Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva

Background & Early Life

Although Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva was born in poverty, he nevertheless rose to the top of Brazilian society through his own hard work and determination and became president of the country in 2003.

Silva began his working life selling peanuts to tourists when he was only seven years old. Later, as a factory worker, he became active in an industrial union to help protect the rights of workers. Today, he is one of the most important socialist leaders in the world and a hero to the Brazilian people.

On October 27, 1945, Da Silva was born to Aristides Inacio da Silva and Euridice Ferreira de Mello in Garanhuns, in the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil. He later officially added his nickname, "Lula," to his name. The seventh of eight children, da Silva did not meet his father until he was five years old because Aristides did not live with the family. He worked loading coffee in the port of Santos in Sao Paulo, and was rarely able to come home.

In 1952, when Luiz was seven, his mother moved the family to Vicente de Carvalho, a poor suburb outside Guaruja in Sao Paulo. Da Silva began his first job there, selling peanuts, tapioca, and oranges to the tourists visiting Guaruja resorts. He also attended school for the first time there, at the state-owned Escuela Marcilio Dias. Even with the advantage of public education, however, da Silva did not learn to read until he was ten.

When he was twelve years old, da Silva’s parents separated, and the family moved again. They lived in a room behind a neighborhood bar in Sao Paulo. With his father gone, da Silva was forced to work full time. He took several jobs, at a dry cleaning shop, as a shoeshine boy, and as an office errand boy. At age fourteen, unable to keep up with both work and his studies, he left school for good. Da Silva never again had any type of formal academic education.

The Brazilian military revolted against the democratically elected government in 1964, eventually taking control and establishing a dictatorship. The political turbulence also disrupted the economy. During this period, da Silva worked in factories to make a living. While working in an auto parts factory, he lost a finger on his left hand in an accident.

In 1966, da Silva found a job with Villares Industries, a metal processing company. The company was located in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a suburb of Sao Paulo and one of the most industrial areas in Brazil. Although he would later represent the area's workers, da Silva was originally more interested in finding and keeping a steady job than in politics or social activism. However, after his first wife died in 1969, he became more involved in union activity.

Political Career

At the urging of his brother, Jose Ferreira da Silva, he joined the Metallurgist’s Trade Union of Sao Bernardo do Campo. In 1972, he was elected first secretary of the union's board of directors. In that position, he was in charge of the union’s policies that ensured basic workers' rights, such as compensation for on-the-job injuries, disability pay, pensions, and survivor benefits.

Da Silva felt that trade unions could do more than their traditional role of reinforcing government policies. He envisioned the union as an independent organization that could act as a voice for workers’ needs. During the 1970s, da Silva led anti-government strikes. He was arrested once by the military dictatorship and held in jail for a month but was released after a series of protests.

Finally, in 1975, da Silva was elected president of the trade union. He had received 92 percent of the vote, and he represented more than 100,000 workers. The new role gave him the position he needed to promote his idea of union independence.

Luiz da Silva's political career began on March 10, 1980, when he brought together several groups with the goal of helping the working class. The coalition he formed became known as the Partidos dos Trabalhadores (PT) or Workers’ Party. The coalition included trade unions, intellectuals, and church leaders, among others. Da Silva was also a co-founder of the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT), a federation of trade unions formed for political action.

By 1982, the Workers’ Party had around 400,000 members across Brazil. Da Silva hoped the party’s support would be enough to win him the governorship of Sao Paulo state, but he lost the election. His party, however, did quite well. The Workers’ Party won eight seats in the national congress, twelve seats in state legislatures, and seventy-eight city council seats.

The Workers’ Party became more and more successful throughout the 1980s. In 1986, da Silva was not only elected as a federal representative for the state of Sao Paulo, but also received a record number of votes. When the Brazilian government wrote the first post-dictatorship constitution later that year, da Silva and the Workers’ Party made important contributions, helping to guarantee workers' rights. However, the party was unable to get approval for their desired agrarian reforms, which were based on the redistribution of rural land.

In 1989, Brazil held its first direct presidential elections in almost thirty years. The Workers’ Party chose Luiz da Silva as its candidate. He lost the election, and lost again in 1994 and 1998.

President of Brazil

Da Silva attributed his political losses in part to the mistrust of Brazil's middle class, which perceived him as a radical socialist. He had also failed to gain support from financial institutions, which were concerned about his proposal to default on Brazil’s huge international loans.

Da Silva broadened his coalition, courting business leaders and others, in an effort to win the presidency. He reconsidered his plan to refuse to pay off Brazil's foreign debt, and agreed to work closely with the International Monetary Fund. He moved closer to the middle of the political spectrum, bringing a right-wing party into his coalition and establishing an alliance with the Liberal Party.

His efforts made the financial community and the middle classes more comfortable with his leadership. These groups were key elements of da Silva’s success in the 2002 presidential election.

On November 6, 2002, Luiz da Silva was elected president of Brazil as the representative of the Workers’ Party, with Jose Alencar as his vice president. He won more than 61 percent of the total vote, representing the votes of 53 million people. His victory meant the first democratic transfer of power in almost thirty years, and the first time in over forty years that a left-leaning government controlled Brazil. Workers celebrated in the streets after the elections.

On January 1, 2003, Luiz da Silva officially began his administration by promising to end hunger in Brazil. This promise proved difficult to fulfill because of Brazil's serious financial problems, including its gigantic foreign debt.

Nevertheless, the Brazilian economy, the twelfth largest in the world, saw improvements during da Silva’s first year in office. Brazil's currency, the real, rebounded when he took office, and showed major gains against the dollar. Inflation, bond yields, and Brazilian country risk, an international measure of economic stability, also decreased after Lula took office.

The Brazilian pension system posed an early challenge to the da Silva administration. The system was deeply in debt and had an annual deficit of $20 billion (USD). Da Silva maneuvered pension reform through Brazil's congress in July 2003. Although some of his key supporters, including civil servants and union members, originally protested this measure, da Silva’s approval ratings eventually rebounded.

Today, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lives with his second wife, Marisa Leticia, and their five children. He seems to have made the transition to power without alienating the working people he has represented for so long.

In 2006, finance minister Antonio Palocci was forced to resign in a corruption scandal. Lula appointed Guidao Mantega as his replacement. Despite the controversy, Lula's economic policies have improved market conditions in Brazil. Lula was reelected in 2006.

In March of 2008, a report was circulated that Lula was working to increase public spending in areas where his political constituents will soon face re-election. Lula vehemently denied the charge. Brazil's constitution stipulated that Lula could not run for a third consecutive term as president. He remained president until January 1, 2011, when he was succeeded by Dilma Rousseff. Although he was not without his critics, it is likely that Lula's tenure has presidency will be remembered as a period of great economic success for Brazil.

Post-Presidency and Imprisonment

In September 2016, Lula was arrested on charges of having sold his political influence-to gain government contracts for various clients. In July 2017, Lula was found guilty by a Brazilian court of corruption and money laundering. In 2018, he was convicted of additional charges, and his sentence was increased to twelve years in prison. After being incarcerated for nearly two years in the Brazilian Federal Police headquarters, Lula was released in November 2019 by the Brazilian Supreme Court. The judge presiding over the lower court was shown to have colluded with prosecutors to bring about Lula’s conviction. In March 2021, the Supreme Court annulled all remaining charges against Lula, leaving him eligible to run for the presidency in 2022 against the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

2022 Re-Election

On October 30, 2022, Lula completed a remarkable political comeback by defeating Bolsanaro for the Brazilian presidency. His margin of victory was less than 2 percent, making it the most closely contested presidential election in Brazilian history. The win followed a bitterly contested campaign that was marked by harsh rhetoric. In the aftermath of the election, Bolsanaro questioned the integrity of the electoral process. This unleashed speculation about whether Bolsanaro would peacefully concede the election or attempt to reverse its outcome like his presidential counterpart in the United States.

On January 8, 2023, supporters of Bolsanaro stormed the Brazilian congressional building in Brasilia’s capitol in an attack reminiscent of the January 6, 2021, assault on the United States Capitol building. This occurred eight days following the inauguration of Lula to this third term.

As Lula’s term progressed, his popularity began to slowly erode, with his approval rating dropping from 54 percent to 51 percent just prior to Brazil’s mid-term elections in October 2024. Just weeks earlier, Lula spoke at the opening of the seventy-ninth session of the United Nations General Assembly, calling upon the world’s nations to do more to combat climate change.

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