SÃO PAULO, Brazil — SINCE early June, protests that began out of anger over public transit fare increases have spread across Brazil, filling the streets of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and dozens of other cities with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. On June 13, the police cracked down violently and the protests mushroomed. Finally, after seven days, the government of President Dilma Rousseff pushed governors and mayors to cancel the fare increases they had presented as the inevitable price of a modern market economy.

The cost of public transportation for a family living in Rio or São Paulo is, proportionally, higher than in New York or Paris. Yet, the service delivered is humiliating. In 2009, security guards of a train company that services the Rio metropolitan area used whips on passengers during rush hour crowding. The mayor of Rio has proudly declared that during his tenure not a cent is being spent on subsidizing public transportation. Yet he was able to find $560 million of public money to spend on the renovation of the iconic Maracanã stadium to meet the requirements of next year’s FIFA World Cup.

At a time when federal, state and municipal taxes eat up 36 percent of Brazil’s gross domestic product without providing public services minimally compatible with what is expected from government, at least $13 billion is being poured into 12 soccer stadiums to host the World Cup. An additional $12 billion is being spent on projects to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

But delusionary modernism has its pitfalls. The same day the first protests started in São Paulo, the city’s mayor and the state’s governor happened to be in Paris trying to land yet another global mega event — the 2020 World’s Fair. A few days later, when the protesters were climbing atop the Congress building in Brasília, a landmark of Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture, the president of the House of Representatives was visiting Moscow.