On Sunday (January 1) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, mononymously known as Lula, was sworn in as Brazil’s president for a record third term. He was previously president from 2002 to 2010, leaving office with an 83 per cent approval rating only due to Brazil’s presidential term constraints.
Lula inherits a polarised Brazilian society on the back of a closely contested election against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsanaro. The economy is in its worst condition in years with pandemic-induced precarity and rising commodity prices key issues that he needs to address. Also, his approach towards the conservation of the Amazon rainforest, notoriously mistreated by his predecessor, will be crucial.
However, supporters are confident of Lula’s competence, often citing his origins and upbringing as reasons to have faith in the 77-year old. Unlike all of Brazil’s previous presidents, Lula hails from the working class. His relatability, charisma and sincere dedication towards Brazil’s less-privileged populations has been crucial to his political success and popularity over the years.
The Indian Express takes a deeper look.
Hardships shaped Lula’s politics
Lula was one of eight children born into a farming family in Brazil’s northeast region. When his parents realised that they could not feed eight children with their meagre farm income, Lula, six siblings and his mother moved to the port town of Santos near Sao Paulo. They would later move to Sao Paulo.
Lula’s childhood was difficult. He dropped out of school in the fifth standard to help his family survive, initially working as a shoe-shiner on the streets of Sao Paulo. He would also work as an office boy, running various errands. In his teens, Lula got a job in a factory where he lost his left little finger in a machinery accident at the age of 17. The family of six lived in the backroom of a bar, where drunks would often puke and piss, and rains would bring all sorts of creatures in.
Lula’s rise as a union leader
A young Lula was a football fan with little interest in politics. However the grind of his factory work as well as the repressive regime in Brazil during the 1970s pushed him towards political awakening. As he witnessed the daily suffering of his working class compatriots, Lula would become active in workers’ unions.
A pivotal moment in his life would come in 1975 when one of Lula’s brothers was captured and tortured by the security forces for his dissident activities.That year, Lula was elected as the president of Brazil’s union of metal workers.
He became Brazil’s most famous union leader after organising a bunch of strikes in 1979 challenging the country’s dictatorial military government. He was imprisoned for a month after a kangaroo court found these strikes illegal, only adding to his popularity with the masses. Many compared him to Poland’s Lech Walesa.
Founding the Workers’ Party
In 1980, Lula, other working class leaders, public intellectuals and artists founded a pluralistic left-wing party called Partido dos Trabalhadores (TP) or the Workers’ Party. This party brought together trade unionists, intellectuals, artists and liberation theology practitioners, among others and posed the most credible challenge to Brazil’s military regime in years.
Lula first ran for office in 1982, for the state government of São Paulo, and lost. This loss almost led to him quitting politics if not for Cuban leftist leader Fidel Castro. According to Lula’s biography, Castro said to Lula, “Listen, Lula … you don’t have the right to abandon politics. You don’t have the right to do this to the working class… Get back into politics!”
The 1980s would eventually be better for Lula and Brazil overall – as the military’s grip on the country weakened, Lula was elected to the Brazilian Congress in 1986. In the Congress Lula and his Worker’s Party helped draft the new Brazilian constitution, strengthening workers’ rights.
However, despite his popularity, electoral success at the national level eluded Lula. He would lose three elections after military dictatorship ended (1989, 1994, 1998) till success would finally beckon in 2002.
Brazil’s most popular president ever
Lula’s 2002 victory was a historic triumph for the working classes. Here was a man who held the highest office in the country but could relate to the everyday lives and struggles of ordinary Brazilians. “I cried so much,” Fernando Morais, Lula’s close friend and biographer, told the Guardian in 2022.
Lula’s presidency is remembered as one of Brazil’s finest. His reign saw an economic boom as well as mass-scale social welfare programmes that lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. He invested heavily in nutrition, housing and education. His Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) programme was extremely popular, providing targeted families with monthly allowances for food, gas and schooling, drawing from things he wished he himself had in his childhood.
He was also lauded internationally for his efforts to conserve the Amazon rainforest.
A tough decade and a miraculous return to power
Lula left the presidency in 2010 with soaring popularity. However, the 2010s was a dreary decade for Brazil. Soon after Lula stepped down, his successor Dilma Roussef got embroiled in multiple corruption scandals. Brazil’s economy also entered into recession. In 2016, Roussef was unceremoniously impeached with many observers calling it a political coup.
Lula himself was having a hard time. In 2011, Lula himself was diagnosed with throat cancer, undergoing several rounds of chemotherapy. Then in 2018, the former president was arrested on charges of corruption. His arrest was divisive. While Brazil’s elites including its military was fully for it, Lula’s supporters themselves alleged a larger political agenda.
In 2019, The Intercept published leaked Telegram messages between the judge in Lula’s case and the lead prosecutor in his case in which they allegedly conspired to convict Lula to prevent his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election. 2018, saw far right leader, isolationist and darling of Brazil’s industrial lobbies, Jair Bolsanaro come to power.
Lula would spend 580 days behind bars, returning to contest the 2022 elections after the Brazilian Supreme Court overthrew his conviction in 2019.
