The Autumn of the Patriarch
In 2002, Luís Inácio “Lula” da Silva had run for president three times, and three times had been soundly beaten. In the mind of a generation, Lula had become synonymous with leftism, and often with a radical brand of leftism that terrified the conservative Brazilian middle class.
He was tired of losing.
There had never been a better time to win. The centre-right government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso was tired and unpopular, plagued by scandals, an energy crisis and high rates of unemployment; the government’s candidate, Health Minister José Serra, could hardly match Lula in terms of charisma and likeability. Lula’s time had come, and he was ready for it. Through a carefully crafted campaign, Lula shed his radical image to become a president who understood poverty, but was not hostile to ambition. One of the clearest signs of his change of heart was the so called “Carta ao povo brasileiro” (Letter To The Brazilian People) in which Lula pledged to keep managing the economy in the direction taken by Cardoso’s government. The message was intended for both suspicious voters and foreign investors: Lula’s revolution would not bring a capitalist exodus to the country. British readers might compare the document to Tony Blair’s struggle to rewrite Clause IV of the Labour Party, but, like all things Brazilian, the truth is far more personal and intimate: Blair wanted to modernize a long-lived British institution for a new millennium. For Lula, the letter represented that he was ready put aside childish things and become the man the country expected him to be.
For the following eight years, Lula was that man without fail. He was the man that pleased hyper-capitalist businessmen as well as the country’s poorest; he was the man as comfortable talking to American presidents as he was talking to Hugo Chavez and Fidel; he was the man whose popularity never sank, even as his own government’s right hand man was caught in a horrifying corruption scandal. As Lula’s party lost its star as an untouchable representative of honesty, Lula remained the Brazilian left’s strongest man. There was something nearly graceful in seeing Lula dodge every obstacle as though his feet were blessed; there was something Pelé-like to his political instincts, the beauty of motion and talent. In 2010, at the end of his second term as president, Lula said goodbye to the country with a slight promise of return. The hero had earned a happy ending, making way for the first female president to expand his project of a fairer and more powerful Brazil.
Three years into his downfall, has the Lula project failed completely? His fortunes wane by the second. Once it emerged his name was among those found in the massive Lava Jato (Carwash) investigation, it was clear that the game no longer was going to be played on his terms. Lula’s anointed successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached for “breaking fiscal laws” (though anyone can tell you, that was simply a poor excuse for terrible economic performance and widespread unpopularity). Last year, Lula’s Worker’s Party was destroyed in local elections. The situation looks dire for the once and future king of the Brazilian left; and yet it would be unwise to write off a man whose political life was built on defying adversity — for a poor, illiterate migrant steelworker does not become the president of one most unequal societies in the world by being easy to beat. Recent polls suggest that for all the toxicity of his name, Lula would just about squeeze the presidency after a round off election.
Lula’s remarkable political resilience, however, is not the best way to judge his success, but rather his legacy. Any leftist worth their salt will tell you that the Lula years saw immense social progress, even as they might disagree with his methods; poverty shrunk in leaps, unemployment was reduced massively, the country made steps toward ending hunger (one of Lula’s biggest priorities: in every speech, he would emphasize that he knew hunger). Internationally, Brazil was now treated not as a junior partner, but as a country of some importance; if Obama’s “this is the man” statement was in large part flattery, it says much that an American president would even bother to flatter a country that had been essentially obedient before. Upper middle class Brazilians now rubbed elbows with poorer Brazilians in universities, airports and shopping centers. This was a gospel repeated for every flaw exposed, every corruption scandal unearthed; the undeniable progress of the Lula years. These same advances, however, melt into the air as the economic crisis deepens and previous allies turn into enemies.
In recent years, since 2014, poorer Brazilians have witnessed their fortunes shrink, and unemployment grow. The response from the Rousseff government was to start “austerity light” measures; they slashed some workers’ rights, and cut some financing to social programmes. Once Rousseff was ousted — partly due to her own incompetence dealing with the treacherous Brazilian ruling class, partly because austerity did not in fact work to take Brazil out of the crisis — the Brazilian centre-right did what it does best. The current president, Michel Temer imposed the harshest austerity measures known to the world, shooting holes into the already deficient Brazilian welfare state. The in-between solution Lula proposed in 2003, the one that would please high and low, only lasted when there was enough money to go around. With the economy short-circuiting, rich Brazilians demanded their share first, effectively dismantling the progress of a working class with enough purchasing power to have the same rights as its elite.
This is what seals Lula as a failure: the fact that his progress was barren. As worrying as the social consequences of the cruelty of the Brazilian right, are the consequences of a sterile Brazilian left. The Worker’s Party has been discredited. Smaller, more radical parties struggle to make themselves acceptable to the general public, a struggle that the country simply does not have time for. If the left cannot make its case, there is a hunger for someone who will — and the 2018 elections might yet bring forth one of the Bible caucus candidates that have deftly stolen the “social care” discourse from under the left’s feet, or equally as bad, a return to militaristic mindset of the dictatorship, willing to achieve through democratic means what had to be taken by force in 1964. The Brazilian general public hates austerity and loves infrastructure investment, but it has a strong dislike of anything approaching liberal values; this is a country that rejects human rights as absolution to criminals. To win, a leftist must be the champion of a strong economy, that will rebuild and improve the welfare state while not being painted by his enemies as a weak willed anti-Christian idiot; the issue is, of course, the one name that could possibly do this is Lula himself. A left that relies almost solely in an ambiguously corrupt figurehead is not a left that can face up to the challenges that the country demands.
Nobody will say that Lula should not have won in 2002. His years in power were undoubtedly better for Brazil than any previous government in its recent short democratic period. Any politician to leave power lifting 20 million people out of poverty, millions more richer than when he got in office, and an approval rate of 80% would be considered a hero in the developed world. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the things that he left behind in his ascension to power — namely a willingness to build permanent change, one that might displease a media mogul or corporate owners, and a bravery to fundamentally alter a fundamentally wrong state of affairs. That isn’t to say Lula failed because he could not bring socialism to the country (that was never his plan, in any case), but that he failed because his balancing act was, in the end, simply that: an act.
