CINELÂNDIA

CINELÂNDIA

Address: Praça Floriano, Centro, Rio de Janeiro
Themes: The 1964 Coup D’état; Repressive Structures; Civil and Corporate Participation; Universities and the Student Movement; Homosexuality and Dictatorship; Political-Cultural Resistance and Memory
Translated from the Portuguese by Lara Norgaard

Cinelândia, located in the heart of Rio de Janeiro’s Central Zone, is made up of the Marechal Floriano Peixoto plaza and surrounding streets. During the dictatorship, this area was the site of countless protests and political-cultural movements against the military regime. The plaza, which easily holds large groups of people, is also located near a significant concentration of political, cultural, and educational institutions functioning on a city, state, and federal level, making the space a choice site for politically engaged action. Indeed, diverse social and political struggles took place in the plaza historically. Cinelândia can be understood as a singular public space that displays the constant tension between the exercise of state authority and popular movements.

Cinelândia came out of Rio de Janeiro’s urban reforms that took place in the first decade of the 20^th century. From 1903-07 – during Brazilian President Rodrigues Alves’s administration, and under the watch of Mayor Pereira Passos – major changes to the urban landscape took place. With the goal of modernizing the then-national capital, reforms included the creation of a huge avenue, called Central Avenue (now Rio Branco Avenue), which connects the new port (Mauá Plaza) to Beira-mar Avenue and facilitated the city’s growth in the South Zone. At the far end of the Central Avenue was Ferreira Viana Plaza, known as the Floriano Plaza after 1910 in homage to the second president of the Brazilian republic. Some of Rio de Janeiro’s most emblematic buildings were built around the plaza, including the National Library, the National School for Fine Arts, the Supreme Court, the Monroe Palace and, dominating the landscape, the Municipal Theater. Most buildings were built in Renaissance Revival and eclectic architectural styles.

These buildings were part of a large urban project guided by modernist and cosmopolitan ideals that the ruling elites and dominant Brazilian classes held. Their goal was to imitate some of the changes, such as the construction of parks, boulevards, mansions, and palaces, that Paris had undergone during Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852-70). The Passos administration created a heavy-handed policy of forcibly displacing the low-income groups that lived in informal housing and tenements in the city center in order to build the Central Avenue and make room for commercial space and government buildings. The overarching goal was to polish the expansionist and modernist image of the nation’s capital. Passos’s discourse about cultural revival, centered specifically on the plaza in Cinelândia, received heavy criticism, given the elite nature of the urban reforms. The mayor claimed the changes would benefit everyone, but in reality they created spaces for a privileged minority. Though they could not fully take advantage of the space, a portion of the popular classes did frequent the plaza, especially after 1925, when a large number of movie theaters were built in the area. This high concentration of cinema is what led the area to be known as Cinelândia. The movies were extremely popular, as the theaters’ clientele was less distinguished and prices were far more accessible than at the nearby Municipal Theater.

Cinelândia was a space of intense political action since its construction because of its proximity to the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and to the Monroe Palace, which at different points in time held the Ministries of Transportation and Agriculture, the 1914 House of Representatives, and the 1925 Federal Senate. The Pedro Ernesto Palace, inaugurated in 1923, is also in the plaza; this building was home to the City Council. It became the Legislative Assembly of the State of Guanabara after 1966 and then, after 1977, the Rio de Janeiro City Council. In this context, it makes sense that Cinelândia emerged as a compelling option for those who wanted to show their political point of view.

During the Getúlio Vargas government in the 1930s, Cinelândia would be the site for an event very much tied to the persecution of leftists in Brazil. The National Liberation Alliance (ALN) was established in 1935 as a political organization dedicated to stopping the spread of fascist ideas in Brazil. The organization especially opposed the National Integralist Action (AIN), led by Plínio Salgado, but also the Vargas government and the possibility of war in Europe. The ALN’s leader was communist Luís Carlos Prestes; the positions the group defended included land reform, a halt on foreign debt payments, the nationalization of businesses operating abroad, and extensive democratic rights. With rapid growth and thousands of members, the ALN organized one of its main rallies in Cinelândia. In November 1935, a few months after the organization began, a series of rebellions took place in what would come to be known as the Communist Uprising – or, pejoratively, the Communist Conspiracy. In this movement, members of the ANL took the cities of Natal, Maranhão, Recife, and, lastly, Rio de Janeiro. However, Prestes’ plan lacked coordination and organization. After it failed, the ALN was made illegal, Vargas declared a state of emergency, and repression increased not only towards communists, but also towards anyone critical to the government. The escalating oppression would culminate in the establishment of the Estado Novo dictatorship in 1937.

In 1954, Cinelândia would see yet another historic popular movement – and this time, it was one in support of Getúlio Vargas. The rally took place because of Vargas’s suicide on August 24, during his second term as the democratically elected president. His death inspired popular distress, and a crowd headed to Cinelândia, where a bust of Vargas stood. The legacy of this president would be important in Brazil’s history, especially during the equally dramatic presidency of João Goulart, a leader who represented workers and who was the last democratically elected president to hold office before the beginning of the military dictatorship.

On September 2, 1961, Vice President João Goulart assumed Brazil’s presidency while the country was led by an unprecedented parliamentary system that limited executive powers. The gradual implementation of this kind of governance was the compromise that leaders had come to in order to resolve the political crisis of the time: Jânio Quadros had unexpectedly resigned from the presidency, military ministers and representatives then rejected Goulart’s assumption of the role, and Leonel Brizola, Governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul at the time, rejected the military’s position and stood with Goulart’s presidency through the Legality Campaign. In this context of increased political polarization and the clearly offensive stance of the nation’s conservative forces, the Command for Hunting Communists (CCC) invaded and plundered the National Student Union (UNE), the main agency of Brazil’s student movement. A huge protest took place in Cinelândia in condemnation of the CCC’s actions.

August 24, 1962, the first anniversary of Vargas’s suicide in Goulart’s presidency, would mark yet another rally in Cinelândia. The moment was tense, framed by a confrontation between the president and the then-governor of the state of Guanabara Carlos Lacerda, a prominent right-wing leader. Ever since Jango (as Goulart was referred to) took office, moves to destabilize the presidency intensified. The Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) and the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD) drove actions against the president through a substantial anticommunist campaign that opposed the nationalistic reforms Jango proposed. Financed by Brazilian and foreign businesses and the US government, IPES and IBAD reached the Brazilian public through newspapers, radio stations, and films.¹

Given the failure of the parliamentary system and pressure from a general workers’ strike organized by the General Workers’ Command (CGT), congress had no option but to bring forward the plebiscite that would determine Brazil’s system of governance – presidential or parliamentary – and rescheduled the vote for January 6, 1963. It was a stunning victory for the presidential system: presidentialism received 9 million 500 thousand votes out of 11 million. Clearly, the campaign to destabilize the presidency had not affected Jango’s popularity. Consequently, military groups, businesses, politicians, and mainstream media – with the active participation of the United States – began to openly conspire against João Goulart’s govnerment administration, plotting to depose the president. All the while, Brazil suffered an intense economic crisis.²

Political polarization and radicalization deepened over the course of 1963. August 24 was once again commemorated with a rally in Cinelândia; in this case, João Goulart participated. During the event, the public insisted that Jango clearly articulate his stand on issues, since he had gone back and forth between “positions conciliatory to the elite and nods to leftist reforms” (Fico, 2015, p. 47). In his speech, he affirmed that he would fight not just for land reform, but also for banking reform. But it was the massive rally at the Central do Brasil Station on March 13, 1964 that would serve as trigger for those pushing for a coup d’état. The rally was the first of a series planned to take place across Brazil, and there Goulart publicly expressed his close ties to the left. He reaffirmed broad-based reforms as part of his administration’s plan, indicating that, in addition to the appropriation of land, he also intended to take over private oil refineries and develop a new Constitution. Brizola, congressional representative with the Brazilian Labor Party, gave the most inflammatory speech of the rally. In addition to provoking the governor of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, he criticized congress for rejecting broad-based reforms. In a political climate heavy with the possibility of a coup, with members of the armed forces scattered in civil and political circles, Brizola stated: “we will not accept any kind of coup from any source. We intend to be peaceful but are prepared to meet violence with violence” (UNIVESP TV, 2014). However, the countdown to the coup had already begun. A series of events led by various actors built up to the final outcome: in March 19, 1964 was the first large-scale “March of the Family with God for Liberty” in São Paulo; the next day, classified documents from general Castelo Branco, Chief of the Brazilian Army, circulated amongst subordinates. The documents criticized the rally at Central do Brasil Station and evaluated the gravity of the political situation, stated to be severe enough to justify a coup d’état. March 25 was the Navy Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro Metalworkers’ Union, seen by leaders of the Armed Forces as yet another example of the lack of discipline amongst subordinate soldiers, caused by the government. March 30 would be Jango’s last speech as president, transmitted over radio and television. It was the commemoration of the Association of the Non-commissioned Officers and Sergeants of the Military Police at the Automotive Club of Brazil. The president reaffirmed that, “reactionary forces will (not) be capable of destroying this administration, which represents the Brazilian people.” The next day, March 31, marked the first movement of troops from Minas Gerais towards Rio de Janeiro under the command of general Mourão Filho, a long-time conspirator against the democratic government.

On April 1, the military coup solidified, and the police and the three branches of the armed forces took over all of the Center Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The flux of people trying to get information Cinelândia was intense, and there some of the first people fell victim to the violence of the new regime. Political activists and students opposing the coup congregated in the area. Among them was the communist leader Carlos Marighella who, standing on a crate in the middle of the plaza, shouted out against the coup against Brazil’s democratic leader in what became an impromptu rally. In just over three hours, a group of soldiers left the Military Club for the plaza and distributed leaflets against Jango’s “nefarious government.” The activists that had occupied the space reacted by throwing rocks at the Military Club. In retaliation, the army shot into the crowd with firearms. Marighella encouraged the crowd to rush the building, but machine gun rounds prevented anyone from getting close. Dozens of people were shot. One bullet fatally wounded Labibe Elias Abduch, a nearly 60-year-old woman who had walked to Cinelândia to get information about the political situation in Rio Grande do Sul, where one of her children lived. Ari de Oliveira Mendes Cunha was another person who died that day.

Soldiers flooded the path from the Municipal Theater to the Monroe Palace with the intention of quelling groups of protestors. They used tear gas as well as their rifle butts and closed bayonets to beat protestors back; the crowd threw rocks at tanks, cheered for Jango, and sang the national anthem until the military expelled them from the plaza.

So we drove the VW Beetle to Cinelândia. We saw pro-coup officials from the Military Club firing into the crowd, and also the “legalist” Army troops repressing the people protesting the coup. We didn’t know about Aragão’s arms. Upset, we went back to República do Peru Street, where people were celebrating the coup. That’s when I started getting political (Eduardo Benevides. Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 99).

The vast majority of mainstream media supported the military coup. The country’s major newspapers, especially those from Rio de Janeiro, published articles from April 1-3 demonstrating the conviction that the rule of law being taken into military hands was the best thing that could have happened to Brazil:

Saved from the rapid spread of communism, Brazilians should thank the brave soldiers who protected them from their enemies (O Globo, 2 abr. 1964).

The residents of Copacabana went out onto the streets like it was carnaval, welcoming army troops. Confetti rained from buildings as the people flowed into the streets in celebration (O Dia, 2 abr. 1964).

Cast out, quiet, and cowardly, Mr. João Belchior Marques Goulart, infamous leader of the communist-insider-unionizer, was ousted from power by the legitimate will of the Brazilian people. Mr. João Goulart will go down in history as one of the most notorious crooks in Brazilian politics and, now, as one of the country’s biggest cowards (Tribuna da Imprensa, 2 abr. 1964).

Yesterday, the real rule of law was established in Brazil […] Rule of law that the previous leader did not want to preserve, violating it in its most fundamental principle: military hierarchy. The rule of law is with us and not with the communist leader (Jornal do Brasil, 1 abr. 1964, Editorial).

Violence targeting those in support of Jango’s government started on the first day of the coup and continued throughout the country for a long period of time. That violence involved arbitrary arrests, torture, and death. The Supreme Command of the Revolution, made up of commanders from the three branches of the armed forces and led by self-appointed commander of the National Army, general Costa e Silva, released a decree on April 9. The Institutional Act declared the legitimacy and constituent power of the new dictatorship, which called itself a revolution. It allowed the Constitution and Congress to remain with severe limitations and restrictions, maintaining the façade of democratic normalcy. The Act also passed discretionary power to general Castelo Branco, commander and soon-to-be president, elected two days later by a congress already purged of 40 representatives. Those powers gave Castelo Branco the ability to repeal congressional powers, suspend political rights, and transfer soldiers against the coup to the reserves.

The Act also set a June 15 deadline for carrying out “revolutionary punishments” – these punishments, according to the Command’s decision, had to be grounded in expeditious investigations coordinated by superior officials, especially coronels. Those members of the armed forces were so-called “hard-liners,” members of the most radical groups that would come to be known as the “intelligence committee” during the most intense and brutal phase of political violence (1969-74). In any case, constant pressure from increased sanctions and the rise of these groups in the institutional structure of the military regime caused the mandate of the first president-general, Castelo Branco, to be extended, (frustrating politicians who had participated in the coup with the expectation that the presidential elections scheduled for 1965 would take place, as Castelo Branco himself had promised). Moreover, the influence of these groups also led to the decree of two Institution Acts that would serve as the rigid framework for the dictatorship’s most violent repressive practices: the Second Institutional Act (AI-2), passed on October 27, 1965, and, above all, the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) on September 13, 1968.

The AI-2 was the consequence of an electoral victory by opposition candidates in gubernatorial elections in Guanabara and Minas Gerais and the reaction of radical groups against what they saw as impunity for the “enemies of the regime.” The Act reopened the practice of “revolutionary punishments” and established indirect elections for the presidency. It also removed existing political parties, establishing a controlled bipartisanship system made up of the governing National Reform Alliance (ARENA) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), the permitted opposition group. The regime also used the AI-2 to increase the number of justices in the Federal Supreme Court, ensuring that it would have a solid majority. Additionally, the AI-2 lent the president discretionary power to announce, a state of emergency for 180 days via the National Security Council, to suspend Congress, intervene in states and cities, and to purge civil servants and members of the armed forces suspected of opposing the regime. This act would be in effect until March 15, 1967, when the regime would establish a new constitution and a new National Security Law.

It is important to note that, in addition to the broad persecution of opposition groups (unions, politicians, students, and soldiers), repression and censorship also affected certain groups of indigenous people, the black rights movement, residents of Afro-Brazilian quilombos, favela residents, queer people, farmers, urban workers, and others, all for a variety of motives. For that reason, Cinelândia was the site for frequent repression against behavior and customs considered to be immoral by the military regime. Homosexuality is one example, especially because Cinelândia had been a queer socializing space since the 1930s. There was even a newspaper called Snob that continued to circulate amongst the LGBT community in Cinelândia and Copacaba until 1969.³

The establishment of the Fifth Institutional Act (AI-5) on December 13, 1968 marked the pinnacle of the intensifying institutional political and social violence inherent to the military dictatorship. That year saw increasing resistance and opposition to the regime in diverse forms: the civil-political movement called Frente Ampla (Broad Front) brought together former adversaries to the regime, incuding Carlos Lacerda, Juscelino Kubitschek, and João Goulart, at the end of 1967; protests carried about by the national student movement gained support from the Catholic church and sectors of the middle class that had initially supported the civil-military coup and the new regime in 1964; metalworkers in Osasco and Contagem carried out strikes to condemn restrictions of social rights and the regime’s economic policies, which cut salaries; leftist organizations began, still through very small-scale actions, to opt for armed resistance to the dictatorship. The call to deeply restructure the repressive apparatus of the military regime certainly did precede this mass mobilization. However, members of the Armed Forces, from the “hard-liners” to the “moderates”, perceived the countless opposition protests that involved, above all, the student leadership under the leadership of the National Student Union (UNE) and the Metropolitan Student Union (UME) as a confirmation of the urgent need to establish a centralized coercive system. Grounded in a more comprehensive and interconnected network of surveillance, that system would guarantee more selective and efficient repression, both within the State and society at large. Until that system was established, the repression already at play intensified: the regime prohibited activities carried out by the Broad Front, police violently repressed student protests throughout the country, and the military invaded or shut down federal universities. The regime imprisoned hundreds of students during the 30^th annual UNE Conference in Ibiúna and began to require a “political affiliation certificate” for elected workers’ union leaders. Meanwhile, intimidation techniques escalated towards theaters, publishers, and newspapers, in addition to the kidnapping of artists.

In the turbulence of 1968, Cinelândia set the stage for many important political movements in Rio de Janeiro. The event responsible for broadening opposition to the military dictatorship was the regime’s murder of student Edson Luís Lima Souto, originally from the northern state of Pará. Together with his peers, the young boy protested in order to call attention to the precarious conditions of the university mess hall, also known as the Calabouço. On March 28, the Calabouço student movement marched to the Legislative Assembly at the Pedro Ernesto Palace. Aware that the press would cover a protest in front of the Legislative Assembly, the students called for improvements in the mess hall and the completion of never-ending renovations. The police quickly arrived at the scene and began to violently impede the protest. In response to the attacks they suffered, students retaliated by throwing rocks:

It was after 6 P.M., after dinner, on that fateful Thursday, March 28, 1968, that we, the students, had scheduled a protest. We met at the clearing where we would begin to march against the high price of meals in the mess hall in addition to terribly unhygienic conditions and the slow speed of renovations on the building. Then the military police began to attack, first with nightsticks. They came from the LBA building and from Avenida Marechal Câmara and surrounded the clearing and brutally beat us, ordering everyone to disperse and leave the area.

We didn’t want to leave the area, so we ran inside the Calabouço and, from there, fought back using stones from the construction site. The police tried to intimidate us by sending rounds from rifles and machine guns into the air.

The police then shot at us, and we responded by throwing more rocks. The result was that many students were wounded and Edson Luís Lima Souto tragically died. He was murdered by a shot in the chest from a 45-caliber pistol. Later, it was discovered that the pistol belonged to Lieutenant Alcindo Costa, who commanded the Military Police’s Motorized Battalion in the area (Airton Queiroz, Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 162).

Shot, Edson Luís was carried by students, first to the Santa Casa Hospital, where he died. Then, the students carried him to the Pedro Ernesto Palace and mourned his death throughout the night and through the afternoon of March 29. A mass of nearly 100,000 people came together in Cinelândia in homage to the victims of dictatorship violence. On April 4, the Candelária Church held two 7^th day masses in honor of the victims, which were accompanied by more protests, and were also met by police brutality.

Other events in 1968 mark Cinelândia as a site of resistance. A series of flash demonstrations took place on May 7, bringing together hundreds of people in the Cinelândia area to discuss the changes that the military regime had brought to Brazil. The government’s response was to send the Military Police and agents in the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS/GB) to the plaza and repress such movements. On June 26, the “March of One Hundred Thousand” took place to protest the violence that had taken place just days before during a protest in front of the U.S. embassy near Cinelândia. The day would come to be known as “bloody Friday” because of the 28 people murdered, hundreds wounded, and nearly one thousand taken prisoner during the protest. Joined by nearly 100,000 people, the protest in response to that violence included students, politicians, religious leaders, artists, and intellectuals, and became an icon of resistance to the dictatorship.

Everyone was there: students, artists, and intellectuals like Otto Maria Carpeaux, Professor Maria Yedda Linhares, lawyer Ciro Kurtz, Marcelo, Alencar, who defended political prisoners at the time, union workers from countless lines of work, professors, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the Brazilian Press Association (ABI). And everything was so joyful as we formed lines. It was utopic, our dream playing out to the sound of Vandré’s music. It was so crowded when we got to Cinelândia, the final gathering point. Even though the march had been permitted, we were still observed. And a lot of people were paranoid, thinking there might be a bomb on every corner. But the march was as impeccable as Woodstock. Everyone came together in a beautiful, peaceful protest that showed the world that it was not the people of Brazil who wanted war. We just wanted the return of our legal system and our democratic freedoms that the military government had usurped after the 1964 coup (Dalva Bonet. Depoimento em Ferrer, 2011, p. 181).

From 1969 onwards, the military regime toughened, intensifying repression and increasing surveillance through the AI-5, Complementary Acts and a constitutional amendment. The most brutal period of the military dictatorship (which coincided with and mutually reinforced the phase known as the Brazilian “economic miracle”) led to the drastic weakening of public political and social opposition movements. Those who chose to continue struggling against the dictatorship dedicated themselves, in many cases, to armed resistance; others, running against the saying “Brazil: love it or leave it” went into exile and while abroad organized international campaigns to denounce the atrocities and barbarities of the dictatorship. As Medici’s administration came to a close and Geisel became the military leader of Brazil, the dictatorship had completely crushed leftist revolutionary movements, which included the Araguaia guerrilla movement (in this case, the vast majority of the fighters died or disappeared as part of a deliberate annihilation strategy on the part of the dictatorship). In 1974, Geisel stepped into the presidency and began the period of so-called “slow, gradual, and secure” political distention, which would later come to be known as a political opening.

The project of political opening was meant to carry out a strategy of gradual decompression of political repression. Without abandoning existing security measures and select repressive practices (including, above all, torture, murder, and forced disappearance), this period guaranteed the institutionalization of the regime, complete with political safeguards and repressive strategies built into the very constitutional structure. As this phase began and strengthened, an economic crisis – the end of the “miracle,” with rising inflation and increased foreign debt –, increased political differences in the core of the armed forces, political action within emerging social movements and civil society groups, and the unexpected growth of the permitted opposition party, the MDB, all weighed on the parliamentary elections that were to take place that year. Though the military confronted serious economic, political, and social challenges that made a transition to democracy irreversible during the 11-year period of political opening, they did not at any point in time lose their strategic steering or control over the process. They also established safeguards, like the National Intelligence Service (SNI) and the new National Security Law, as well as other institutional legacies. And it was from this position of power that the dictatorship was able to carry out crucial, interrelated tasks: on the one hand, the dismantling of the central mechanisms of the state of exception (the AI-5, prior censorship, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODIs)), drawing violent responses from the most recalcitrant sectors of the “intelligence community,” and, on the other hand, the implementation of key measures that structured the shift away from the military regime (these measures included the Amnesty Law, a multi-party system, direct elections for governors, and indirect elections for the presidency). The first civil government inaugurated the “top-down,” negotiated transition to democracy, which occurred under the tutelage and veto power of the armed forces.

One would imagine that Cinelândia might have revived its role as a site for major protests with political opening underway in the second half of the 1970s. But the plaza had become a huge construction site for a new metro station. As the construction took place, there was also an architectural-urbanist shift of enormous relevance: the Monroe Palace, one of the most emblematic buildings in Rio, was knocked down. At the time, studies on the building’s foundations had been carried out to design a detour in the metro line, which would allow the palace to remain standing. However, despite the many ways through which the Monroe Palace resisted, President Geisel authorized its demolition, which was swiftly carried out in 1976 in conjunction with a dedicated publicity campaign from the newspaper O Globo. For quite some time it was impossible to use Cinelândia as a space for public demonstrations. The events tied to the construction of the Cinelândia metro aimed to empty the center of Rio de Janeiro of political action, a process that also involved the displacement of various universities to more distant areas of Rio de Janeiro.

By the 1980s, various factors allowed Cinlândia to return to its identity as a space for political action. The construction work on the metro was complete, the Amnesty Law had caused the major state institutions of repression to shut down, the political system opened to more than two parties, and direct elections for governors were taking place. With these changes, new political parties began and social movements multiplied, strengthened, and rearticulated themselves — “new unionism,” the feminist movement, the black movement, the sanitation movement, block associations, etc. And so Cinelândia became once more the stage for important political protests by these social actors, and, most notoriously, for the Direitas Já – Direct Elections Now – movement. The regime’s loosening combined with the democratizing changes appearing “from below,” in the heart of civil society, allowed for political parties, unions, social movements, collectives, and people to mobilize and have a voice for their varied demands. The demand that quickly galvanized a desire for change and the political participation of vast swaths of the Brazilian population was that the president be chosen by the direct popular vote in the 1984 election. The movement began in 1983 and reached its peak in 1984, when countless rallies took place in major Brazilian cities. There were three in Rio de Janeiro, with the first two taking place on February 16 and March 21 in Cinelândia and the third, which brought together nearly 1 million people, in Candelária. In the Cinelândia region, more than 250 Brazilians came together to call for the approval of the Dante de Oliveira amendment, which would ensure the direct election. But the amendment was rejected in congress, and Tancredo Neves, the first civil president after 21 years of military rule, was elected through an indirect election imposed by the dictatorship in January 1985.⁴

After the dictatorship, Cinelândia remained an important space for a variety of social and political protests. Stand-out causes include the Painted Faces movement of 1992, which brought thousands of students into the streets across Brazil, their faces painted in green and yellow, to protest against president Fernando Collor de Melo. Collor de Melo’s economic plan had failed and there were accusations of a corruption scheme within the administration that directly involved the president. Then, the president himself called for the people to go to the streets in his support, dressed in Brazil’s national colors, which motivated a counter-protest on a Sunday in September. The movement was led by the Movement for Ethics in Politics and was marked by the massive presence of “painted faces” and black clothing. Impeachment proceedings were launched against Collor, and he was removed from his position. In other words, the first democratically elected president after the military dictatorship was judged and condemned by a Senate majority and consequently lost his presidential mandate and his right to run in elections for a period of eight years.

In the Military Club, a building also located in the Cinelândia region, commemorations of the military coup and related events were frequent. In 2012, the National Truth Commission (CNV) was established and then-president Dilma Rousseff banned official celebrations of the armed forces in military barracks. As a response, soldiers in the reserves planned to celebrate the coup d’état early, on March 29. With this military provocation, leftist social movements and political parties organized a specific type of protest called an escrache, performing symbolic burials of the disappeared and shouting orders at the reserves who arrived in uniform. The military police Batalhão de Choque – Shock Battalion – along with the metro security and the Municipal Guard worked together to ensure that the soldiers left the building. The military police reacted to the leftist protests with pepper spray, flash bombs, and stun guns. Some people were arrested and others were wounded.

Cinelândia was the site for intense protests once again in the 2013 Jornadas de Junho protests, which were triggered by an increase in bus fare across the country and calls for free transportation by the Free Pass Movement (MPL). The protests grew in strength through social media and had no links to political parties, unions, or established mass movements, bringing together hundreds of thousands of youth and people of various political and ideological views from cities across the Brazil. The State’s response was repeatedly one of police violence in the vast majority of these protests.

The stalemate about transportation in major Brazilian cities brought other topics about urban life into the public’s demands. There were calls for the demilitarization of the police and protests against the military’s repression and occupation, as well as appeals for free, universally accessible, and quality health care and public education (“We want schools and hospitals at FIFA-level quality”). These protests challenged the government and traditional forms of political representation (sometimes with anti-political and non-partisan discourse of an openly conservative slant, with purely moral condemnations of corruption). At the same time, the movement affirmed new forms of self-representation and self-governance, and autonomous groups occupied public space and city buildings. The protests called into questions the absurd spending on World Cup and Olympic infrastructure projects as a way to critique one element of a dominant model of business-oriented urbanism in the country’s major cities and the policy of forced displacement, privatization, and the denial of rights. In this way, in its heterogeneity, this true earthquake in Brazil’s political life “made not one, but infinite unresolved, contradictory, and paradoxical agendas emerge” (Rolnik, 2015, p. 357), all of which met in struggles for the right to the city and for the taking back of public space.

September and October 2013 were also marked by protests carried out by state and municipal teachers in Rio de Janeiro. The State barred the movements and reacted with extreme repression. Notable protests include that of October 1, when there was a vote on the Jobs and Salaries Plan/Career and Salaries Plan for the teachers, and that of October 15, teacher’s day, when a huge protest stopped traffic on Rio Branco Avenue. The march ended in Cinedlândia with police brutality and the mass arrests of protestors and others passing through the area.

April 1, 2014 marked 50 years after the 1964 coup. On that day, a monument to the cause of “Never Again” was inaugurated in Cinelândia in honor of Brazilian resistance and the struggle for amnesty for political prisoners. Sponsored by the Justice Ministry’s Amnesty Commission in partnership with the Rio de Janeiro State Truth Commission (CEV-Rio) and numerous other entities, the demonstration was part of the most significant moment of debates, academic seminars, cultural activities, and public forums about the military dictatorship that had occurred since National Truth Commission (CNV) and hundreds of other public and private-sector truth commissions had begun working across the country. The sculpture in Cinelândia represents Brazil’s flag, broken, with stars strewn across the ground. As a memorial landmark for those who do not want to forget the injustice of a violent past, a plaque reads: “This memorial is dedicated to the soldiers who were hunted down and persecuted for defending democracy and constitutional rights. For truth, memory, reparations, and justice so that no one forgets and so that this never repeats.”

More recently, the so-called “Women’s Spring” took place in Cinelândia in November 2015. This series of protests was organized by the feminist movement against the Speaker of the House, Eudardo Cunha, and the implementation of a conservative agenda that withdrew reproductive rights and affected the lives of women.

Just as in distant history and the recent past, Cinelândia continues, in the present, to be a quintessentially public space where the political life of the city of Rio de Janeiro pulses/thrives.

1. As duas organizações funcionavam como centros de articulação entre o empresariado e grupos militares (ligados principalmente à Escola Superior de Guerra). Além disso, suas ações iam muito além da propaganda. O complexo Ipes/Ibad realizava lobbies no Congresso, a fim de unificar a oposição de direita ao governo, a partir da bandeira do anticomunismo e da defesa dos interes­ses do capital multinacional e associado no país – for­talecidos durante o mandato de Juscelino Kubitschek.
2. Como demostraram documentos oficias norte-americanos conhecidos décadas depois, a conspiração contou com a participação ativa dos Estados Unidos, cujo governo não só elaborou, secretamente, um “plano de contingência” para apoiar o golpe que previa até a intervenção militar direta em caso de resistência popular – a chamada Operação Brother Sam –, como de fato enviou uma força-tarefa naval no dia do golpe, logo desativada diante do triunfo dos golpistas. Tal participação se completaria com o imediato reconhecimento diplomático do novo governo e a difusão internacional da versão de que não havia acontecido um golpe de Estado que interrompesse a continuidade institucional democrática no Brasil. Após o golpe, importantes mudanças econômicas, políticas e ideológicas marcaram as relações especiais entre os dos países: alinhamento da política externa brasileira; empréstimos e ajuda americana na negociação da dívida externa com os bancos credores europeus; fluxo maciço de investimentos diretos norte-americanos privados; financiamento de vastos recursos para combate à pobreza provenientes da Aliança para o Progresso; estreitamento das relações no âmbito militar, etc.
3. Depois do AI-5, por causa de incidentes com a polícia na Cinelândia e da preocupação em ser confundido com panfletos da resistência ao regime, Agildo Gimarães, editor do Snob, decidiu “suspender a publicação” (Rio de Janeiro, 2014, p. 155).
4. No dia 15 de março de 1985, em virtude da doença de Tancredo Neves (seguida de sua morte, um mês depois), tomou posse na Presidência o vice-presidente, José Sarney. Nascia a Nova República. Sarney tinha sido presidente do partido do regime militar, o Partido Democrático Social (PDS), até junho de 1984. Em julho do mesmo ano, surgiu a Frente Liberal (FL), dissidência do PDS, que passou a apoiar a candidatura de Tancredo Neves em aliança com o PMDB.