Not too long ago, Brazilians might have been counted as the most optimistic people in the world. From 2008 to 2013, as the United States and Europe grappled with the aftermath of a crisis wrought by blind trust in unfettered finance, Brazil’s income per person grew 12 percent after inflation. Wages soared. The poverty rate plummeted. Even income inequality narrowed.

Brazil remained only a high-middle-income country, in the technospeak of the International Monetary Fund. But for the first time in forever, the eternal “country of tomorrow,” as Brazilians often ruefully described their nation, saw itself instead as a rampant member of the emerging cohort of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) — maybe even closer than China to making the jump into the ranks of the world’s richest nations.

And then it didn’t happen.

Between 2015 and 2017, the Brazilian economy is expected to shrink 8 percent, in the I.M.F.’s estimation. That is deeper than the contraction of the early 1980s, which began what in Brazil and much of Latin America is still known as the “lost decade.”

Unemployment hit 11 percent in the first quarter. Brazilians are so angry that they are about to impeach their president. The development of Brazil into an advanced economy — once tantalizingly within sight — again seems more like an elusive mirage.