Lula in Historical and Political Context

Review of Fernando Morais's Lula: A Biography, volume 1

Alice Taylor

February 18, 2025

Lula: A Biography

by Fernando Morais

Verso

2024

Fernando Morais’s biography of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, “Lula,” Brazil’s first working-class president, is a primer on modern Brazilian history. Lula, arguably the most well-known Brazilian political figure, is a giant. Barack Obama famously called him “the most popular politician on Earth,” adding “this is my man, right here!” Counting cumulative votes across elections, Lula has received among the greatest number of votes of any president in history. In his book, Morais traces Lula’s story from his childhood in abject poverty and beginning to work as an 8-year-old, to union leader of the largest car manufacturing hub in the region, to cofounder of the Workers’ Party (PT). This approach to Lula’s life is a common one. Another biography, for example, traces his unlikely rise, against all odds, from a metalworker and “fourth grade-educated man of the most humble origins” to president.¹ Morais follows a similar trajectory, emphasizing the transformation of someone who “hated politics and whoever likes politics” into an international political phenomenon.²

Yet, the more pressing political questions are ones about the substance of Lula’s policies, their social and economic impacts, and how to situate them in the broader history of Brazil. This line of inquiry is also attuned to transformation, but of another kind: how Lula went from a candidate known as propoor and prounion to one who developed a particular political style as he steered increasingly toward the center. For all it offers as a useful introduction to key events in Lula’s life, Morais’s conventional take leaves out the fuller story of Lula and his party in the context of a more complex political landscape.

First published in Portuguese in 2021 by Companhia das Letras, the 2024 English edition was published by Verso Books and translated by Brian Meir. The book’s chapters are organized according to newspaper-style headings. The writing is accessible and often captivating, a style Morais has skillfully developed in his nearly five-decade journalism career. Morais conducted interviews with Lula while flying around the world, drawing on over twenty hours of interviews on planes to write the book. We learn that Lula does not sleep much on planes—one of dozens of meticulous details Morais includes about Lula and the characters surrounding him from his early life to his imprisonment. The list of people he interviewed is similarly impressive, but does not venture far beyond allies. Reading reproductions of Lula’s letters in his curly handwriting, one can almost hear his raspy voice, his palavrões (curse words), and jokes, capturing the charisma for which Lula is so well known.

Critically, and unsurprisingly given the immensity of Lula’s life, the first volume focuses on two specific slices. Though vital parts of Lula’s life, the selection of these episodes frames Morais’s story. The first half focuses on Operation Car Wash (an anticorruption probe that targeted Lula and the PT, among others, leading to his imprisonment) and attacks from the press and Sergio Moro (the judge who ordered Lula’s sentence and later became Minister of Justice and Public Security under Jair Bolsonaro).³ By November 2019, the Supreme Court reversed its charges after the Intercept famously published leaks by a hacker named Red. Earning his freedom, Lula was poised to run for president again in 2022. We learn—it seems, hour by hour—of the events leading up to Lula’s return to the union headquarters in São Bernardo, in the interior of the state of São Paulo (where rallies and vigils filled with his supporters), and the conditions of his arrest and imprisonment in the state of Curitiba. Lula is portrayed as humble and concerned with the needs of the working class, while also invincible. As the investigation targets Lula and the PT, we begin to see the contradictions that mark so much of the second half of his life. The vigil in support of Lula continued throughout Lula’s year and a half in prison, illuminating his almost cult-like following. Morais tells the story of a baby conceived at the vigil, accompanied by an ultrasound image of the baby making the letter L with its fingers. Just as he and his party are loved, they are also despised, and they have been targets of Brazil’s twenty-one-year military dictatorship and figures like Moro and others.

It is absolutely essential that Morais’s narrative of the ascent of this working-class hero be considered amid a more comprehensive view of the consequences of his policies: reform and compromise within the capitalist system have come at a cost to the working class and the environment alike, always along racialized, ethnic, gendered, and geographic lines.

The second half of the book turns to Lula’s early life, from the poverty of his childhood, including his family’s migration from the Northeast to the southern state of São Paulo, where he would become a metalworker. His family was one of thousands to migrate during the 1950s; industrialization and investments greatly favored the Southeastern region while neglecting the Northeast, which also suffered from droughts and lack of infrastructure. It is in this industrial boom epicenter that Lula began as a union leader. The young Lula faced one hardship after another: the brutality of his abusive father toward his seven children (twelve counting stepsiblings); the loss of his first wife, Lourdes, who died in childbirth; the amputation of his finger after a factory accident. Lula returns from his first international trip upon news that his brother is being tortured in DOI-CODI, a Brazilian intelligence and political repression agency during the military dictatorship that was responsible for the torture and execution of union, communist, and student activists. In his 2020 biography, historian John French develops a more pointed argument about the significance of Lula’s early life: that it was his experiences—his hardships, union upbringing, and exposure to many kinds of situations and people—that shaped the kind of leader Lula became.

Lula’s politicization, largely influenced by his brother, and his ascent in the ABC Metalworker’s Union, Latin America’s largest industrial center in the state of São Paulo, is compelling. He led underground meetings and workers in a fervor of strikes—sometimes three times per week. The union was formative for Lula: “This was my school.…This is where I learned sociology, economics, physics, and chemistry. This is where I learned to do a lot of politics.…Anytime I had any doubt about anything, I would go to the factory door and ask the workers how to do things right in this country.”⁴

Remarkably, much of this history takes place toward the end of the military dictatorship and a risky time leading to Lula’s cofounding of the PT, the first party “of and for the working class.” It is this leadership that leads to his first arrest and interrogation. Because of the adept organizing strategies that ultimately made him famous as a union president, the strikes continued despite the arrest and firing of major worker leaders, many of whom would go on to form the PT. Almost forty years later, Lula’s speech and arrest in 2018 at this same union epicenter underscores the centrality of the ABC Region to his political and personal life. The devoted crowd chants “don’t surrender!” As the Intercept leaks revealed, he has more than once been the subject of attack, including the blocking of his running for office in 2018 and the mainstream press’s unfavorable portrayal of him. Even though he overcame these obstacles, there is more nuance to what Lula and his politics have come to mean.

Morais’s volume suffers from three main omissions, which—though they do not detract from the importance of the events described—are critical to a broader political story. First, by portraying Lula as a popular hero, the book allows for little critique of Lula’s policies and the shifting nature of the PT. Lula’s political weight, as the only candidate widely considered capable of defeating far-right, authoritarian former president Bolsonaro in 2022, cannot be dismissed. Many of his social welfare policies, such as Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) and Bolsa Famila (which continued from the previous Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration), have also been widely applauded and studied. Yet these policies are more complex than they appear at first glance; recognition of society’s most vulnerable sectors is not consistently backed by funding for these groups, nor the protection of rights (like, for example, the demarcation of Indigenous territories). That is, policies came with concessions and benefits for business and upper-class sectors; though they addressed some forms of poverty, they did not consistently reduce stark inequalities among Brazilians. It is absolutely essential that Morais’s narrative of the ascent of this working-class hero be considered amid a more comprehensive view of the consequences of his policies: reform and compromise within the capitalist system have come at a cost to the working class and the environment alike, always along racialized, ethnic, gendered, and geographic lines.

Here, other Brazilian scholars offer more fine-grained analyses on Lula and the PT. André Singer unpacks the phenomenon of what he calls “Lulismo,” rather than focusing on Lula the personality. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “passive revolution,” Singer describes how Lula’s reforms supported development and the poor to the extent that they did not detract from the interest—and gains—of financial sectors and the elite. As Lula’s former press secretary (and thus also an insider like Morais), Singer’s 2012 The Meanings of Lulismo: Gradual Reform and Conservative Settlement was followed by a book on the administrations of Dilma Rousseff.⁵ These books of course predated Operation Car Wash and Lula’s 2018 imprisonment about which Morais dedicates much of the first half of the book. Lulismo, however, keeps much-needed attention on a political project rather than a figure (though, arguably, Lula the figure was instrumental in sustaining Lulismo the project). Crucially, Lula cannot be separated from shifts in the political landscape, from political ideology, and from changes in class and regional dynamics (particularly the significance of the Northeastern region and the Northeastern Brazilian vote).⁶

Without being given much context on them, readers miss a broader story of a “left beyond Lula”—a critical question, particularly for the post-Lula years to come. The PT is historically significant to understanding big questions of how Brazilians—from metalworkers to students to those dispossessed from land—have struggled to create a left in a country with divisions within the left and right alike. Yet the PT is far from the only component of the left…

Political scientist Luciana Tatagiba’s distinction between the distinct roles played by the PT throughout the decades is also helpful. She characterizes the party’s shifting role from a movement party in the early 1980s, to a party in opposition in 1992 with the party’s support of the impeachment of Fernando Collor, to a party in government by 2013 with distance from the protests.⁷

The PT’s early days and Lula’s first administration in 2003 reflected its emergence as a party born from social movements and unionism. It tended to be more revolutionary in the projects it proposed. The PT initially identified as socialist, but ultimately dropped the term.⁸ This first Lula administration, was elected by the leftist middle class. By the second administration and after his social welfare policies, his electoral base shifted to the more working classes, especially in the Northeast. The Mensalão scandal (corruption charges against a vote-buying scheme) consolidated the middle class against Lulismo and the PT and further divided the working class from the middle class.

In sum, not only did its voting base change, but the PT became more centrist and its policies increasingly neoliberal, accompanied by increasing alliances with right-wing politicians. One set of interpretations attributes this shift as a response to the powerful far-right block that emerged and consolidated with the election of Bolsonaro. Lula’s tendency to favor financial policies that came at the cost of reducing inequalities, however, began before this. He increasingly considered it necessary to ally with figures that were previously adversaries of the PT. His current right-wing vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, is a case in point. Alckmin went from political opponent to ally, along with other center-right and right-wing politicians. The PT itself was also divided over neoliberal policies, including public expenditure and fiscal adjustment policies (Teto de Gastos and the Novo Arcabouço Fiscal). Federal spending on education through private third parties rather than in policies that would facilitate working-class students staying in universities, and sidelining the demands of months of strikes, are further examples that show more complex layers beyond Lula’s support of quota systems.⁹

Second, and relatedly, Morais’s biography leaves out more a more encompassing view of the history of the Brazilian left. It is in the context of the divisions of the PT—and specifically over disagreement with a pension reform policy—that members of the PT both were expelled and left, founding the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). While sharing a structure of internal tendencies, PSOL has offered alternatives of how to rewin the working class, construct a left, and hold the PT accountable since 2004. Readers will recall PSOL as the party of Marielle Franco, a queer Black city councilwoman assassinated in 2018.

Apart from an introduction to the only opposition party legally allowed during the time of the dictatorship (the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB)), and some mentions of persecuted communists and the Communist Party, Morais introduces very few figures on the left who were not PT members. (Morais, who was active in the MDB, joined the PT later, but is otherwise primarily an insider biographer to Lula.) Guilherme Boulos, Manuela D’Avila, and Fernando Haddad are allies of Lula, but we learn next to nothing of their significance, even though they all ran for president. Without being given much context on them, readers miss a broader story of a “left beyond Lula”—a critical question, particularly for the post-Lula years to come. The PT is historically significant to understanding big questions of how Brazilians—from metalworkers to students to those dispossessed from land—have struggled to create a left in a country with divisions within the left and right alike. Yet the PT is far from the only component of the left; the country has a history of dynamic disputes across multiple parties and within parties of multiple tendencies.

A third result of the biography’s lack of political context is a silence around the rise of Bolsonaro and its relationship to what many analysts describe as a vacuum left by the PT. In the June 2013 protests, for example, posters that read “the PT left the streets!” were emblematic of a primary critique from the left—that the PT had lost touch with a crucial social movement base. This was also apparent in a number of strikes and uprisings that were gaining momentum, including among young people, who wanted to mobilize between elections.¹⁰ A heroic “father of the people” account offers limited insight into why and how Lula distanced himself from his grassroots bases and frustration began giving rise to the far right. With a kind of celebratory narrative of Lula, readers get no sense of the detrimental effects policies had on the environment and the heterogenous working class.

In the epilogue, we find out that Morais’s second volume, already underway, will focus on Lula’s three electoral losses, three presidencies, and his transfer of power to former president Dilma Rousseff. With advancing far-right authoritarianism and neoliberalism, both in the United States and worldwide, questions of how to confront challenges like the ones Lula faced could not be more pressing. A life so complex and inseparable to the PT certainly merits two volumes. Perhaps Morais’s second volume will take a longer view in situating Lula the president within the evolving landscape of the PT, the contested dynamics of the left, and all that is at stake for the people and land of Brazil.

Brazil, Elections, Latin America, Neoliberalism, Social Democracy

Alice Taylor

Alice Taylor is a researcher and Global Justice postdoctoral scholar at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. She lived in Brazil for seven years, during which she carried out research with a nongovernmental organization. Participating in the June 2013 protests in Rio de Janeiro drew her attention to the dynamic Brazilian political landscape and youth activism. She earned a PhD from UC Berkeley and an MA in International Studies from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. An ethnographer, she is active in movements and is working on a book manuscript. She has taught courses on social movements and other areas for eight years, and has published work in various genres, from academic journals to nonprofit reports and public scholarship. You can find out more at aliceyt.net.

Lula in Historical and Political Context

Review of Fernando Morais's Lula: A Biography, volume 1

Alice Taylor

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Lula in Historical and Political Context

Review of Fernando Morais's Lula: A Biography, volume 1

Alice Taylor

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