Biography - President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

BIOGRAPHY
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
39th President of Brazil

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was born on October 27, 1945, in the city of Garanhuns, deep in rural Pernambuco, Brazil. Lula is the seventh of the eight offspring of Aristides Inácio da Silva and Eurídice Ferreira de Mello, dona Lindu – who has always been a great example to him.

In December 1952, dona Lindu and her eight children migrated to São Paulo fleeing drought and hunger. The journey took 13 days on a pau de arara truck [adapted in a makeshift way to transport passengers, as an improvised and uncomfortable substitute for conventional buses]. At first, the family lived on the outskirts of the city of Guarujá, 60 kilometers away from the state capital São Paulo.

Young Lula was taught to read and write at Grupo Escolar Marcílio Dias, a local public school. In 1956 the family moved to the capital São Paulo, where they lived in a room at the back of a bar in the Ipiranga neighborhood. Lula got his first job at the age of 12, in a dye shop. He was also a shoeshine boy and an office boy.

At 14, Lula began to work at Armazéns Gerais Columbia, where his Carteira de Trabalho [Brazil’s official work permit] was ratified for the very first time. He later began working at Fábrica de Parafusos Marte, a screw factory, and training to work with mechanical lathes at Brazil’s National Service for Industrial Learning (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial/Senai). The course lasted three years, and Lula became a metallurgist.

The mechanical turner diploma was the first in his life. Lula would later become the first president of Brazil without a university degree – but also the one who created the most public universities in Brazilian history (14), and who received the most honorary degrees from important universities around the world.

The crisis that followed the 1964 military coup in Brazil led Lula to change jobs and work at several different factories until he joined Indústrias Villares, one of the country’s main metallurgical companies, in São Bernardo do Campo, in São Paulo’s ABC region. While working at Villares, he began to come into contact with the trade union movement through his brother José Ferreira da Silva, better known as Frei Chico.

In 1969, the Metalworkers Union of São Bernardo do Campo and Diadema (Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos de São Bernardo do Campo e Diadema) held an election to choose a new board, and Lula was elected a substitute. At the next election in 1972, he became First Secretary. In 1975, Lula was elected president of the union with 92% of the votes, representing 100,000 workers.

Lula then gave a new direction to Brazil’s trade union movement, and, in 1978, was re-elected president of the union. Despite the military dictatorship having prohibited workers’ strikes, they began to take place across the country. In March 1979, under his leadership, 170,000 metallurgists drove São Paulo’s ABC region to a halt.

Police repression of the strikes and the almost absolute lack of politicians representing the interests of workers in Brazil’s National Congress (Congresso Nacional) led the union leader to think for the first time about creating a Workers’ Party.

Brazil was then undergoing a process of slow and gradual political opening [or redemocratization] led by the military that were still in power. On February 10, 1980, Lula founded the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT) alongside other trade unionists, intellectuals, politicians, rural leaders, religious leaders, and social movement representatives. In 1980, a new metallurgist strike led to federal intervention in the union and to the arrest of Lula and other leaders based on Brazil’s National Security Law (Lei de Segurança Nacional). Lula’s first political arrest lasted 31 days.

In 1982, PT was already present across almost all of Brazil. Lula led the organization of the party and ran for governor of São Paulo that same year. In August 1983, he helped found Brazil’s United Workers’ Center (Central Única dos Trabalhadores/CUT). In the following year, Lula was one of the main leaders of the Brazilian Diretas Já campaign in favor of democratic elections for the Presidency of the Republic. In 1986 he was elected the most voted federal deputy in Brazil for the Constituent Assembly (Assembleia Constituinte).

PT launched Lula as presidential candidate in 1989, following 29 years without any direct elections in Brazil. Lula lost in the second round by a small margin. Two years later, victorious candidate Fernando Collor de Mello was impeached for corruption. Lula ran again for president in the two following elections – 1994 and 1998 –, but was defeated in both by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

First presidential election

On October 27, 2002, at the age of 57, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President of the Federative Republic of Brazil for the first time, with almost 53 million votes. Liberal Party (Partido Liberal/PL) businessman and senator for Minas Gerais José Alencar became vice-president.

That same year, the PT National Convention approved a broad political alliance (made up also of political parties PL, PCdoB, PCB and PMN) based on a government program to redeem the country’s social debts to the vast majority of the Brazilian people.

President Lula’s first term as president put Brazil on the right track and prepared it for economic growth alongside important social progress and a significant improvement in income distribution – mostly due to a policy to value Brazil’s minimum wage, to record generation of jobs and to income distribution programs such as Bolsa Família.

Inequality reduction became one of the hallmarks of that period, and Lula ended his first term with historic public approval of 57%.

On October 29, 2006, once again alongside Vice President José Alencar, Lula was re-elected President with over 58 million votes – then the biggest turnout in the history of Brazil.

Second presidential term

Lula took on his second term on January 1, 2007. That same year, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) began placing Brazil on the list of nations with a high Human Development Index.

On April 30, 2008, Standard & Poor’s granted the Brazilian economy an investment-grade scale and was followed by Fitch and Moody's. Also in 2008, Petrobras carried out an unprecedented feat: extracting oil from Brazil’s pre-salt layer, over 7,000 meters down in oceanic waters.

2008 was also the year of the storm triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15. The episode expanded the existing financial crisis – the worst since the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929.

In Brazil, President Lula proclaimed that the “tsunami” sweeping the world would turn into a “small wave” in Brazil. Following a reduction in interest rates and taxes; incentives for consumption; the offer of credit; a minimum wage recovery policy; and more investments in social programs and infrastructure, Brazil emerged much stronger from the first round of that great crisis.

This is my man, right here. I love this guy. He’s the most popular politician on Earth
President Barack Obama

On April 3, 2009, the BBC revealed that, when then President Barack Obama shook hands with President Lula, he said:

In 2010 Brazil was reaping the riches of a growing economy – with USD 300 billion in foreign exchange reserves; inflation under control; a record number of jobs; a 53.5% increase in the minimum wage; millions of Brazilians integrated into the middle class; and an approved regulatory framework for the oil sector.

With these credentials in hand, Lula, PT and allies presented Brazil’s former Mines and Energy (Minas e Energia) and Civil House (Casa Civil) Minister Dilma Rousseff as presidential candidate. Dilma was elected in the second round with 11 million votes over candidate José Serra.

On January 1, 2011, President Lula handed over the position to his successor, leaving Brazil’s Planalto Palace (Palácio do Planalto) with a historic approval rating (87%) and the admiration of the world.

In 2011, the former president focused on organizing the Lula Institute (Instituto Lula). He also began giving lectures about his experience as President of Brazil, but in October was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and underwent rigorous treatment at the Sírio-Libanês Hospital in São Paulo. In February 2012, doctors reported that the tumor had been eliminated.

Having overcome the disease, the former president resumed his political activities intensely, supporting PT candidates in the 2012 municipal elections. Two years later, however, Operation Lava-Jato (Operação Lava-Jato) began in the Federal Court of Paraná (Justiça Federal do Paraná). Lula faced unprecedented political and legal persecution and media exposure, leading to unparalleled setbacks in Brazilian democracy itself.

Lava-Jato also destroyed some of the foundations of the Brazilian economy. Petrobras – which in September 2008 had begun exploring oil in the pre-salt layer and had become a vector of development for the national naval industry, generating thousands of qualified jobs – was shaken to the core. Large contractors, some of them internationally relevant, were forced into bankruptcy.

Despite great media exposure, Lava-Jato was unable to prevent the re-election of Dilma Rousseff in the 2014 elections. Even so, Lula was the target of an illegal coercive arrest on March 4, 2016, at the behest of then federal judge, in first instance, Sérgio Moro.

In May 2016, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies (Câmara dos Deputados) voted to initiate an impeachment process against Dilma, despite no crime having been committed. Removed from her position, Dilma was replaced by Vice President Michel Temer – who officially became president in August 2016.

In July 2016, Lula was made a defendant in the scope of Lava-Jato. On February 3, 2017, he suffered a severe blow with the death of his wife Marisa Letícia Lula da Silva, mother of four of his five children, and to whom he had been married since 1974. In July that same year, the former president was sentenced in the first instance.

In January 2018 – when preparing for the presidential campaign in which he was an almost unrivaled favorite –, Lula was found guilty in the second instance and made ineligible. On April 7, 2018, following his arrest decreed by Moro, the former president – courageously and with head held high – handed himself in to Brazil’s Federal Police following an outdoor mass that gathered a great crowd in front of the ABC Metallurgist Union (Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC) in São Bernardo do Campo.

Lula did not give up during his political imprisonment, despite suffering two terrible losses during the period: first, the death of his brother, and Lula was not allowed to attend the funeral due to a decision by a Federal Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal/STF) minister; then the death of his seven-year-old grandson.

In jail, in Curitiba, the former president received important political leaders from Brazil and abroad – such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Esquivel; then-candidate and future President of Argentina Alberto Fernández; former President of Colombia Ernesto Samper; former President of Uruguay José Mujica; and even American actor Danny Glover.

Social movements organized the Free Lula Vigil (Vigília Lula Livre) which remained in front of the Federal Police building from April 7, 2018 until Lula’s release on November 8, 2019. During each of his 580 days in prison, Lula was consistently greeted by the public with a chorus of “good morning,” “good evening,” and “good night, President Lula.”

Also crucial support were the 580 letters – one for each day in prison – exchanged with sociologist Rosângela da Silva, Janja, from Paraná, a member of PT since 1983. Janja was one of the first people to receive Lula outside the Federal Police jail. She was also by his side in his first post-prison speech, when hope for democracy and social justice in Brazil was rekindled. Lula and Janja were married on May 18, 2022, in São Paulo.

The STF sentence was annulled due to incompetence, since the cases should never have been judged in Curitiba, and due to the partiality of judge Sérgio Moro, who conducted an unfair persecution against Lula. The latter’s political rights were only regained in March 2021, however, following the annulment of all convictions handed down by Moro.

In the 2022 presidential campaign Lula built a broad network of support, gathering notables and politicians from different political parties to back his candidacy – and even Geraldo Alckmin, against whom he had disputed the 2006 election, as vice president. At the end of a fiercely contested election, Lula became the first Brazilian citizen to occupy the Presidency of the Republic three times by the sovereign will of the people. Over 60 million Brazilian men and women gave Lula the biggest vote in history.

On January 1, 2023, Lula ascended the Planalto Palace ramp alongside people who represent Brazilian diversity, and received the presidential sash from recyclable material collector Aline Sousa. Aline was able to go to college thanks to the public policies of Lula’s two previous terms. One cycle was completed, and another began.

Ricardo Stuckert / PR