Tens of thousands of Brazilian students and teachers are blasting far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's education funding cuts with widespread street protests around the country, from the Amazon to the deep south.

"This isn't just an attack on universities.  It is going to affect all levels of education," said Rodrigo Iacovini, an urban planner while marching in Sao Paulo.  "We knew it would be bad - but not this bad," he added, "Unfortunately, they have shown themselves to be not just a conservative government, but a completely incompetent conservative government that is utterly detached from the Brazilian reality."

Programs like "University for all" and "Science without borders" were created by the Left-wing administrations of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.  But despite the very obvious good these programs have accomplished - lifting thousands out of poverty and training new scientists in more advanced nations like the United States and Europe - Brazil has undergone profound political change.  Massive media campaigns and political prosecutions creating cynicism and desperation among voters coupled with economic recession and official corruption.  Hence, the swing to the right, to a president known for making hateful, homophobic, misogynist, racist remarks rather than actually having any policy successes.

When the funding cuts turned out to be far deeper than the worst fears, students expressed their shock with massive protests on 15 May - only to be belittled by Bolsonaro as "useful idiots" and "imbeciles".  He later walked that back, but only a little, saying students were naive "kids" who "didn't even know what they were doing" because they were being manipulated by their teachers.

This week's protests showed the students rejected by dismissed by Bolsonaro.

"It gives me hope that it is possible to resist this government's regressions," said Iacovini, "Brazilian people are starting to see that the threat this administration poses is a threat to all of us, not just to others."