AP, Brasilia
Separated by only a boulevard, two rival camps of demonstrators in Brazil’s capital underscore the sharp ideological divide that is playing out in Congress as lawmakers debate whether to oust the president. On one side of Brasilia’s showcase Eixo Monumental, which cuts through the center of city and dead ends at Congress, several thousand supporters of embattled President Dilma Rousseff have pitched a tent city, sleeping in hammocks and eating rice and beans served by volunteers at communal kitchens.
Largely union members and land reform activists, and overwhelmingly poor, they have come by bus from across this continent-sized country to defend Rousseff and her left-leaning Workers’ Party, which they credit for unprecedented improvements in their lives. They call the impeachment debate in the nearby lower house of Congress that started Friday and is expected to go all weekend an attempt by Brazil’s elite to take back power after 13 years of Workers’ Party rule. “They’re trying to knock down what the Workers’ Party conquered, what we conquered,” said Francisco das Chagas, a 47-year-old mechanic who came from his home state of Alagoas, in the impoverished northeastern region that’s Rousseff’s stronghold. “It’s classist.”