June 2013: criticism and opening of the crisis of representative Brazilian democracy

Abstract

This article recognizes the centrality of the June 2013 Manifestations as a turning point for the opening of the crisis of the democratic-representative model still experienced today. It argues that from that month of June a critical social environment was created for this political system, pointing to the need to readjust the political practices of the representatives and the effective fulfillment of the constitutional pact of 1988. After exploring the historicity and the semantic potential of the concept of democracy - in its unfinished and susceptible character to the permanent critique of civil society - and to characterize the Brazilian democratic model after 88, the article advances in the ambivalences of June examinating the political discourses of the actors in that time, distinguishing two moments: first channeled by the Free Pass Movement, centered on the debate on the right to public transport and, more broadly, on the right to the city; the second, without such an specific organizing center, but with a clear attempt by control the mainstream press, triggered multiple demands associated with the fight against corruption. The non-excluding sum of the two moments happen the formation of a environment of criticism to the representative democratic model still in force and its practices.