras that spread the images countrywide. That sparked mass protests over a litany of grievances: government corruption, substandard education and health care, the forced removal of favela (or slum) dwellers, and the $22.8 billion in public spending on facilities for the World Cup in 12 Brazilian cities and for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Last June 20, on what he calls "the best political day of my life," Fragoso joined more than 1.5 million angry demonstrators who marched in the streets of Rio, São Paulo and 80 other cities around the country.
The protests coincided with the Confederations Cup, a World Cup dress rehearsal, and 10 days later, on the day of the final between Brazil and Spain, Fragoso advanced with another group of roughly 5,000 protestors toward Rio's legendary Maracanã Stadium. "The demonstrators outside the stadium were surrounded and bombarded with tear gas and rubber bullets," recalls Fragoso, who donned a gas mask on some days and covered his face with a vinegar-soaked bandanna on others to combat the fumes. "Even though we were far away, the smell of the tear gas reached inside the Maracanã."
Nobody knows if the million-strong protests (which led to six deaths) will recur when the World Cup kicks off in São Paulo on June 12. The demonstrations since last June have been smaller and at times violent, pitting Black Bloc anarchists against the police. But now, four months before the World Cup, Fragoso is hoping to go mainstream again: 64 games, 64 protests. As he talks about this in the café, a middle-aged stranger walks over. He has been eavesdropping, and he wants to say one thing as he leaves, a slogan that has become fashionable among young activists: "Não vai ter Copa do Mundo no Brasil!"
There won't be a World Cup in Brazil.
