Skateboarders sit together on Paulista Avenue during a demonstration in Sao Paulo on June 20, 2013. The mass protests across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances from costly stadiums and corrupt politicians to high taxes and shoddy schools, and spread to more than 100 cities.MAURICO LIMA/The New York Times
The widespread protests in Brazil vividly show that, for all the country's success as an emerging economic power, its winning bids for both the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 have strained the country's ability to match the growing expectations of its population, especially those of modest incomes.
A massive investment in sports infrastructure is underway, while roads, transit, policing, governance and utilities that Canadians would take for granted are inadequate or non-existent. Back in 2009, the president at the time, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva was on the verge on tears and alarmed as well as honoured, when the Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro. His anxiety was well-founded.
Unfortunately, Brazil will need to go even deeper into debt than it already is, in order to overcome the severe infrastructure deficit. The protests began with outrage at a large transit-fare increase; it has been revoked – which will make the needed public investment all the more difficult.
President Dilma Rousseff, Mr. Lula's chosen successor, is the leader of a moderate left-wing party. Brazil has acquired great wealth, mostly from commodities, but prosperity is still not widely experienced, as it is in Canada, the United States and northwestern Europe. Ms. Rousseff has professed her solidarity with the protests, which are mostly directed at state and municipal governments. But the Workers Party has been in power at the federal level for 11 years, and Ms. Rousseff can hardly disassociate herself and her government from the condition of the country as a whole.
Brazil is not a case of "bread and circuses," because the bread – that is, the consumer economy – is largely missing. The sports events will go on, and at the end of the day a surge of national pride can be expected to accompany those global events, especially if Brazil's athletes seize on the hometown advantage. The challenge to create public infrastructure will remain.