Brazil: Hope for the First Time in a Very Long Time

Greg Wilpert

Welcome to The World on Fire. I’m your host, Greg Wilpert. Sunday, January 1, Brazil inaugurated the former labor union leader and Workers Party President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also known as Lula, for a third non-consecutive term as President of Brazil. Last October, Lula narrowly won a run-off election against the right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro with 50.9% of the vote. Lula had previously served two consecutive terms as president from 2003 to 2010, during Latin America’s first so-called pink tide of the early 2000s. Then his successor, Dilma Rousseff, also from the Workers Party, was removed from office in 2016 in what many have considered to be a legislative coup.

Lula himself faced prosecution for corruption and was sent to prison as he was preparing to run for president in 2018. After nearly two years of imprisonment, he was exonerated and able to run for president for a third time. Sunday’s inauguration was, in many ways, a historic event, not only because of the unusual circumstances that led to it but also because Lula presented a cabinet in which one out of three members are women.

Joining me now to take a look at what Lula’s third term as president might mean is Michael Fox. He’s a freelance journalist, former editor of the journal NACLA, and host and producer of the podcast Brazil on Fire. Thanks for joining me today, Mike.

Michael Fox

Thanks for having me, Greg.

Greg Wilpert

So, first of all, just how significant would you say is Lula’s inauguration for a third non-consecutive term as president of Brazil?

Michael Fox

I mean, it’s a complete 180. It’s a complete about-face. It’s huge. It’s a complete game-changer for Brazil. The inauguration itself was powerful, with 200,000 people in the streets. So many people are talking about hope, talking about a return to democracy. As you mentioned, there was the coup against Dilma Rousseff, and then many people saw Lula’s jailing and then Bolsonaro’s elections as all other layers of the coup. Then now, for Brazil, this is the return to democracy, the return of hope. As all of your listeners know, Bolsonaro brought in so many different things: white supremacy, fake news, and attacks against black, indigenous communities. This opens the door for a complete about-face to what we’ve had until now. The inauguration really laid the groundwork for that.

Greg Wilpert

So let’s take a look at the cabinet. First of all, as I mentioned, one out of three members are women, more or less. I think it was 11 out of 30 something, which is no doubt the highest number, I think, of any Cabinet in Brazil’s history. What do we know about some of the main members of this cabinet, and what can we expect from them?

Michael Fox

Well, the first thing is the Workers Party, which is obviously Lula’s party. It came into power with a very broad coalition of Left, Center, and center-right parties. Remember that his running mate, Vice President Geraldo Alkman, was his arch-nemesis back in 2006. He’s the guy who ran against Lula back in 2006. He really went across the aisle to bring in everybody within kind of the unity democracy camp, and that’s what his whole campaign was about. It was really about bringing everybody in as much as possible. So, of course, that’s what his cabinet also looks like.

A quarter of those seats have gone to Workers Party members, the nine seats. Those are really the key ministries for Lula. So that’s the makeup. You have roughly nine Workers Party ministries, and then the rest of the ministries are divided up amongst those other parties, the three ministries to each of the different parties.

Now, amongst the Workers Party, you have some extremely important ministries, like the Ministry of Finance with Fernando Haddad, who is the former presidential candidate who ran for the Workers Party when, of course, Lula was taken out in 2018. Flávio Dino, who is the former Governor of Maranhão, and extremely important. He battled Bolsonaro. He is one of the most arch-nemesis of Bolsonaro during his time in power, and he is now the Minister of Justice. So that’s amongst the Workers Party.

You also have– and this is really, really key, Greg. All of these new ministries, several of them, and that includes the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Women, the Ministry of Racial Justice, and actually, the woman, Marielle Franco’s sister, is now the Minister of Racial Justices or Racial Equality. This is extremely important because it brings in all these other sectors, and the Left won big in a lot of these different areas.

Now, the big thing that a lot of people are talking about is, of course, the Environment Ministry. Marina Silva’s back, remember, she was Environment Minister for six or seven years under Lula. She was really key in pushing back on deforestation, cutting deforestation in half in those first two years of Lula’s first government. Then they had a falling out. She ran for president several times, and then they built their relationship again, and that’s been one of the most exciting things about Lula’s campaign and seeing her back on the stage. In fact, she was just sworn in just yesterday, and the line for her swearing-in moment or for her opening ceremony was the longest of all the different ceremonies for ministers that are happening now.

Of course, the other really big key ministry that’s new is the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, led by Sonia Guajajara, who is one of the most important indigenous rights activists in Brazil. She’s the leader of APIB [Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil], which is the largest indigenous organization. Of course, she was constantly battling against the Bolsonaro government, and she is now the Minister of Indigenous Peoples. Just to put this in perspective, first off, there was never a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, and there was never an indigenous minister before. In fact, she was the very first minister to be sworn in on Sunday. She walked up, and she wore the feathered headdress. When they took a picture of the ministers there with Lula, she was standing right beside Lula. On the other side of Vice President Gerald Alkman was Anielle Franco, who is Marielle Franco’s sister. This is a very, very telling moment that Lula is pushing for diversity, he’s pushing for inclusiveness, and not just within the Ministry itself, but Lula actually went out and asked Joênia Wapichana if she would be the head of FUNAI [Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas].

Now FUNAI is kind of the Indigenous Affairs Agency. It always has been. Although the name was the Indian Affairs Agency and it’s now the National Foundation for Indigenous People. So they’ve changed the name. She’s now the head of that, and that agency is now underneath the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Extremely important pushes. They’ve already been talking about wanting to demarcate 13 different indigenous territories just within this first month. So there are a lot of things that have happened. The cabinet is actually really exciting. It’s way more progressive than even people thought was possible. 

There is another person that I think is important, that’s Simone Tebet, who is now the Minister of Planning and Budget. Now, she was key because she got the third most number of votes in this election. She’s from the PMDB or the MDB Party, which is a centrist right party. But man, after that first-round election, she came out just battling for Lula. She came out attacking Bolsonaro for his secret budget, saying it was potentially the largest corruption scandal in the world at the time. She was really, really active in a way that a lot of people did not expect. She now has her own cabinet seat. It’s really exciting. It’s exciting for the Left to see so many different people moving into power, into Lula’s Cabinet, with really clear visions for where they want to take this, and it’s exciting for the progressive movement, just looking forward here.

Greg Wilpert

You mentioned, just quickly, Marielle Franco and her sister Anielle being in the cabinet. Many people might not know who Marielle is. Can you summarize briefly who she is and what the significance of her sister being in the cabinet is?

Michael Fox

That’s right. So Marielle was a black lesbian City Council member from Rio de Janeiro who was gunned down in 2018. It sent shockwaves around Brazil because it showed that there was just (A) no justice, no respect for black communities, and black politicians and leadership. So protests happened across the country. It was like a Black Lives Matter moment in Brazil and around the world, really, because of what she symbolized for Brazil, and it continues to have reverberations. Her name continues to be extremely important. Anielle, her sister, then created the Marielle Franco Institute and has been trying to lift up her name ever since and that image. The fact that she is now the Minister of Racial Equality is just so key. It’s so, so important.

To put this into perspective, back in 2018, when Bolsonaro was running for power, there were Bolsonaro-allied people who actually won office, legislators who won office, who actually had picked up signs, Marielle signs. They were breaking them in this image of showing that Marielle just isn’t for Bolsonaro and for his allies. She was just worthless. The image of black communities, LGBT communities, and indigenous quilombolas communities, are worth just nothing in this country. That’s why we’ve seen so much pushback over the last four years and so much resistance from social movements. Right now, that’s why people are just so ecstatic about the potential for so much hope and possibility in this new Lula government.

Greg Wilpert

Now, what do you think we can expect from Lula in terms of his domestic policies? What are the priorities? Also, do you think that his scope of action might be rather limited, given that he does not have a majority in Congress? That is, would he even be able to pass any significant new laws?

Michael Fox

So, great questions. First off, he’s been very clear about what his focus is on domestic policies and it’s poverty alleviation. That’s what it was in his first two terms. He wants to again lift people out of poverty because, of course, we’ve seen poverty numbers have risen, inequality has risen, and hunger has risen. This is one of the things. He actually broke down crying, Greg, during his inauguration speech when he talked about people asking for money on the street and people begging for food because this is not the country that he left. When he left office with an 87% approval rating back in early 2010, Brazil had eliminated poverty. Dilma did even more on that step. So this is something that’s really key. He’s talked about bringing back health and bringing back SUS [Sistema Único de Saúde], the public state healthcare system, because, of course, that was gutted under Bolsonaro.

So much of his focus, particularly in these first coming months, is going to be to renew those systems and those agencies that were gutted and undone by Bolsonaro. We’ve already seen this, actually, just in his decrees within the first 24 hours. He blocked eight different privatizations of state businesses, including Petrobras, the state oil company, including Correios, the mail service. He redid Bolsonaro’s previous decree that was liberalizing and freeing up arms for people around the country. So he’s tightening those. He eliminated the 100-year sigilo or confidentiality that Bolsonaro had put into place for many things, kind of whatever Bolsonaro wanted to do. He passed seven different environmental decrees, including blocking mining on indigenous territories and opening up the Amazon fund again for people to be able to invest in Brazil from different countries.

That’s just what he’s done within his first 24 hours. His domestic policy is very much going to be focused on poverty alleviation. He’s also talked about, of course, wanting to stop Amazon deforestation, but at the same time, he wants to keep the economy running. This is what he was really good at back in his first two terms. He didn’t lift people out of poverty and then do it as a detriment to Brazilian businesses, but he actually lifted Brazilian businesses, were able to get them abroad and keep them making even more money than ever before, and that’s something he wants to continue to do.

He said that, of course, particularly with the Amazon, that look, “we can continue to be the breadbasket of the world and not deforest one more meter of our forest. We don’t have to cut down one more tree.” So that’s really important for him. Part of that is being able to throw money and throw resources and funds for local farmers and local small farmers. That was key. That’s something he did a lot back in his first two terms. It’s something he’s going to want to do again. It had really helped small agricultural farming. At the same time, he’s focused on his poverty alleviation stuff. He’s already reinstituted Bolsa Família, which is, of course, his conditional cash transfer program back from the 2000s. He says that poor families are going to be receiving 600 reals a month, just over $100.

So these are all really key things that aren’t actually that hard for him to do, that he’s been able to do so far. Of course, he can’t knock out the knees of important industries, agribusiness, and things like that. So that’s going to be a challenge he’s going to have, and particularly even a challenge within his own cabinet, finding the ways that he’s going to be able to push to protect the Amazon, support indigenous issues, support, say, the MST [Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra] and local small farmers at the same time as he’s not turning his back on the big agribusiness.

The other thing that was really gutted under Bolsonaro, Greg, is industry. This was something that Bolsonaro basically just turned his back on, and the whole idea under Bolsonaro was to sell off Brazilian industry as much as possible and to really focus on commodities markets and selling markets for export abroad. That was his big thing. Lula comes from a completely different perspective– developmentalism. Saying, “no, we actually need Brazilian industry. We need Brazilian businesses, and we want to help to jumpstart that around the country.” With those two visions for the world of poverty alleviation and also developmentalism, we need to build up Brazilian businesses again; they’re not a contradiction. They go hand in hand.

Now, like what you just asked about, how is he going to do this with obviously a conservative Congress? This is a big question. I think it’s maybe one of the biggest questions that a lot of people are asking because, as you know, so many people came in, Bolsonaro allies, and it is a very, very conservative Congress. At the same time, the Workers Party doesn’t have its back against the wall. In fact, the PT, at this point, has as many people in Congress as it did before the whole car wash Lava Jato scandal. So it was very clear in this last election that people were more than willing to vote for the PT at the same levels that they were doing under the early Dilma years and under the Lula years. So that is one point that a lot of people have missed when they’ve been talking about the makeup of the legislature. There is going to be a conservative legislature.

One other key thing that’s really important, though. Many of the allies of Bolsonaro in Congress are not used to doing opposition. They’re from centrist parties, what’s known as the Centrao, and these are the parties like the PMDB. Maybe they’ve jumped ship and joined more Bolsonaro parties, but these are individuals that are used to being in the middle and always joining whoever is in power. This is going to be a really interesting thing to see how they play opposition or don’t play opposition in the coming months and the coming years. I think a lot of this is going to depend on how strong Bolsonaro himself is.

I know that we’re going to get into this, but Bolsonaro has left the country. He left the country early. Some people will say he fled. Many of his supporters and his allies are not happy with him because they feel like he’s completely turned his back on him. So the question of Bolsonaro is going to be a really important question going forward, and we don’t know how to answer that right now.

In terms of the makeup of the legislature, Lula still has every possibility of pushing through things that he thinks are important. Not everything is done via the legislature. Not everything’s done in Congress and the Senate. Look at what we’ve already seen just this week from his decrees. They have been extremely important. He’s going to continue to do those in the same way that Bolsonaro– he also ruled very much by decree a lot of times. I think Lula is going to be able to do a lot more. He already has. He already has, but he’s going to be able to do a lot more than many people give him credit for.

Now, is he going to be able to completely legalize abortion? No, that’s not an issue he’s going to get traction on. Why is that? Because the Evangelical movement has grown substantially. That’s not something he’s going to be able to move on at this point. He’s able to move on to so many other things, and those have been his focus that he’s been very, very clear about for months.

Greg Wilpert

Okay, I want to turn now to Lula’s international policies, where he presumably has a little bit more leeway than he does for domestic issues. During the first pink tide, Lula, together with former President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, they were instrumental in setting up numerous regional new bodies, such as CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations, and UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, which both fell apart when the first pink tide ended. Now, what can we expect from Lula this time around?

Michael Fox

Well, this is really, really exciting. For folks internationally, it’s one of the most exciting pieces because, of course, under Bolsonaro, Brazil has had a very not just U.S.-focused but Trump-focused foreign policy. It’s whatever is good for Trump is good for us. Of course, that left Brazil in the air over the last two years, not knowing exactly what to do once Trump was out of office two years ago. The foreign policy now is going to be completely about-face. Lula has already said that, and so has his incoming Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, who was actually Foreign Minister under Dilma Rousseff. He’s been very clear that he was instructed to focus on three key elements, to begin with, by Lula, and that’s first South American ties, then Latin American ties, and then African ties. Those, of course, were really important for Lula back in the 2000s. His whole thing was south-south relations, regional integration, and building those relationships with Africa for the first time. He opened up 35 new embassies during his two administrations during those years, and he traveled to more than 50 countries in eight years. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. He is a great diplomat. We saw that at COP-27 when he was there. It was only two weeks after his election. He still wasn’t even president yet, and he was received like a rock star in Egypt. That’s going to be really key for Brazil. It is kind of lifting Brazil back up onto the international sphere, being able to dialogue with the world’s richest countries, but not bowing down to those richest countries and really being able to keep Brazil on this international level and have a relationship with everybody.

We saw that at the inauguration. I think this is really interesting, Greg. Sixty-five different foreign delegations came to Lula’s inauguration, including nineteen different heads of state. We’ve never seen anything like this before. During that, while we were watching the passing of the different foreign delegations, first you saw Ukraine; the Ukrainian delegation came and shook hands with Lula, and right behind them was Russia. So it shows how Lula is willing to dialogue with everybody in the world, and he’s going to have solid relationships with everybody. He is the great negotiator in that sense.

Now, regional integration and south-south ties are one of the most exciting things about this whole question because this is pink tide 2.0, really, except for the fact we don’t have the revolutionary socialism of the 21st century. It’s not the revolutionary pink tide. Many of those governments maybe came to power kind of eking it out, just like Lula. He won by 2 million votes, 2%. But still, most of the countries in Latin America at this point are Left or left-leaning, and that’s going to be really important. Lula has already said he wants to go full speed ahead with UNASUR. Most likely, his first international meeting is going to be in Argentina at the CELAC Conference, where he’s going to reannounce Brazil’s reentry into the international meeting. Many people are talking about the importance of a new UNASUR and the possibility of reinvigorating UNASUR or kickstarting it again like we haven’t seen in a very long time. So this is really, really key. In fact, what Lula’s Foreign Minister said, and Lula has said as well, “it is not just building these bodies, but going even further,” is what they want to see. What does regional integration look like going beyond what we saw back in the 2000s? So it’s really exciting.

We’re going to see what these next couple of months mean and what they look like as the different countries are dialoguing. But just to give you a little bit of sense of what we’re looking at, six different heads of state leaders met with Lula just the day after his inauguration, talking about how do we go forward, what are we doing, what does trade look like, what are our relations look like? So that’s what we’re going to be seeing in the coming months.

Greg Wilpert

I just want to turn briefly to the point that you made earlier about the narrow victory that Lula had and the fact, of course, that Lula and Bolsonaro’s camps were so far apart in terms of politically speaking. Does that mean that Brazilian society is this deeply divided? How do you make sense of that? There’s such a big divide, so to speak, and such a narrow divide, too, in the sense of the population’s support for each side.

Michael Fox

So there are several different things to unpack here. First off, absolutely, it’s deeply divided, and it’s divided like it hasn’t been before. It’s divided almost like what we saw in Venezuela back in the 2000s or like what we see in the United States right now with Trump. I mean, that’s the legacy of the Trump image and the Trump style of politics that Bolsonaro inherited and took on completely: pushing fake news and pushing this nationalist agenda, attacking, attacking, attacking the other side and the Left and whatnot. It is extremely concerning.

One of the things and part of the reason for this division is obviously the fake news, the misrepresentation of things we saw even just around the polls, the whole electoral system, and everything under the elections. This was one of those moments; this election was one of those moments that was the most twisted and contorted in terms of fake news and just new misrepresentation and misinformation being pushed just on the daily by Bolsonaro’s campaign. So that’s extremely concerning.

Look, the thing is, though, Greg, a lot of people I talked to during the elections when I was there, and I was there reporting from around the country, a lot of them are completely on board with Bolsonaro. What they told me even ahead of the second round vote was, “look, if Bolsonaro, first off, we know that we’re in the majority,” Bolsonaro’s people were the majority, “so if Bolsonaro doesn’t win, well, then we know something was wrong with the electoral system, so he should have won.” That’s why we saw his people out in the streets later on because the idea there is about faith. It’s almost like a religious conviction. It’s not about actually having a democratic play and trying to figure out how we work together in a democratic system. No, it’s about destroying your opponent. That’s what we’ve seen just in the last little bit. That’s why we had, around the country, people rallying, Bolsonaro supporters rallying in front of military barracks, calling on the military to turn out to block Lula’s election and to keep Bolsonaro in power. People actually believe that. We’re talking about thousands of Bolsonaro supporters who believed that if they protested in front of the military barracks, the military was going to support them. The fact that they actually believe that, and they continue to do it for months and months, and they actually thought that Bolsonaro was going to find a way to enact some sort of a coup at some point is really concerning for what it means for Brazilian democracy, for what it means going forward, and for what it means for Lula.

I think most likely what we’re going to be seeing in the coming weeks and in the coming months, although right now, there’s kind of this unclear phase about how Bolsonaro’s people are going to organize. There’s almost no doubt that they are going to organize as an opposition and as a very clear opposition, particularly in the streets, particularly with fake news that’s going to come against Lula, and people are going to be out in the streets just like Trump supporters have been out there. We’ve even seen this in the news right now, Greg. Since Lula’s inauguration, you’ve seen over Twitter, and social media people are saying, “look, Lula never he never walked up the presidential palace. He never was inaugurated. He never swore with his hand up in Congress. It didn’t happen. At any point, Bolsonaro is going to fly back from Florida, and he’s going to be taking power.” People actually believe this, and it’s on social media. This is what’s passing over What’s App in the social networks amongst Bolsonaro supporters. So it’s really concerning that this is a real reality. It shows the polarization, but it also shows the very clear intent by a certain group of people to attack Brazilian democracy, to gut the potential for Lula to be successful.

This is one of the things that the Supreme Court, Brazilian Supreme Court has been very clear on, and they’ve been investigating for several years the attacks against Brazilian democracy. This is why many people have been talking about potential accusations and crimes against Bolsonaro and potentially that he might actually stand trial for some of these things. This is why, from what we heard from reports, was that when he left two days early, that’s because his lawyers, from what we understand, advised him, “hey, it might be a good idea for you to skip town for a little bit and get out of the country because they might be coming after you.”

The very first day after Lula’s inauguration, PSOL [Partido Socialismo e Liberdade], the small Left party that had split from the Workers Party back in 2005 but is now back in the coalition, they actually requested from the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court ask for preventative prison from Bolsonaro for crimes, for the crimes against humanity, for lying during the elections, for attacks on democracy and pushing coups. There are several different potential crimes and accusations against Bolsonaro going back to, of course, the Senate inquiry into COVID-19, which lasted for almost eight or nine months. When they came out, they said that Bolsonaro was responsible for as many as nine different crimes, including crimes against humanity. So all this is kind of putting this into– that’s how come, most likely, Bolsonaro is right out of the country right now, but we’re going to see what happens going forward.

Greg Wilpert

Now, just turning to what Lula can do to counter these dangers, what about his own party, the Workers Party, the PT? Lula is said to enjoy a massive amount of popularity, often far beyond his own party. First of all, is that still true? Some people even say that he has lost touch with the grassroots. Is there anything to that story? If so, what is or has the PT done to connect with the grassroots?

Michael Fox

Well, I think the first thing, Greg, is just to understand that this electoral campaign that brought Lula to power, like I said, was a very broad coalition. It wasn’t just with other parties. It was social movements and grassroots movements. It was broader than anything we’ve ever seen before. In fact, the MST, working together with other social movements, actually created five to 7,000 different popular committees in urban communities and cities all up and down Brazil with the idea of exactly that– being able to organize for Lula’s election, but then be able to continue to organize in those communities long beyond that. Some people have had that criticism around the PT that they lost touch with the grassroots, but that criticism is actually pretty old. That’s like, from a decade ago at a time when their local grassroots committees had failed, when the PT had been in power for a very long time.

What we’ve seen since the coup against Dilma Rousseff, and particularly since Lula’s jailing, is this overwhelming organization from below, from the grass, from grassroots organizations, from movements, unions, and political parties behind Lula, behind Lula to (A), to get him out of jail, and to (B), to get him into power. I mean, this is like the ultimate rags-to-riches story, a political prisoner comeback. Here he is, and he’s just come to office. This is huge. People in Brazil realize this. I mean, Lula represents the working class and the poor.

I’ll tell you what, Greg, when I was in Recife, which is northeastern Brazil, State of Pernambuco, which of course is where Lula’s from, this is the capital of that. There was a big rally there for Lula where was where he arrived. Every single person I talked to, everybody said, “Lula is our guy. Lula helped me go to school. He built universities where I was able to study. Lula is the hero of the working class.” Particularly in the northeast, Lula won this election because of the northeast, Greg. He won roughly 70% in northeastern Brazil, whereas in the rest of the country, he either lost or he was very close. So, I mean, a lot of people were talking right after the election about how northeastern Brazil saved Brazil. It’s very true.

Even in São Paulo, remember, Lula’s trajectory is super interesting because he was born poor in northeastern Brazil. He comes young to São Paulo with his family in search of work. Many people I met on the streets of São Paulo on the night that Lula won; on that night, almost everybody I talked to said, “I’m proud. I’m from Pernambuco. I’m from this state. I’m from northeastern Brazil. I’m here because Lula represents me.” So absolutely, he still is extremely important, extremely, extremely popular.

Now, some people, obviously, he lost some support because they still believe that he was corrupt or they still don’t understand what went down. All of the convictions, every one of the accusations against Lula, have all been tossed out in one court or another in Brazil. So it’s just ridiculous to believe that those convictions were real. Of course, they were done by biased judge Sergio Moro with the idea of tanking him and blocking his ability to return to power. In 2018, Sergio Moro, by the way, who then became Justice Minister under Bolsonaro and who is now a Senator who just won Senate in this last election. He will, I’m sure, be very loud, as loud as he possibly can be. But no, Lula is extremely important for the grassroots. The grassroots is now organized and more kind of on fire and excited than ever before. That’s why this election was so important. That’s why Lula was so important.

So it’ll be interesting to see how they continue to keep the grassroots mobilized. This is something that João Stedile talked about just before the first-round vote in a press conference I attended in São Paulo. He’s one of the longtime founders of the MST, the landless workers’ movement, of course, one of the largest social movements in the Americas. He said, “what we need is a popular grassroots movement from below like we haven’t seen in decades. They just need to push Lula all they can.” Of course, there will be other interests, there’ll be other parties, and there’ll be other people trying to push Lula in different directions. Obviously, the grassroots needs to keep organized. Right now, at this point, there is so much unity from beyond pushing, beyond Bolsonaro. Everybody’s had their back against the wall.

Right now, I was talking to somebody yesterday who is involved in the indigenous movement, and he said, “right now, we’re feeling three things. We’re feeling alleviation relief, we’re feeling excitement, like celebration, commemoratory, and we’re feeling hope.” And that’s the feeling on the ground right now. Now we’re going to see what the coming months– this is the honeymoon period, of course. In the coming months, things will get more complicated in one way or the other, and when different factions are trying to vie for this or that.

Right now, Lula’s connection with the grassroots and those grassroots organizing is like never before. Just an example to really define that, Greg. Traditionally, in inauguration ceremonies, it’s always the previous president who passes the presidential sash onto the incoming president. They walk together up the presidential ramp to Planalto Palace, which, of course, is the presidential palace, and then the old president passes the sash on to Lula. Of course, Bolsonaro left two days early, so he was not passing the sash. Many people were asking, I mean, this was the big question for days. What is going to happen? Who’s going to pass the sash on to Lula? Is it going to be Dilma? Is it going to be Bolsonaro’s vice president? What’s going to happen? And the way they did it was so perfect, Greg. They brought together this group of people that just symbolized the pure diversity of Brazil and who are Brazilians. You had a cook. You had a black trash collector who comes from a family of catadores and recyclers in the streets. You had a disabled activist—someone from the LGBT community. You had a young child, a ten-year-old child, black child, and they all came together. Oh, and of course, Chief Raoni, who’s the most important indigenous leader in the history of Brazil. He’s the guy who did all the tours back in the ’80s with Sting and who was actually pretty critical of the Dilma Rousseff administration back in the early 2010s. They all walked up the presidential ramp together, arm in arm, and they put the presidential sash onto Lula. That just signified just so clearly that this is going to be a government, or Lula wants this to be a government by the people and for the people, in which the people are giving Lula the power to be in charge. He’s going to try and hold on to that to be sure that he’s able to push, continue to push his policies.

One of the things we heard from Sonia Guajajara, for instance, she is now the Minister of Indigenous Peoples. She said in her very first talk with supporters that she was in conversation all the time during the campaign with Lula. Always talking, “hey, what’s going on?” They’d see them in different places. They kept talking about what they wanted. Then she was the one who said, “let’s do a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, let’s do it.” Within days later, Lula is talking about that up and down the country. He did it. He made good on his promise. There she is. She’s in power. So indigenous peoples are more excited than ever. People up and down the country are more excited than ever. There is hope for the first time in a very long time.

Greg Wilpert

Okay, well, on that note, we’re going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Michael Fox, freelance journalist, host, and producer of the podcast Brazil on Fire. Thanks again, Mike, for having joined me today.

Michael Fox

Thanks so much, Greg. A pleasure to be here.

Greg Wilpert

Thank you to our audience for having joined The World on Fire. The title’s similarity to Mike’s podcast is just a coincidence. Thanks again.