The Art of Being Indirect: Talking about Politics in Brazil

Abstract

The mid-'70s in Brazil and in many other Latin American countries were marked by the emergence of many urban social movements. As soon as freedom of political organization and expression began to be assured, many associations disconnected from political parties appeared and started pressing state agencies for public services, improvements in the urban infrastructure, and the acknowledgment of civil rights. Both social scientists and politicians have considered this process extremely important in countries used to authoritarian political relationships even under civilian rule. Thus, many have described the social movements as generating a way of doing one more democratic in its procedures and more popular in its basis; and one that would inaugurate a new way of relating to state apparatuses and political institutions, especially political parties. In this article I analyze a debate among five leaders of one type of popular association that became important in the 1970s in Brazil, and which both observers and members considered to represent a way of doing politics. This type of association is called Sociedades de Amigos de Bairro (SAB), literally Neighborhood-Friends Associations, based in the poor working-class areas of Brazil's big cities. I do not focus my analysis on the content of the opinions expressed during the debate. Nor do I analyze the participants' conceptions of politics, their roles as working-class leaders, or their methods of organizing political participation-subjects about which they express considerable disagreement.' Rather, I focus on how their opinions and disagreements were voiced; that is, on the discourse strategies they employed to express opinions and disagreements, and to deal with conflicts. As a starting point for the analysis, I use Gumperz's (1982) understanding of a communicative event in which interpretation will be negotiated and interactions established. In the case of the debate I study, the analysis of discourse strategies suggests how the possibility of expressing political opinions and disagreements in a political discussion, in an interclass context, was negotiated among the participants. As a consequence, the analysis reveals how political and interclass relationships are shaped in Brazilian society. It indicates not only the complexities and difficulties involved in attempts to change political practices, but also the limitations that people face in the construction of a way of doing politics in