Few people travel so much around the world and see so little for two hotels, palaces and offices like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (76 years old, Garanhuns, Pernambuco).
He was the former president of Brazil when, on an official trip to India, he did not have a single moment outside the official agenda, but for a brief getaway to visit two of the most beautiful monuments in the world.
“In recent years, Lula has not done anything besides politics.
He does not take advantage of nenhuma viagem to see anything.
Na Índia ele nem sequer viu o Taj Mahal.
Ele ficou no hotel receiving politicians”, reveals his biographer and friend Fernando Morais, who has accompanied him for a decade.
Politics is the fuel that feeds this pragmatic and chameleon man, who after his grace remains, is lighting a more unexpected political revival in the last two times.
He is now warming up his third mandate, not the command of the main power in Latin America, which he governed between 2003 and 2010.
Imagining the current scenario would have been a delirious dream four years ago, when the metallurgical union leader who founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) was practically a political corpse.
Jair Bolsonaro, 67, was imprisoned for corruption six months before the elections.
Lula has been imprisoned during the military government.
Now, four years later, the investigations place the native Pernambucan 12 points in front of the ultra-directist in the elections of October 2, in the quais or Congress, the governors and the state parliaments will also be elected.
If no candidate wins more than two valid votes, there will be a second election four Sundays later.
You two favorites are old known by the eleitorado.
For Lula it is his sixth choice because, before winning two times, he lost three.
He quase desisted, but the Cuban Fidel Castro or convinced him with the argument that he could not bring the working class.
382466 03: Cuban President Fidel Castro speaks to two-time Brazilian presidential candidate for the leftist Workers Party, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, during a demonstration to demand that exile Luis Posada Carriles be tried for terrorism in front of the US Interests Section , November 27, 2000 in Havana, Cuba.
Cuba accuses Carriles, 72, of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados, which killed 73 people.
It also blames him for a string of bombings at Havana tourist locales in 1997, including one that killed an Italian tourist.
(Photo by Jorge Rey/Newsmakers) Jorge Rey (Getty Images)
Lula entered history in 2003, when he became the first – and now or only – man of the working class to preside over this classist and unequal country.
For some of his compatriots, he is the hero who threw thousands of people into poverty and unimaginable opportunities for the older ones.
For others, he is the leader of a gang of looters of public money at the Petrobras oil company (he has been annulled or shelved for corruption convictions that he served or served in prison for 20 months).
He always proclaimed his innocence and his confidence in justice
For more than three decades, he has been a central figure in Brazilian politics.
For or bem or for or bad, quase tudo giram em around dele.
Quase ninguém answers that he is a skilled negotiator, charismatic, empathic, cunning and a great storyteller.
In his school he stood out for his oral and written expression, but he was not a good student, second to his biographer.
The PT is the most solid party in Brazil, but it is not the most powerful electoral machine in two of Lula's best years.
Its territorial power has been diminished since the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, in 2016. It and its allies govern five states, all in the poorest part of Brazil, and since the last municipal elections, they have not achieved a single capital;
just a handful of municipalities, a total number of four thousand inhabitants, out of a population of 210 thousand.
The party, not the end of the counts, is a personal formation.
Its parliamentary group, a two-largest group with 56 members, was unable to establish itself as a powerful opposition to Bolsonarism.
This function was assumed by Lula when he was released.
His speeches include constant references to his mother, Dona Lindu.
That illiterate and severe woman who managed to raise her seven children after leaving an abusive husband, was Eurídice Ferreira de Melo.
And when journalists ask him about expenses, Lula generally avoids it, it is said that he learned to manage money like this dona from house to poor house.
He embarrasses the economic powers or fears us for appearing radical, he has shown himself to be quite orthodox, even though he has implemented policies for a slightly fairer distribution of income: under progressive governments, the average income of Brazilians increased by 38% more than inflation, more than two poor people increased much more, in 84%, second or PT.
BRASILIA, BRAZIL - SEPTEMBER 20: View of a poster of presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at PT (Workers Party) office at Setor Comercial Sul on September 20, 2022 in Brasilia, Brazil.
Brazilians will go to polls on October 02 in a polarized presidential election.
(Photo by Gustavo Minas/Getty Images)Gustavo Minas (Getty Images)
For many poorer Brazilians, Lula is one of the poorest because he knows misery.
Born in the interior of Pernambuco, poor and dry, he was seven years old when, in 1952, he traveled with his mother and sons in a truck for 13 days to São Paulo, an exodus of northeasterners to the south.
They were established as a second family raised by their father, Aristides, a stivator who mourned to feed all his descendants as long as he treated them with cruelty that beirava or sadism, Morais recounts in Lula, Biography Volume 1 (Companhia das Letras).
Life was hard, but there were opportunities.
Lula shot from them.
He worked as a greaser and boy two errands before entering a professional school, he was a springboard for a job as a lathe operator.
Ele perdeu o dedo mindinho esquerdo no processo.
He would like to hear a wide range of opinions before making a decision.
He is bom na ambiguidade and he is a politician who moves among the poor, bankers and kings, seeming like an impostor.
His is “a multiple personality”, says Morais, who also highlights his ability not to hold grudges.
Mesmo seu tempo en prisão no azedou seu character of him.
“We have more capacity to make alliances with old friends than most of the people I know,” he says about his friend.
It is enough to smell to make me choose him as his traveling companion.
His vice-presidential candidate is Geraldo Alckmin, a former adversary in the 2006 presidential dispute, a historical figure of 70 years of central leadership, who in the previous electoral campaign said “After ruining the country, Lula wants to return to power, year place of crime”,
Lula is also “fearful”.
He was still in prison when he said: “You will leave here to run for the Presidency of the Republic”, remembers the journalist who was fala with him, even in this final challenge of the campaign.
When he entered prison, in 2018, Lula thought it was a quest of days, but it was a quest of 20 months.
Enough time to write hundreds of letters to his girlfriend, Rosángela Silva, Janja, 55, with whom he just got married.
E to read like never before in life, with a Portuguese dictionary and an atlas.
These readings that “will give consistency to its principles and objectives”, says Morais, who adds: “He said much better than he entered”.
You are not afraid to ask your lawyers questions such as: “Tell me something, what is this history of identity politics?
He also does not digest other questões of modernity, such as the use of telemóveis.
And he is particularly irritated by the people who olham for écrans dos telemóveis no meio das reuniones.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - SEPTEMBER 25: Brazil's former president and current presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva greets supporters during a campaign rally in the final week of campaign at Portela Samba School on September 25, 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
(Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images)Buda Mendes (Getty Images)
Much admired abroad, Obama told him in a group of the G20 “I love that face, he is the most popular politician on Earth”!
Not the following year he left or charged with a popularity rating of 87%, as he liked to say.
After traveling the world as a former president, he ended up in the lama do furacão that was the corruption scandal of Lava Jato.
As hated as he was, or resentment towards Lula and the PT, he diminished a little after his release from prison.
There are no Brazilians scared by Bolsonaro, who will vote against him despite being convinced that he was not a politician of integrity.
Um pai de filhos, to life lhe deu other blows.
His first wife died together with the baby they were expecting.
His second, Dona Marisa, died in the middle of the judicial attack.
He got over cancer of the larynx.
He is enthusiastic about the heat of two elections, about how he directly contacted the public, that the pandemic, and now the security situation, complicates.
But no one is immersed in earthly activities such as going to the supermarket, to the cinema, to a restaurant or to the Corinthians stadium, to the legendary Sócrates team, whatever it is.
Before going to prison in 2018, he still played some soccer games with friends (he knew Janja in some of them) and on Saturdays he organized a barbecue at his house with his old friends for two days in which they fought against the dictator for Greve.
Nem isso mais.
Just politics.
Always accompanied by his wife, he is on a mission to defeat Bolsonaro, save democracy and return to power, so that "the poor are once again included not ordained and all Brazilians have three refreshments a day."
The same says to be aware of the magnitude of the challenges in these times that do not give you bonança generated by the raw materials.
“É por isso que faço ginastica every day”.
To serve or Brazil.
E to rewrite its history.