Janja da Silva and Michelle Bolsonaro, two antagonistic first ladies for Brazil

The first lady of Brazil, Michelle Bolsonaro, and Lula da Silva's wife, Janja da Silva.Buda Mendes / Antonio Lacerda

The wives of the candidates for the presidency of Brazil have never been as prominent as in this election.

Michelle Bolsonaro and Rosangela da Silva, known as Janja

have fallen into the mud of politics and multiplied their appearances at campaign events.

One closes them with prayers to God;

the other, with a ditty of love and hope.

An abyss of personality and style separates them, but both have the same mission: to attract the decisive vote of women.

Janja da Silva, 56, is the

coordinator of her husband's agenda.

Married to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since May, she produced the new version of “Lula la,” the ubiquitous campaign theme.

She appears next to her, calls him “love”, sings and projects joy.

“I love this city, I love Rio de Janeiro… There is only one week left to deposit all the love and vote for Lula!” She said at a recent rally, dressed in blue and behind big horn-rimmed glasses.

He looked at her smiling sitting in her chair.

Twenty years his junior, Janja da Silva has rejuvenated the campaign of the five-time presidential candidate.

She is a sociologist, a teacher, a former worker at the Itaipu hydroelectric plant, one of the largest in the world, she has been a militant of the Workers' Party for four decades.

She began dating Lula in 2018, shortly after he was widowed by his second wife.

Love blossomed, even during the 580 days Lula spent in jail.

The first thing he did upon leaving prison was introduce his girlfriend to the world.

In addition to preaching love and peace, Da Silva is a harsh critic of the Government of Jair Bolsonaro.

In an act in Curitiba, the city in southern Brazil where he grew up, he called on the president for the hundreds of thousands of victims of covid-19, including his mother.

“Every time I see [the video of] the president imitating a person dying of suffocation from covid-19, it is as if I saw my mother die again and again,” she lamented emotionally.

Da Silva has said that she wants to "resignify" the position of first lady, and focus on priority problems for women such as gender violence.

Despite being more discreet than Da Silva, Michelle Bolsonaro, 40, is seen as decisive in the political trajectory of her husband.

The presidential couple met in 2007 when she was a secretary in the Chamber of Deputies and he was a marginal far-right legislator close to the military.

He also carried two divorces.

She, a fervent evangelical, opened the doors to the powerful religious vote.

They were first married civilly and in 2013 received God's blessing from the influential pastor Silas Malafaia.

Michelle convinced her husband to reverse the vasectomy so they could start a family.

When her husband took office, after a campaign in which he hardly participated, Michelle gave a speech in sign language—she volunteered with the deaf.

It was an unprecedented gesture in the history of Brazilian inaugurations and many thought that an era of more active first ladies was beginning.

It was not so.

For the past four years, Michelle has reverted to a low-key role.

That is, until her husband's re-election has been in serious trouble.

Bolsonaro needs it.

The 67-year-old president has rejection rates above 50% among women and seeks to change that bad image.

It is a giant challenge for someone who came to tell a deputy that she did not deserve to be raped "because she is ugly."

Michelle enters there, with her profile as a respectable family woman of hers.

It has appeared so much in Bolsonaro's propaganda that the Superior Electoral Court has vetoed videos for exceeding the time limits for follower participation.

The campaign tried to get around the order with a female narrator repeating Michelle's phrases.

The court again suspended the dissemination of the material.

Michelle has presented her husband as a man who supports women.

In a recent act, she highlighted that the Government had approved 70 laws in this regard, a number that has been questioned by the Brazilian media.

She said of him that he was a “technical” man and that she was more “spiritual”: “I think we complement each other, right?

It has to be that way, darlings.

The woman has to be the helper of the husband.”

Efforts have fallen on deaf ears most of the time.

A few weeks ago, on the esplanade in front of the presidential palace in Brasilia and with Michelle by his side, Bolsonaro repeated an invented word to refer to himself: "

", one who does not have erectile dysfunction.

He then called on supporters to compare the candidates' wives.

"There is nothing to discuss.

One is a woman of God, of a family”, he sentenced, and addressing singles: “Find a woman, a princess and get married”.

The next day, Janja da Silva picked up the glove and replied: “You don't have princesses here, only wrestling women!”

Princesses or fighters, Brazil also chooses this Sunday which woman it wants to represent it.

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