Four o’clock in the afternoon may be called Miller Time or Happy Hour here in the U.S, but in the $50-per-night Rio de Janeiro hotel I was staying, guests knew it was Caipirinha time. From my surprisingly roomy second-floor balcony overlooking the affluent and SoHo-like Ipanema neighborhood, I could almost see the beach two blocks away.

The painful rout of Brazil’s soccer team by Germany may be a metaphor for the deeper political losses that Brazil has experienced in the past year. Last summer students were marching down the streets of major cities like Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Sao Paulo protesting higher transport costs.These demonstrations, coupled with public outcries about the cost of hosting a World Cup and an Olympics in 2016 marked a turning point in the Brazilian success story.