‘There are not two Brazils’: Can President-elect Lula bridge deep divides?

It’s common to hear after any election that “the hard work starts now,” but rarely has it been as appropriate as in Brazil this week. President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces the enormous task of uniting a nation divided almost precisely down the middle, and putting a rehabilitated Brazil back on the map.

Lula, as he is universally known, beat the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a runoff on Sunday, winning with 50.9% of the votes, the slimmest margin in almost 30 years.

While Lula’s victory was a relief for his supporters, tired of the machinations of a populist president whose botched handling of the pandemic and crude attacks on opponents