Reuters) - As many as 200,000
demonstrators marched through the
streets of Brazil's biggest cities on
Monday in a swelling wave of protest
tapping into widespread anger at poor
public services, police violence and government corruption. The marches, organized mostly through
snowballing social media campaigns, blocked
streets and halted traffic in more than a half-dozen
cities, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo
Horizonte and Brasilia, where demonstrators
climbed onto the roof of Brazil's Congress building and then stormed it. Monday's demonstrations were the latest in a flurry
of protests in the past two weeks that have added
to growing unease over Brazil's sluggish economy, high inflation and a spurt in violent crime. While most of the protests unfolded as a festive
display of dissent, some demonstrators in Rio threw
rocks at police, set fire to a parked car and
vandalized the state assembly building. Vandals
also destroyed property in the southern city of
Porto Alegre. Around the country, protesters waved Brazilian
flags, dancing and chanting slogans such as "The
people have awakened" and "Pardon the
inconvenience, Brazil is changing." The epicenter of Monday's march shifted from Sao
Paulo, where some 65,000 people took to the
streets late in the afternoon, to Rio. There, as
protesters gathered throughout the evening,
crowds ballooned to 100,000 people, local police
said. At least 20,000 more gathered in Belo Horizonte. The demonstrations are the first time that Brazilians,
since a recent decade of steady economic growth,
are collectively questioning the status quo. BIG EVENTS LOOM The protests have gathered pace as Brazil is hosting
the Confederation's Cup, a dry run for next year's
World Cup soccer championship. The government
hopes these events, along with the 2016 Summer Olympics, will showcase Brazil as an emerging power on the global stage. Brazil also is gearing up to welcome more than 2
million visitors in July as Pope Francis makes his first
foreign trip for a gathering of Catholic youth in Rio. Contrasting the billions in taxpayer money spent
on new stadiums with the shoddy state of Brazil's
public services, protesters are using the
Confederation's Cup as a counterpoint to amplify
their concerns. The tournament got off to shaky
start this weekend when police clashed with demonstrators outside stadiums at the opening
matches in Brasilia and Rio. "For many years the government has been feeding
corruption. People are demonstrating against the
system," said Graciela Caçador, a 28-year-old
saleswoman protesting in Sao Paulo. "They spent
billions of dollars building stadiums and nothing on
education and health." More protests are being organized for the coming
days. It is unclear what specific response from
authorities - such as a reduction in the hike of
transport fares - would lead the loose collection of
organizers across Brazil to consider stopping them. For President Dilma Rousseff, the demonstrations
come at a delicate time, as price increases and
lackluster growth begin to loom over an expected
run for re-election next year. Polls show Rousseff still is widely popular,
especially among poor and working-class voters,
but her approval ratings began to slip in recent
weeks for the first time since taking office in 2011.
Rousseff was booed at Saturday's Confederations
Cup opener as protesters gathered outside. Through a spokeswoman, Rousseff called the
protests "legitimate" and said peaceful
demonstrations are "part of democracy." The
president, a leftist guerrilla as a young woman, also
said that it was "befitting of youth to protest." WIDE ARRAY OF GRIEVANCES Some were baffled by the protests in a country
where unemployment remains near record lows,
even after more than two years of tepid economic
growth. "What are they going to do - march every day?"
asked Cristina, a 43-year-old cashier, who declined
to give her surname, peeking out at the
demonstration from behind the curtain of a closed
Sao Paulo butcher shop. She said corruption and
other age-old ills in Brazil are unlikely to change soon. The marches began this month with an isolated
protest in Sao Paulo against a small increase in bus
and subway fares. The demonstrations initially
drew the scorn of many middle-class Brazilians
after protesters vandalized storefronts, subway
stations and buses on one of the city's main avenues. The movement quickly gained support and spread
to other cities as police used heavy-handed tactics
to quell the demonstrations. The biggest
crackdown happened on Thursday in Sao Paulo
when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in
clashes that injured more than 100 people, including 15 journalists, some of whom said they
were deliberately targeted. Other common grievances at Monday's marches
included corruption and the inadequate and
overcrowded public transportation networks that
Brazilians cope with daily. POLICE SHOW RESTRAINT The harsh police reaction to last week's protests
touched a nerve in Brazil, which endured two
decades of political repression under a military
dictatorship that ended in 1985. It also added to
doubts about whether Brazil's police forces would
be ready for next year's World Cup. The uproar following last week's crackdown
prompted Sao Paulo state Governor Geraldo
Alckmin, who first described the protesters as
"troublemakers" and "vandals," to order police to
allow Monday's march to proceed and not to use
rubber bullets. The protests are shaping up as a major political
challenge for Alckmin, a former presidential
candidate, and Sao Paulo's new mayor, Fernando
Haddad, a rising star in the left-leaning Workers'
Party that has governed Brazil for the past decade.
Haddad invited protest leaders to meet Tuesday morning, but has so far balked at talk of a bus fare
reduction. The resonance of the demonstrations underscores
what economists say will be a challenge for
Rousseff and other Brazilian leaders in the years
ahead: providing public services to meet the
demands of the growing middle class.

nice move by the Brazilians