08/16/2021 11:57 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 08/16/2021 11:57 AM
The Brazilian publicist Duda Mendonça, famous for having led the publicity of the victorious campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002 and advised the former Argentine presidents Carlos Menem and Eduardo Duhalde,
died this Monday at the age of 77
in São Paulo, a victim of cancer in the brain, his doctors reported.
Mendonça, considered a revolutionary in advertising and political marketing, became famous in Argentina for running a campaign in 1999 called
"Menem did it,"
a propaganda summary of Carlos Menem's presidency at the end of his second term.
The propaganda, it became known later, was a copy of the campaign jingle "Maluf que fez" (Maluf did it), which brought the right-wing politician Paulo Maluf to the intendancy of São Paulo in 1992.
Mendonça
also advised the Duhalde-Ramón Ortega formula in the final stretch of the 1999 campaign,
who in October 1999 lost the elections against Fernando de la Rúa-Carlos "Chacho" Alvarez.
Duda Mendonça with Lula da Silva in one of the campaigns led by the publicist.
Photo EFE.
He also worked in 1998 with José Manuel de la Sota
in his campaign for the Cordovan governor.
But the great job in Brazil was to have commanded the campaign that brought Lula to the presidency in the 2002 elections against José Serra: it was Duda Mendonça who suggested a version of "peace and love", of dialogue, a brand that forced the former metallurgist to wear a jacket and tie and win over the middle sectors.
José Eduardo Cavalcanti Mendonça, a native of the state of Bahia, was detained several times and fined for organizing cockfights, which, he said publicly, were his passion.
The publicist was accused of receiving an undeclared $ 3 million from the Workers' Party campaign in the Mensalao scandal but admitted that it was a case of tax evasion and not money laundering, with which he was criminally acquitted.
Mendonça died in the Hospital Sirio Libanés de San Pablo.
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