RIO DE JANEIRO — Students are taking over Rio de Janeiro schools to protest crippling education cuts, while the politician who helped bring the Summer Olympics to this city is battling allegations that he pocketed millions in bribes.



Grenade blasts from drug-gang battles echo through Leblon, the seaside bastion of the city’s elite. Even the governor’s daughter was recently mugged at gunpoint outside her home.

When Brazil’s new leader, Michel Temer, took the reins of the nation this month — a milestone in the caustic fight to oust President Dilma Rousseff, who faces an impeachment trial — he promised a new day of “national salvation.”

But what Mr. Temer did not mention is that his political party and its allies have wielded immense power here in the oil-rich state of Rio de Janeiro for most of the past decade — and this place needs a whole lot of saving, too.