Lula

A Biography

Fernando Morais

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781804294925
• eBook ISBN: 9781804298060
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of seven children raised in abject poverty by a single parent, Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva acquired his politics on the hard road of personal suffering, inspired by the selfless example of his mother. He started work at the age of eight and didn't learn to read for another two years. At twenty, he lost his wife and child. A union organizer in the 1980s, when Brazil still languished under military dictatorship, Lula helped form the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Brazilian Workers' Party). His first steps in politics were faltering. He came last running for governor of S?o Paulo and would have retreated from electoral politics entirely were it not for the intercession of Fidel Castro.

More setbacks were to follow, but in 2003 Lula was elected president. He became one of the most popular politicians not only in Brazilian history but on the planet. His seven years in office saw millions of his compatriots lifted out of poverty. Disqualified from running for president in 2018, he was subsequently sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. That sentence was quashed in 2019, allowing Lula to defeat Jair Bolsonaro and win a third term.

Leading Brazilian journalist Fernando Morais has enjoyed direct, frank, and frequent access to his subject for decades. The result is a biography that paints a human portrait of grandeur and complexity.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents 
• Political Party and Public Agency Abbreviations
• Map of ABC, São Paulo
• 1. Sergio Moro orders Lula’s arrest but he decides not to turn himself in to the Federal Police. “They’ll have to come for me”
• 2. While searching Lula’s home, the Federal Police stick a bug under his couch to secretly record conversations with his wife
• 3. GloboNews network runs a fake story—“Lula Will Resist Arrest!”—and its ratings rise by 694 percent
• 4. Emídio learns that the Federal Police had not one but several spies filming everything that happened inside the union hall
• 5. After standing up to the neighbors and the Federal Police, the people spend 581 days yelling greetings to Lula. He can’t see them from his cell, but he can hear them
• 6. A hacker named Red opens to the gates of hell, and the Supreme Court buries Moro and the Car Wash investigation. Lula steps out of prison as a presidential candidate
• 7. Jardim Lavinia, April 1980—With the police at the door to arrest him, Lula growls, “I’m sleeping, damn it! They can go fuck themselves!”
• 8. Navy intelligence intercepts communications from the Curia and reveals that Cardinal Arns asked the German Catholic Church to support the ABC Metalworkers’ strike fund
• 9. After a cruel childhood in abject poverty, Lula receives the key to paradise: a diploma from SENAI technical school
• 10. Lula’s fiancée makes an ultimatum: “You have to choose between the union and marriage. You can’t have both”
• 11. “I know, doctor, my baby was born dead.” “Be strong, Mr. Lula, because the news is worse: Your wife, Lourdes, has died too”
• 12. During his first visit to a foreign country, Lula rushes home from Tokyo: his brother is being tortured in a DOI-CODI prison
• 13. After years denigrating the political class, Lula starts building the foundation for the Workers’ Party
• 14. While Lula faces the police and the bosses in ABC, Brizola tries to rebuild the Brazilian Labor Party and is blocked by Golbery
• 15. Lula brings together workers, politicians, intellectuals, and leftist activists to create the Workers’ Party. Two months later, he is arrested
• 16. In the middle of the night, a polite man in a tie interrogates Lula in a cubicle in DOPS, sent by a general codenamed “the chief”
• 17. Clobbered in the polls, Lula sinks into depression and decides to abandon politics. He travels to Cuba, listens to Fidel, and returns to Brazil to win a congressional seat with the most votes in history
• Epilogue
• Appendix: An X-ray of the Large Communications Companies’ War against Lula and His Party
• Index