Lula speaking at the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies in 1989. Photograph Source: Roosewelt Pinheiro – ABr – CC BY 3.0br
Far-right election deniers cut short the celebration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s remarkable political comeback with violent attacks in the country’s capital yesterday. Echoing the assault on the U.S. Capitol two years ago, supporters of defeated ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace.
While security forces have now regained control, Brazil’s insurrectionists rattled the foundation of the world’s fifth-largest democracy. Coming just a week after Lula’s inauguration, these attacks make chillingly clear the enormous hurdles he’ll need to overcome to achieve the pro-democracy, pro-worker agenda he’s been pursuing for nearly half a century.
A former metalworker, Lula rose up the ranks of the labor movement and helped launch the Workers’ Party in 1980 as an opposition force against the country’s military dictatorship. During his first two terms as Brazil’s president, which ran from 2003 to 2010, he had enormous success in reducing the economic gaps that had widened under military rule. In this, his third term, Lula intends once again to prioritize the poor and the working-class.
Just hours after his inauguration on January 1, he signed a provisional measureexpanding the flagship anti-poverty program he introduced in his previous stint in office. Between 2003 and 2011, the Bolsa Família – roughly translated as the Family Grant – distributed monthly benefits that lifted 25 million people out of poverty. This program, combined with a minimum wage increase, expanded public investment in health care and education and other progressive reforms, reduced the country’s income inequality for the first time in four decades.
Bolsonaro replaced the Bolsa Família a little over a year ago with a much less effective program – called Auxílio Brasil (Brazil Aid) – that was purely a Trojan horse intended to reduce social spending by eliminating access to other welfare programs. Thanks to Lula’s immediate action, the government will deliver 600 Brazilian reais a month – approximately $112 US dollars – to 21 million families.
In another immediate action, Lula reversed Bolsonaro’s plans to sell off eight state-run institutions, including the Petrobras oil company and the public postal service. In scrapping his predecessor’s privatization plans, he aims to ensure these entities serve the public good rather than lining the pockets of corporate executives.