Garanhuns (Brasil), 1945
By Emir Sader
Lula was born Luiz Inácio da Silva in a small town in the Pernambuco hinterland. His mother, a farm worker with seven children, was illiterate. Like millions of his fellow Northeasterners in the 1950s and 1960s, she migrated to São Paulo, in the Southeast of Brazil. He took a vocational training course and began working as a mechanical lathe operator in the São Paulo metalworking industry in the late 1950s. During the military dictatorship in the 1970s, he became active in the union of his category in São Bernardo do Campo, Greater São Paulo. This marked the beginning of an unusual trajectory that would lead him, in 2003, thirty years and four presidential candidacies later, to become the first Brazilian of working-class origin to take office as President of the Republic.
In the union, Lula became the main leader of the resistance against the regime’s inflexible wage policy. He led the largest mobilizations against the dictatorship in the late 1970s. He was arrested, framed under the then-infamous National Security Law, had his union intervened, and his city was besieged by army troops (1982). But the metalworkers’ strikes, under his leadership, managed to defeat the dictatorship’s economic policy, paving the way for the regime’s exhaustion.
In the transition to democracy, he founded, with other union leaders, intellectuals, members of the Catholic left (influenced by Liberation Theology), and remnants of the 1960s and 1970s left-wing, the Workers’ Party (PT), of which he was a founder and president. He ran for governor of São Paulo in 1982, finishing in fourth place. He actively participated in the Direct Elections Now (Diretas Já) campaign for president. He was elected a federal deputy with a record vote to participate in the Constituent Assembly in 1986.
With a program focused on the extension of social rights, the suspension of external debt payments, and the democratization of the political system, the Workers’ Party (PT), under Lula’s leadership, began to grow throughout the turbulent 1980s as Brazil’s major popular party – alongside the founding of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), both closely linked to the party.
Near Victory in the First Direct Elections
Lula ran for president of the Republic in 1989, in the first direct election for that office since 1960. He defended the original PT program, with a strong class-based focus and critique of capitalism. In a historic campaign, which confirmed the party’s popularity in large cities and among intellectuals, artists, and growing sectors of the middle class, he made it to the second round, where he received support from all other left-wing sectors against Fernando Collor de Mello. He lost by a narrow margin, but from that moment on, he became the great national political hope, especially after Collor was ousted due to corruption charges.
Lula stepped down from the presidency of the PT and began preparing his program for the next presidential elections in 1994, at the Institute of Citizenship, which he directed. The program now had two central pillars: social justice – promoted by Lula through marches across Brazil’s poor regions – and ethics in politics – a theme that became particularly important after Collor’s downfall. Lula was the favorite when the government of Itamar Franco (Collor’s vice president), with Fernando Henrique Cardoso as Minister of Finance, launched the Real Plan. Similar to plans already being implemented in countries like Argentina and Mexico, with great electoral success, the Real Plan succeeded immediately in controlling inflation, gaining popular support. Cardoso then launched his candidacy for president in the next election, through a coalition between his PSDB and the PFL. Quickly, Cardoso surpassed Lula.
The traumatic defeat had a profound impact on the PT and its candidate, who had already been preparing to govern the country for the first time. From that moment, Lula led a process of securing “governability” for the PT, which meant adapting its ideas to the conditions of the Brazilian state and economy. He ran for president again in 1998, but with more moderate ideas, aiming to distance his image from the combative tone that his speeches had typically carried. He was defeated in the first round by Cardoso, despite having Leonel Brizola as his vice-presidential candidate.
The Campaign of Hope Against Fear
In the next elections, in 2002, when the failure of Cardoso’s government was already apparent, Lula ran for president again, stating that “this time, the last, he could not lose.” He formulated his program directly at the Institute of Citizenship and not at the PT. He also informed the party that he would accept the candidacy under the condition that he would have the freedom to make whatever alliances he deemed necessary for victory. He chose José Alencar, a textile businessman, as his vice-presidential candidate, hired a marketing professional to guide the campaign, and declared that no commitments would be broken – the Letter to the Brazilian People – when, during the electoral campaign, the financial capital launched a strong speculative attack on Brazil’s economy.
Lula triumphed in the 2002 elections with the slogan of “hope against fear” and the appeal of prioritizing social issues. However, it became clear in the composition of the government that the commitment made during the campaign implied prioritizing economic goals. Henrique Meirelles, a former international banker who had just been elected to Parliament by Cardoso’s party, was chosen for the strategic role of president of the Central Bank.
Although initially maintaining the discourse of the “fight against hunger” as a central focus, the government opted for targeted, assistential social policies rather than a general affirmation of social rights – which would have been insufficient to change the face of a country with very high poverty rates. Lula’s government did not prioritize social issues as promised because it maintained the economic policies inherited from Cardoso’s administration. It carried out a (counter)reform of Social Security, which decisively contributed to criticism and the distancing of social movements from the government.
The government’s foreign policy represented the greatest break from the previous administration, accentuating the regional integration process, making the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA) unfeasible, promoting the formation of the Group of 20, and creating a regional alliance spanning from Cuba and Venezuela, with Brazil as the central hub, to Uruguay and Argentina.
From the middle of his term, the government and the PT began to be accused of corruption cases. The “mensalão” crisis (the alleged monthly payments to allied deputies to secure a majority in Congress) and other subsequent scandals led to the replacement of ministers – including the government’s main political strategist, the Chief of Staff José Dirceu, and later the Minister of Finance, Antonio Palocci – and the leadership of the party. But above all, it deeply affected Lula and the PT’s ethical image. The right-wing opposition gained strength, supported by the private media monopoly, which maximized the denunciations to weaken Lula and prevent his re-election, which had been considered certain before the 2005 crisis.
The president responded by resorting to popular mobilizations to combat the opposition’s accusations. This maneuver, along with the positive effects of his government’s social policies, was largely responsible for his re-election in 2006, when he defeated the PSDB candidate, Geraldo Alckmin.
The allegations damaged the image of the PT, but not Lula’s. On the contrary, the president’s prestige continued to grow throughout his second term. His policy to fight hunger projected him as a major figure on the international stage. The government opened a series of embassies in the southern hemisphere – especially in Africa, to which Lula traveled several times – further enhancing his international prestige.
In the face of the international economic crisis that began in 2008, Lula decided to intensify public investments, strengthen state-owned banks, and expand income redistribution policies. Thanks to this strategy, Brazil, after experiencing some initial effects of the crisis, reacted positively and weathered the period without major disruptions. Lula ended his second term with over 90% approval, despite the media’s negative stance toward his government. The president chose Dilma Rousseff to succeed him, and she was elected in 2010.
Shortly after leaving the presidency, Lula was diagnosed with throat cancer. The treatment was successful, and he recovered. From then on, he focused his efforts on the Lula Institute, continuing work on relations with Latin America and Africa. At the Institute, he hosts politicians and personalities from around the world. Since leaving office, he has received hundreds of honorary doctorates from universities across various continents.
In 2014, he worked for Dilma Rousseff’s re-election. After that, his name began to be mentioned for a potential presidential candidacy in 2018.
