LULA THE REDEEMER
THE GENRE WE ASSIGN TO A LIFE STORY DEPENDS a lot on how it ends. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s life has already completed several dramatic arcs. First, the hero’s journey: a child born into poverty moves to the big city, rises to lead a labor union, and then becomes the most popular President in the history of modern Brazil. Then the tragedy: a celebrated statesman is fingered in a staggering corruption scheme, sent to prison, and forced to watch from the sidelines while rivals dismantle his legacy.
The endings don’t seem to stick, though. In April 2021, Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled the corruption convictions that had excluded Lula—as he’s universally known—from politics in 2018, saying a biased judge on his case had compromised his right to a fair trial. The bombshell decision set Brazil on course for a showdown between the leftist Lula and current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in the October 2022 elections. Polls now put the challenger at 45% and the incumbent at 31%, with more centrist candidates all but out of the running.
For Lula, who is 76 and had been preparing for a quieter life away from the halls of power, this new twist in his story was a surprise. But he didn’t hesitate to return to frontline politics. “In truth, I never gave up,” he rumbles in his famously gravelly voice, made hoarser by age. “Politics lives in every cell of my body, because I have a cause. And in the 12 years since I left office, I see that all the policies I created to benefit the poor have been destroyed.”
It’s late March, six weeks before Lula launches his campaign, and he’s sitting in a studio in the São Paulo headquarters of his Workers’ Party (PT). Chuckling and griping that no one knows how to design a comfortable chair these days, he comes off as a jovial grandfather. But at his allusion to the current government, his back stiffens and the deeper, gruffer notes of his voice take over. Lula
