“The Worker's Party sold out the street vendors”: Revanchist populism and the crisis of labor in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Mara Nogueira
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Abstract

In this paper, I examine the links between revanchist populism and the labor crisis in Brazil, a country with a stratified labor market where informality is prevalent among low-income, racialized groups. I analyze the struggles of street vendors for accessing urban space in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where the Worker’s Party (PT) played a key role in evicting vendors from public spaces and criminalizing their activity in the early 2000s. I focus on the connections between this initiative and a more recent “revitalization” policy that displaced street vendors from public spaces in the city center. In this context, I explore the political discourses of displaced workers during the 2018 elections that brought Bolsonaro to power. I show how the eviction stimulated antipetismo (anti-PT sentiment) among street vendors by triggering collective memories and rage against the party that “sold them out.” I argue that street vendors strongly identify as workers but are excluded from the unionized waged workingmen notion central to unions and Latin American left-wing parties. By discussing how street vendors reiterate their position as workers and not criminals, I highlight their identification with a moral notion of worker aligned with Bolsonaro’s conservative anti-crime agenda. I thus argue that support for Bolsonaro among street vendors was stimulated by the shortcomings of Brazil’s urban reform as well as the lack of appropriate policy responses to an increasingly heterogeneous and informalized workforce. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of supporting the collective struggles of non-waged workers as a path beyond revanchist populism.
"工人党出卖了街头小贩":巴西贝洛奥里藏特的民粹主义和劳工危机
巴西是一个劳动力市场分层的国家,非正规就业在低收入、种族化群体中十分普遍。我分析了巴西贝洛奥里藏特街头小贩为获得城市空间而进行的斗争,2000 年代初,工人党(PT)在将小贩驱逐出公共空间并将其活动定为刑事犯罪方面发挥了关键作用。我将重点放在这一举措与最近的 "振兴 "政策之间的联系上,后者将街头小贩赶出了市中心的公共空间。在此背景下,我探讨了 2018 年选举期间流离失所工人的政治话语,这次选举使博尔索纳罗上台执政。我展示了驱逐是如何通过引发集体记忆和对 "出卖他们 "的政党的愤怒,在街头小贩中激发反PT情绪(antipetismo)的。我认为,街头小贩强烈认同工人身份,但却被排除在工会和拉美左翼政党核心的工会雇佣劳动者概念之外。通过讨论街头小贩如何重申他们是工人而非罪犯的立场,我强调了他们对与博尔索纳罗保守的反犯罪议程相一致的工人道德观念的认同。因此,我认为,巴西城市改革的缺陷以及对日益异质化和非正规化的劳动力缺乏适当的政策回应,刺激了街头小贩对博尔索纳罗的支持。最后,我强调了支持无薪工人集体抗争的重要性,这是一条超越谩骂型民粹主义的道路。
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