Lula Da Silva, Luiz Inácio

(1945–)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, born October 27, 1945, assumed the presidency of Brazil on January 1, 2003. Lula (as he is commonly known) rose through the ranks of the labor movement and was a founding member of the Workers' Party, the most leftist of all [Page 878]major Brazilian parties. His election was part of a larger Latin American trend, in which left-of-center candidates have emerged in response to the failures of free-market, neoliberal economic policies.

Lula was born to a poor farming family, with few opportunities for a formal education. By his late teens, he had held several industrial jobs, and soon after that he became active as a union organizer. In 1978, he was elected president of the Steel Workers' Union in the towns of São Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, an area that hosted most of Brazil's auto plants. Lula was jailed briefly in the late 1970s for his role in union strikes. But his ability to, at once, strengthen his union and work peacefully to counter the dictatorial government demonstrated his considerable political skills. After helping to found the Worker's Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) in 1980, Lula first ran for office in 1982, failing to win the governorship of the state of São Paulo. He won a seat in the Brazilian Congress as a PT candidate in 1986. He ran for president unsuccessfully in 1990, 1994, and 1998. Two factors were crucial to his triumph in 2002. First, Brazilians were increasingly skeptical of free-market economic reforms. Lula provided a coherent and pointed critique of these policies. Second, Lula tempered his radicalism slightly for the 2002 campaign, dropping his pledge to refuse to pay Brazil's foreign debt and adopting a more formal personal style. Lula's moderate tactics made his mandate somewhat uncertain. But there is little question that his election represented a fundamental shift in Brazilian (and even Latin American) politics. It marked, perhaps, a final step away from the dictatorship that had so stunted the Brazilian political system. Lula represented anything but a cautious, deferential style of politics and might have been seen as a threat to the status quo even 10 years earlier.

Lula's term has been marked by cautious economic policy and a commitment to reducing poverty. (Brazil routinely ranks as the most economically unequal in the world.) Lula has repeatedly compromised in his efforts to attain these sometimes clashing goals. He placed a longtime PT member in the position of finance minister but chose a member of the more moderate opposition party as head of the Brazilian Central Bank. On the one hand, Lula's government has taken no combative stand on its foreign debt obligations, has worked hard to keep inflation down, and has encouraged foreign investment. On the other hand, the government has pushed some social reforms, including efforts to provide food, health care, and social services to poor and isolated families. Left-wing critics (many from Lula's own party) are probably correct in pointing out that cautious economic policies generally take priority over redistributive social measures. Lula has pushed an independent foreign policy, playing a central role in pushing for fairer global trade policies, especially in the area of industrialized nations' agricultural subsidies.

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