Well, I didn't say everything was caused by austerity. I said austerity made it worse.
Social and infrastructure spending might have been high, but I think they were actually insufficient. Politics and economics are too skewed to the right in Brazil. Look at our budget surpluses for the last few decades:
It is a matter of personal opinion, after all. Anyway, I took the trouble to enumerate the ten largest parties in the brazilian congress and got their political position from Wikipedia (so as not to corrupt it with my own ideas):
PT - Centre-left;
PMDB - Centre;
PSDB - Centre (implemented neoliberal agenda in the 1990s);
PP - Centre-right/Right;
PSD - Centre-right;
PR - Centre;
PSB - Centre-left/Left;
PTB - Centre;
DEM - Centre-right (this I find hard to believe);
PRB - Centre-right.
This is the most absurd out of touch with reality statement I've read this week.
Brazil has 30+ parties almost all with "social" or "socialist" in their name. It's 50 shades of red down here.