| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, November 04 2002 |
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| There is a lot more to Brazil than beautiful beaches, world-famous soccer players, caipirihnas (Brazil's national drink), samba and the song "Girl from Ipanema." It is the largest country in Latin America, the ninth largest economy in the world. It is also home to millions of poor and illiterate people who are fed up with a deteriorating economy, rising crime rate and unemployment. So they elected Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as their new leader with more votes than any president has ever received in the history of their country.
Some might wonder why the Brazilian people would choose a leftist former labor leader with a 5th-grade education over a former government minister and member of Congress with a Ph.D. from Cornell University. There seem to be two main reasons. On the one hand, it's a vote against the establishment, against a government that has not been able to deliver. On the other hand, Lula da Silva was elected because he is perceived as a man of the people.
His is the quintessential rags-to-riches story. He was born into extreme poverty, learned how to read at age 10 and never made it to high school. As a child, he sold peanuts and worked as a shoeshine boy. By 14, he got his first full-time job, as a metalworker. He became a labor activist and went on to become leader of the Metalworkers Union in 1975. Five years later, Lula da Silva -- known simply as Lula -- formed the Workers Party, known as the PT. In the next two decades, he ran for president three times. Three times he lost. The fourth time around, things changed.
A Lula supporter in Rio de Janeiro said of his surge in the polls, "It's not that Lula is now ready to be president; it's that Brazil is now ready to elect him." In the past few years, he toned down his leftist rhetoric, got a new look and aligned himself with a center-right-wing party.
Outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's economic reforms successfully controlled rampant inflation. However, he drove Brazil's foreign debt to $260 billion. Cardoso was not able to eradicate the disparity between the rich and the poor. In a country of 174 million people, 100 million live on less than $2 a day.
Lula da Silva has many challenges ahead of him: Keeping his word to respect Brazil's financial commitments, and reassuring the business community and international financial institutions that he will apply a strict austerity plan. He needs to address the social ills of his countrymen by providing jobs, higher wages, better education, health care and safer streets. And he needs to do it while bridging the political gap. He won by a landslide, but his leftist party remains a minority in state governments and in congress.
One of Lula's biggest challenges will be to set a new course for the Latin American left. In that sense, there are many questions: Will he help redefine the socialist movements in the region? Will Lula be the pragmatic, moderate centrist he is portraying himself to be? Or will he be a radical communist like Cuba's Fidel Castro, or an authoritarian lunatic like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez?
For now it's a party, tudu bem, all is fine. Bring out the caipirihnas and play some samba. The tall, dark, young and lovely girl from Ipanema will be watching, and so will the rest of the world. |
