(CNN) — Nine cents have been enough to make tens of thousands of Brazilians cry foul for a week.
For the demonstrators who have transformed streets in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte into protest battlegrounds, it isn’t so much that the price of a bus ticket went up from 3.00 to 3.20 reais ($1.38 to $1.47).
The small bump in fare was the straw that broke the camel’s back in a much larger issue, and protesters plan to march again Tuesday to vent their anger.
They say the hike is just one more example of how government nickel-and-dimes the poorest out of their money, then throws it out on lavish, high-profile projects.
Brazil is building massive stadiums and revamping infrastructure ahead of the soccer World Cup, which it hosts next year. Two years after that, it will host the 2016 Olympic Games.
Late Monday, demonstrators stormed state capital buildings in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. They set fire outside the one in Sao Paolo.
They faced off with riot police, erected barricades, fled clouds of tear gas and dodged rubber bullets — as they did last week.
Rowdy demonstrators also tried to overtake the National Congress in the nation’s capital Brasilia, but police held them at bay, Agencia Brasil reported.
Social injustice
Demonstrator Douglas Pinheiro was picked out of a crowd of thousands in the city of Victoria late Monday after police thought he was one of the protest leaders.
He convinced them that he wasn’t, and they let him go.
For Pinheiro, the social justice theme of the protests goes deeper than just taxing and spending.
“We are also protesting alongside health workers, who are protesting against the poor state of the country’s health system, students protesting against the education system,” he said.
Protesting hundreds of miles south of Pinheiro in Rio de Janeiro, Fernando Jones echoed his sentiments.
“They destroyed schools to build parking lots for stadiums; hospitals are overcrowded; people are hungry on the streets,” he complained.
The core protest group, the Free Fare Movement, demands public transportation be made available free of charge. But they have been joined by left-wing protesters and disgruntled citizens.
In an allusion to the Occupy Wall Street movement, some of the protesters donned the iconic “Vendetta” masks, a male face with pointy mustache and beard.
Occupy and Anonymous Brazil are both backing the demonstrations on their websites and Facebook pages.
Free Fare boasted a turnout of 100,000 Monday in Sao Paolo alone. Agencia Brasil reported a turnout of about one third as many.
Presidential backing
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff offered protesters words of encouragement.
“Peaceful demonstrations are legitimate and part of democracy. It is right for the youth to protest,” she said in a statement Monday.
As a member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, the president has fought for social justice herself.
Former President Lula da Silva, also a Workers’ Party member, came out in support for the protests on his Facebook page.
He hoped that demonstrators and officials would negotiate public transit prices poor Brazilians can afford.
At just under $340 a month, minimum wage in Brazil about one third of that in the United States.
It makes a $1.50 bus ticket all the more expensive.
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