Lula da Silva marries a militant sociologist of the PT in the middle of the campaign for the presidency of Brazil

Lula with Rosangela da Silva, in May 2022. DOUGLAS MAGNO (AFP)

No other wedding has been so announced in recent times in Brazil.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 76, married this Wednesday the woman he publicly presented upon leaving prison, Rosangela Silva, 55.

That day in 2019, the former president who is now running for a third term exultantly proclaimed to the crowd: “While I was in prison I managed the feat of getting a girlfriend who has even agreed to marry me.

She has courage”.

Known as Janja, she is a sociologist and veteran Workers' Party activist who accompanies Lula at rallies and campaign meetings.

It is not uncommon for her to speak at these events.

She is credited with modernizing Lula's discourse, incorporating issues of race, gender and the environment.

Five months before the elections, the couple has married in a civil and Catholic ceremony officiated by a well-known local priest, Father Dom Angelico. That is the only official information provided by the former president's team.

The rest of the details are known from the statements of relatives or from leaks to local journalists.

The wedding was held at a party venue in the south of São Paulo, reports the newspaper

.

Since they both wanted an intimate bond, deciding the guests was a real puzzle.

Lula has been accompanied by her five children, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, grandchildren, but not her dozens of nephews.

So that the list does not get out of hand, the couple agreed to invite only their friends.

That requirement has left out some of the men who have accompanied Lula for half a century in the front row of Brazilian politics.

They have also been accompanied by Lula's team, including his bodyguard.

Among those absent, the singer Chico Buarque, on a trip to Europe.

Janja is the third wife of Lula, who lost his first, Maria de Lourdes, in 1971 during the birth of what was to be his first child.

His second wife and mother of his children, Marisa, died in 2017, when he was already immersed in the judicial proceedings that were later annulled.

The former president is a romantic who repeats like a mantra that love will overcome hate.

The bride wore an off-white design signed by Helo Rocha.

It is a dress covered in handmade embroidery made by the women of a small town, Timbaúba dos Batistas, in Rio Grande do Norte, one of the states governed by the PT.

A classic cut that contrasts with the t-shirts with the pop image of Lula from the eighties that he likes to wear in the most informal political events.

To protect their privacy and maintain complete control over the image they project, they prohibited guests from entering the event with their mobile phones.

Lula has a head photographer, Ricardo Stuckert, who is the shadow of the former president and the author of the most commented photo of the couple.

Boa noite com essa lua cheia no Ceará!

Photo: Ricardo Stuckert pic.twitter.com/DX72mcXrKu

– Janja Lula Silva (@JanjaLula) August 23, 2021

The Silvas have married after having lived together since he regained his freedom.

They were installed in the apartment in São Bernardo, which was Lula's family home for decades, only to recently move to a bourgeois neighborhood in São Paulo.

Saying yes I do and doing it before a priest can be the culmination of a great love story or a political gesture before millions of voters in conservative Brazil.

Or both at the same time.

Evangelical women, mostly poor and black, are considered a crucial group in this election.

Janja has had a PT card since 1983, shortly after the party was founded.

She was then a teenager and he was a trade unionist who was fighting the dictatorship.

Over the years, he became the first worker to govern Brazil.

She developed her entire professional career in two public companies, the Itaipu hydroelectric plant and the Eletrobras electric plant, where she held high positions.

Shortly after Lula was released, his then-girlfriend asked for early retirement.

She was 53 years old.

The age at which Brazilian women retired on average until the last reform.

Lula's plan was to marry shortly after leaving prison, where he served 580 days for various corruption convictions that were overturned due to procedural errors.

But the event was delayed.

First, because of the pandemic and, later, because he was politically rehabilitated and immediately embarked on countless political efforts to build a candidacy.

Although the official campaign will only start in August, Lula has already begun touring Brazil in search of support to remove President Jair Bolsonaro from power.

Since he introduced her to his compatriots, the courtship has been very public, with a constant exchange of declarations of love at rallies or from his social networks.

This same Wednesday, while each one preened for the ceremony on their own, they proclaimed their love and happiness from their respective accounts on social networks.

He recently touched up her tuteira biography.

To “doña Lindú's son”, he added “Janja's fiancé”.

She's supposed to tweak it again during the three days off they're going to take for their honeymoon to update her status to "husband."

The former president, who exercises and stays in shape, has shown signs of exhaustion on some recent occasions because he has been in a frenetic activity for more than a year.

Almost every day he participates in public events or gives interviews on local radio stations throughout Brazil, a strategy that allows him to intervene in the national debate without depending on the big media, with which he has a conflictive relationship.

The priority interest of these interviews are not the listeners of those stations.

Because they are recorded and broadcast live on YouTube, they allow him to respond to burning issues and allow his team to broadcast selected clips to the millions who follow him on social media.

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