Lula: Warrior of the Brazilian people
Brazil is a fascinating country. It’s one of the biggest countries by landmass, has one of the largest populations, it’s the most biodiverse country in the world and is home to the most thriving cities and picturesque landscape, and yet it is rarely talked as the geographical wonder that is. Its politics do not fail to compete with the excitement of the rest of the country.
When I first learned about Brazilian politics roughly a year and a half ago it was mainly through journalists such as the late Michael Brooks, and Glenn Greenwald. This was at the time when the Lula Livre (free Lula) movement was in full swing and it resonated with me deeply as through the story of Lula I found hope in what could be achieved by a progressive government. While my research into Brazilian politics has since gone deeper, my fascination and in the field of politics with the former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has only been rivalled by Senator Bernie Sanders, and I know I am not the only one who thinks this way. This is an underdog story of how a factory worker became the most popular president in the world and then watched it all come crashing down.
The story of Brazilian democracy is one that sounds eerily familiar with other Latin American countries, as it was one of the victims of Operation condor (Which I have written about before). The setting is 1960, Jânio Quadros is democratically elected president of Brazil but due to increased opposition, he resigns in the same year as he believes his resignation will boost his popularity and allow him to return to office. This doesn’t happen. This means that his vice president João Goulart takes over as president, João was from the Brazilian labour party and therefore he was a left-winger, and so (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) was overthrown in a 1964 coup that established a military dictatorship backed by the United States. The Brazilian dictatorship was particularly brutal as unlike the Argentinian and Chilean dictatorships, it tended not to outright kill people, instead, they used unspeakable methods of torture to leave a message to anyone else that wanted to go against the government. That’s not to say the dictatorship wouldn’t kill, an estimated 421 people were extrajudicially murdered by the Brazilian government. Naturally, there was resistance to the brutal regime, some of this came from the guerrilla fighters, of which future president Dilma Rousseff fought with. But the labour movement also fought back against the government, with strikes taking place to resist the regime. One of these lead strike organisers was a young Lula, who found himself organising with local unions. Lula came from a working-class background and worked in these steel factories, he lost a finger working there. as a union organiser he rose through the ranks of the labour movement and began organising strikes, Lula was arrested for these strikes and spent a month in prison. in 1984 Lula founded with a few others, the worker's party (in Portuguese Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT which I will now refer to it as) it was a left-wing and progressive party. Lula also took part in the “elections now” movement for free elections. The military dictatorship fell in 1985, and free elections were finally held in 1989 marking a huge victory for the Brazilian people.
Lula ran as the PT candidate in 1989 in the first free elections and to many people’s shock, Lula qualified for the second round, narrowly beating the Democratic Labour party candidate by less than a point, however, he failed to win the second round and Fernando Collor de Mello became president. Lula ran again in 1994, where he lost by a large margin, he only achieved 27% of the votes. The same story in 1998, despite him gaining votes, he still ended up losing. However in 2002 things were changing, economic ruin engulfed Brazil, the pink tide was starting to take over in Latin America, and Lula moved PT to a more pragmatic position, as voters feared Lula would ruin the economy he had to move more to the centre-left as opposed to PT’s traditional left. He courted the centre-right liberal party and appointed their candidate as his vice president. That being said he did not stray from the parties leftist roots as his coalition included the Communist Party of Brazil and the party of national mobilisation, two firmly left parties. These changes to the Brazilian political climate paid off in Lula’s favour, and he won the 2002 election, with 61% of the votes, thus began Lula’s presidency and where our story truly begins.
As President, Lula embarked on a mission to eliminate poverty. Coming from an impoverished community he felt the pain of Brazilians living under poor circumstances, Lula also inherited a very unequal Brazil, the Brazilian rich lived like kings, while the poor lived in squalor. Lula sought to change this, and throughout Lula’s presidency, poverty took a sharp drop, going from 41% when he took office in 2003, to 24% when he left in 2011. The Brazilian GDP grew during his presidency meaning he could afford many of the social programs he put in place to combat poverty and hunger. Although literacy rates were not as much as a problem as they were in neighbouring countries, the national literacy rate still grew during a Lula presidency. Lula also was keen on the eradication of hunger, so he started the Fome Zero (zero hunger) campaign, this was a campaign that provided aid to the poorest families and increased the number of cheap restaurants in poor areas, as well as educating people on eating habits. The program was conditional on school attendance so it also led to higher education rates. In an outrageously unequal country, income inequality went down. Brazil became the world’s eighth-largest economy under Lula. civil unions for same-sex couples were recognised under Lula’s presidency as were municipal protections against LGBT discrimination and in 2004 the Lula government launched Brazil sem Homophobia (Brazil without homophobia), and although he was out of power in 2013 under the PT party through a supreme court ruling, Brazil legalised same-sex marriage nationwide (Before the UK or US!). Unions and labour protections under Lula also increased as never seen before. So domestically while he may not have been able to embark on as ambitious programs as his Neighbours Evo Morales or Hugo Chavez, Lula’s presidency did more than any other Brazilian president to lift millions out of poverty and revolutionise the country into a modern nation using left-wing policy and progressive change.
In terms of foreign policy, Lula had close ties with other pink tide presidents. And during the Pink tide, Lula was identified as the representative of the centre-left along with Nestor Kirchner and Michelle Bachellette, whereas Hugo Chavez represented the hard left, along with Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. However, these presidents were all on the left and praised and met with each other constantly with Hugo Chavez referring to Lula as a “fellow gladiator in the anti-imperialist struggle.” Lula did not go the way of other pink tide leaders and sour relations with the united states, he recognised the importance of maintaining a relationship with them, but at the same time criticised the Iraq war, and sought to expand the number of trade partners Brazil had. Lula also played an important role in mediating with Iran as well as being seen as one of the most important factors in bringing Iran to the table for the nuclear deal although that deal took place after he had left office. In 2010 under Lula Brazil voted to recognise the state of Palestine. Lula also attending the first meeting of BRIC, which is a collection of developing countries including Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa has since been added. clearly, Lula was a very powerful figure on the world stage and had a great influence on foreign relations. for these reasons as well as his domestic policy he left office with a massive 87% approval rating. His approval rating was so high that during a meeting with other world leaders Obama said about Lula “That’s my man right here, Love this guy. He’s the most popular politician on earth. It’s because of his good looks.”
Lula Left office on 1st January 2011. He endorsed Dilma Rousseff to be the next PT president and she won 56% of the vote, Rousseff had been a member of a Marxist guerrilla group during the military dictatorship until she was captured and tortured, one of the most notable and saddest moments of her presidency was when in 2014 she read the report into torture during the military dictatorship through tears, as the number of deaths attributed to the regime was revealed as well as the fact that the US and the UK had trained the torturers in this period. Despite her radical roots she was more to the centre than Lula and had more socially conservative positions, but despite this, she still was a solid centre-left president and kept with the pink tide tradition. She was re-elected in 2014,
this, however, is where PT’s downfall came, and what followed was an unrelenting campaign of fear, corruption, misguided anger that brought consequences that still have not healed in Brazil today. A scandal took hold of Brazil, operation car wash as it is now known gripped the nation, operation car wash is much too expansive to go into detail about here but it is fundamental in the story of Lula and PT. The scandal suggested that many members of the Brazilian government were corrupt, and centred around money laundering schemes, due to Dilma’s handling of this scandal, she was impeached, in what critics of the impeachment recognise as being fuelled by misogyny and a political coup. I fall into the camp of agreeing that the impeachment was certainly a political action and was seen as an excuse to end 14 years of left-wing rule in Brazil. It would be wrong and irresponsible to suggest that there was no corruption in PT or any other Brazilian party, but operation car wash was essentially hijacked by the Brazilian right to villainize PT, there were many indictments and the Brazilian people turned against PT. Many right-wing figures came to benefit from the scandal including Judge Sergio Morro who was the head of the case, and far-right congressman Jair Bolsonaro, both were as corrupt as the people they were accusing but it didn’t matter, genuine anger at corruption was weaponised to crush the Brazilian left.
The 2018 election was set to be Lula running against Bolsonaro, Lula announced his candidacy to run and began to drum up support, despite the corruption protests, Lula was leading in the polls, he was still the most popular political figure in Brazil. But Lula was conveniently indicted on corruption charges, despite maintaining his innocence, Lula turned himself in to the authorities, but not before giving an incredibly powerful and moving speech which I highly recommend you watch, I will hyperlink it here. The best line from the speech is “those in power can cut 1 maybe 2 roses, but they will never stop the arrival of spring, and our fight is in search of spring”. Lula was arrested and on the 1st of September, his candidacy was rejected 6–1 by the supreme court. He endorsed the PT candidate Fernando Haddad who was not as well
known as Lula, and the negative image of PT due to the corruption scandal did not improve his image. In a show of left-wing unity, Haddad picked Manuela d’Ávila of the communist party to be his vice president. other Left-wing candidates also ran in the race such as Guilherme Boulos of the socialism and liberty party, who attended pro-Lula events with Haddad and d’Ávila.
Their opponent was the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. When I use the word fascist to describe him, I do not believe I am using hyperbole. Bolsonaro has a very positive view of the military dictatorship that tortured and killed its way through a reign of terror. Bolsonaro said that the military dictatorship “led to a more sustainable and prosperous Brazil” and said “the error of the dictatorship was that it tortured, but did not kill”, he also said he was dedicating his vote to impeach President Dilma to the person who oversaw the facility she was tortured at. Bolsonaro is also famous for his anti-LGBT views, he appeared on a show hosted by Stephen fry where Fry would debate various anti-LGBT activists, in the debate Bolsonaro states that a recent killing of a young gay teen had been exaggerated to “create a public sob story”. Most famously Bolsonaro also stated he would rather his son die in a car crash than be gay, he also stated “If your child starts to become like that, a little gay, you take a whip and you change their behaviour.” Bolsonaro also told a female member of congress that she was “not worth raping; she is very ugly”. Another incident occurred when during the presidential campaign Marielle Franco, a politician from the socialism and liberty party was murdered, allegedly by supporters of Bolsonaro. Every candidate condemned the killing except Bolsonaro, his campaign stated the reason for this was that his views on the topic would be too “controversial”. But Bolsonaro remained popular because of his law and order and anti-crime stance, his pro-gun stance and his opposition to the corruption within the PT party (ironically his son was indicted for money laundering earlier this month), his popularity also experienced a boost after he was stabbed on the 6th September, nearly fatally, and the attacker had been a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party, this was portrayed as the fault of the left and so Bolsorano went up in the polls. Bolsonaro won the 2018 election with 55% of the votes.
The election of Bolsorano was a terrible defeat for the Brazilian left, but hope is not yet lost. After the arrest of Lula the Lula livre movement took off with supports around the world, and people such as Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, Evo Morales, Jeremy Corbyn, Danny Glover, French President François Hollande, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez and many others. They all believed that Lula had wrongfully been imprisoned on bogus charges to prevent him from winning a third term, these suspicions were proven to be correct when journalist Glenn Greenwald leaked chat messages from huge names from within operation car wash including lead judge Sergio Morro that proved Lula’s arrest was politically motivated, this sparked a rejuvenation in the Lula Livre movement.
At this stage I was already into Brazilian politics and I was a big supporter of the Lula Livre movement, and on the 8th of November 2019 I was in Ireland visiting my family, I opened up my phone after I had turned it off from the journey over, and all I could see was two words flooding my screen, “LULA LIVRE” that day Lula had been freed by the Brazilian supreme court, while his criminal charges have not been dropped he is now free, and his innocence is now internationally recognised.
Lula remains to this day a member of PT and a constant critic of Bolsonaro’s government, Bolsonaro’s approval rating rose during the coronavirus pandemic as his government gave generous relief funds, but recent polls suggest this may be dropping as he continues to downplay the virus. Manuela d’Ávila and Guilherme Boulos are running in mayoral elections that take place this Sunday in Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo respectively, with the polls showing Manuela will probably win the election and Boulos will make it to the second round at least. More good news comes in the form of Donald Trump losing re-election, Trump was one of Bolsonaro’s biggest allies and according to sources, this loss is giving Bolsonaro second thoughts about running for a second term. Especially as a new pink tide seems to be rising, with AMLO in Mexico, Alberto Fernandez in Argentina, Luis Acre’s win in Bolivia last month and Chile’s recent decision to scrap its neoliberal constitution, the lefts new rise in Latin America is reportedly making Bolsonaro nervous. So having read this article, remember Lula’s achievements, how as a socialist and progressive he won historic victories and lifted tens of millions out of poverty, remember his humanitarian foreign policy, remember his commitment to fighting for economic and social justice, even when in jail, and remember the Brazilian left in their fight against fascism. The world could use more leaders like Lula.
