Brazilian protests continued on Friday in Belo Horizonte, where plans to increase public transportation fares were the focus.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — With cities across the nation heaving in the biggest protests in decades, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil convened an emergency meeting of top aides on Friday and announced that she would pursue measures touching on some of the grievances stirring the unrest, including a national transportation overhaul and the use of all oil royalties for education.
"The Brazilian people must come to their senses. Protest, yes. But let your voices be heard at the ballot box."PJM, Florida
But she has floated her ambitious proposal before — to use oil revenues to improve the beleaguered public schools — only to run up against stiff resistance from state governors who rely on the money to meet their budgets, leaving her ability to enact it in doubt.
Her pledge came as the government put forward other small measures as well, like injecting new money to bolster transportation and pledging to better scrutinize financial corruption within its ranks.
“Brazil fought a lot to become a democratic country, and it is fighting a lot to become a country that it is more just,” Ms. Rousseff said.
In a show of resolve, Ms. Rousseff and other authorities also lashed out at the growing violence among some of the protesters, denouncing recent attacks on government buildings, acknowledging their concerns about security ahead of a visit by the pope and, in at least one case, threatening to deploy the army to the streets if the demonstrations continued to intensify.
“I assure you, we will maintain order,” Ms. Rousseff said.
More than a million people protested in scores of cities across the country on Thursday night to excoriate the government on a broad array of issues, including political corruption, the high cost of living and the billions of dollars being devoted to building stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in a country where poverty is pervasive and public education is often in shambles.
But while most of the protesters have vented their frustrations peacefully — even joyfully at times, singing and celebrating what they call a mass awakening across the country — a violent subset has stormed public buildings, set fires and smashed storefronts, bus shelters, traffic lights and some A.T.M.’s.
In Rio de Janeiro, José Mariano Beltrame, the official in charge of security policies, said that if the unrest intensified, the army could be asked to increase patrols in various parts of the city to “protect the integrity of people and of public and private and public property.”
The concern over the violent turn among protesters was enough that Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to Ms. Rousseff, acknowledged it could affect the visit of Pope Francis to Brazil, which is scheduled for July.
“We have a series of complications and concerns,” Mr. Carvalho told reporters in the capital, Brasília. “The situation is evolving so fast that we can’t predict what will happen.”
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Social Media Plays Crucial Role in Brazil's ‘Vinegar Revolt’ Protests
Residents of the city of São Paulo walked away from Facebook and headed to the protests on June 13. This photo, widely circulated on blogs and Twitter accounts, was collected by @NoMovimento during collaborative coverage of the protests in Sao Paulo.
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