Brazil sees the biggest protests since the end of its military dictatorship

DILMA ROUSSEFF had been bracing for a rough Sunday. Even so, the size of the throngs chanting “Dilma out” across Brazil on March 13th must have been a shock to the embattled president. The crowds of mostly middle-class protesters had been thinning since the first huge demonstrations a year ago, against her mismanagement of the economy and a bribery scandal at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil and gas giant, which has ensnared her left-wing Workers’ Party (PT).

No longer. In São Paulo the entire length of Avenida Paulista (2.8km, or 1.7 miles), the city’s main thoroughfare, was full. Protesters spilled onto parallel streets, forcing the police to close them off to traffic. Datafolha, a pollster, counted 500,000 people. (The police reckon 1.4m showed up.) On either estimate the numbers beat the previous record set in the Diretas Já (“direct elections now”) rallies, which helped topple Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1985.