Protest success produces a far deeper subsequent crash when repression follows

Evidence

The MPL had not had an easy year. In the first half of 2014, Mayara and many of her friends had felt off or anxious if not downright depressed. They felt that the government was closing in on protest and dissidents. In the run-up to the soccer, the Dilma administration had thrown its weight behind an ominous “antiterrorism law,” and was using existing legislation to crack down on many of the people Mayara knew from a decade in the streets. One by one, they began to be arrested for instances of direct action. Her Movimento Passe Livre group had experienced delirious highs in the days when they had unleashed a wave of protest on the streets and had floated on the crest for weeks afterward. They were welcomed and praised all over the city, and were greeted as heroes at small demonstrations in poor neighborhoods. The subsequent crash took them much lower than Mayara had imagined. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 530

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the ch7/ch10 already-recorded observations about Brazil’s protest-to-authoritarian reversal.