Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s social programs helped lift tens of millions out of poverty and eradicate entrenched inequality and discrimination in Brazil – the hope of Gains supporters is now renewed.
AFP spoke to Lula voters about the October 2 election, which pitted the leftist ex-president (2003-2010) against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
– Annoyed Producer –
Writer, producer and cultural commentator Jonathan Raymundo, 33, is fed up with Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
“I can not stand it anymore. Violence against women, black people and the LGTB+ community has reached alarming levels in this country. We need love, affection, happiness… and Bolsonaro is the opposite of that,” says Raymundo, a black history and philosophy teacher with light pink hair.
Raymundo is the founder of an Afro-Brazilian cultural festival in Rio de Janeiro, “Wakanda in Madureira”, inspired by the fictional kingdom of the superhero Black Panther.
To explain his outrage, he cites some of Bolsonaro’s most controversial statements: he said a woman is “not worth raping” because she is “too ugly”; about the weighing of blacks in arrobas, a unit of measure used for animals and, in past centuries, for slaves; He said there was nothing he could do about Brazil’s rising Covid-19 deaths because he was “not a gravedigger”.
Raymundo is nostalgic for the “fundamental advances” for historically disadvantaged groups under Lula and his Labor Party (PT), he says.
“Brazil is at a crossroads and has a chance to transform itself into a great country. But that will only succeed if it understands how to include its racial diversity in the spheres of power,” he says.
Raymundo wants a new generation of leaders to emerge, but “there’s no alternative right now,” he says.
“We need Lula back as president.”
– teacher activist –
In the northeastern city of Salvador, computer science teacher Messias Figueiredo, 56, is a well-known figure at left-wing protests — instantly recognizable by his rectangular glasses and a ubiquitous red boom box with Lula’s picture on it.
“It’s an instrument of peaceful political struggle,” says Figueiredo, who blasts campaign jingles and pro-Lula comments out of his sound system as he marches.
“He enabled millions of Brazilians to escape poverty. He led the best government in the history of this country.”
He especially loves Lula because he’s from the impoverished Northeast, “a region that’s always lagging behind the rest of the country,” he says.
He praised the former president for bringing investment to the region, opening universities there and beginning construction of a huge canal to bring water from the Sao Francisco River to the semi-arid Sertao region.
“We can no longer stand this fascist, genocidal, inhumane government,” he says through his loudspeaker, accusing Bolsonaro of “decimating” the environment and “massacring” Brazil’s indigenous peoples.
– Grateful union leader –
Public health worker and union leader Aline Xavier, 33, credits Lula with helping her “beat the stats,” get an education and pursue a career despite being a black woman from the poor suburbs of Sao Paulo .
The PT “opened the door for me to have a voice … and not be left out because I was a woman and black,” she says.
Xavier, chair of a local white-collar union, believes in “everything Lula does,” she says.
A graduate of a public school opened under the PT, she despises the Bolsonaro government for its “neoliberal policies, attacks on workers’ rights and intolerance of minorities.”
Lula, she hopes, will “restore a government that is encroaching on the fringes, that gives opportunities to black people, working people and single mothers, that recognizes that if there is no equality, there is no meritocracy.”
“Lula is the only one who can take our country back,” she says.
