Matias Spektor & Ryan Berger – CNN, 07/31/2013
Brazil’s easygoing and upbeat international image has been upended in recent weeks. Popular demonstrations burst into the mainstream last month, when resentment over a nine-cent increase in bus fares intensified into an outpouring of anger on the nation’s streets at insufficient public services and rampant political corruption.
The protests continued last week in Rio de Janeiro to coincide with the first international trip of Pope Francis’s papacy. And they seem to have broad support among the public – a recent survey by Ibope indicated that 89 percent of Brazilians support the demonstrations.
What is happening in Brazil has undertones of discontent seen in Chile, where students have staged ongoing rallies for education reform, and Turkey, where mostly young protestors initially occupied a park over urban redevelopment plans and then railed against heavy-handed governance.