Lula's final campaign

Supporters of eighty-year-old Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used David Bowie and Queen's 1981 hit Under Pressure in a viral video showing his half century in politics, from trade unionist to democracy defender.

“This is our last dance.”

The stakes this weekend

Brazilians vote in the second round of their presidential election. Lula faces a career-ending defeat, with odds favoring hard-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, who seeks to unravel Lula's legacy.

The first round shock

On October fourth, the incumbent placed two points behind Bolsonaro, currently a senator. Right-wing parties and candidates surged in congressional and state elections across the country.

Latin America swings right

Brazil is poised to become the most important entry on a long list of Latin American states that have swung right in the past two years.

History against Lula

The first-round winner in Brazil's presidential race has won the second-round vote in every election stretching back to nineteen eighty-nine, the first direct presidential election held after redemocratization following military dictatorship.

Lula's democratic legacy

Lula was elected president in two thousand two and served two terms until the end of twenty ten.

Environmental and global leadership

Lula positioned Brazil as a world leader in climate action, helping slow Amazon deforestation. He led Brazil into the vanguard of the Global South, charting an independent line in foreign policy.

The corruption conviction

Lula was convicted of corruption and money laundering in twenty eighteen and given a twelve-year sentence.Five hundred and eighty days later, he was released after a court ruled he had been denied adequate due process.

Bolsonaro's presidency

Jair Bolsonaro, a hard-right former Army man, was elected instead. As president, he slashed Lula's environmental protections, cut funding to universities and housing programs, and badly mismanaged the pandemic.

The January eighth insurrection

On January eighth, twenty twenty-three, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brasilia, vandalizing the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Presidential Palace. Brazilian authorities determined Bolsonaro was part of a coup plot to oust Lula.

Bolsonaro's sentence

Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a twenty-seven-year sentence under house arrest. The insurrection drew immediate parallels to the United States Capitol riot.

Lula's political challenge

Lula's politics, rooted in unions and labor movements from the nineteen-seventies and eighties, don't register much in a Brazil reshaped by atomized gig economies.

Bolsonaro's campaign promises

Flavio Bolsonaro has promised a ruthless crackdown on crime, with expanded maximum-security prisons and chemical castration for convicted rapists.

Brazil's global role at stake

Lula is a champion of the Palestinian cause.Bolsonaro, like his father, has befriended the Israeli right.A Flavio victory could see Brazil weaken commitments to the UN climate treaty and non-Western blocs such as BRICS.

Lula's warning on Trump

In an interview with The New Yorker last year, Lula described his uneasiness watching Trump.He lamented the waning of the international order, saying, I saw a speech of his in the U.S.

“I saw a speech of his in the U.S. Congress recently, and it was absurd, those Republicans clapping at whatever nonsense he said.”

Lula's final hope

Lula is hoping that millions of disaffected Brazilians who didn't vote in the first round may yet come out to cast a ballot for him in the runoff.