After a Sunday catching crabs on the outskirts of Santos, on the coast of the state of São Paulo, on Monday, March 21, 1955, of the boy Luiz Inácio da Silva, 10 years old, son of northeasters who migrated southeast to escape misery , was like everyone else: selling oranges at the harbor. In contrast, for the descendants of the Italians Olinda and Percy Bolsonaro, that day, 560 km away, in tiny Glicério, also in the state of São Paulo, was memorable: after a complicated pregnancy, their third child, Messiah, was born.
While “Lula”, the diminutive by which he was called by his parents, Dona Lindu and Aristides, and the more than ten brothers and half-brothers, sons of the father with a cousin of the mother, who also lived with the family in a tent in Santos , was not added until years later in a notary’s office, Bolsonaro’s “Jair”, moments before registration, would be made official, by decree of Mr. Percy, when he realized that his son was born on the birthday of his idol, Jair da Rosa Pinto, who played for Palmeiras at the time.
In São Paulo, where Dona Lindu, her greatest inspiration in life and in politics, escaped her intimidating husband, Lula was a shoe shiner, dry cleaner and office assistant before training as a machinist at age 16. who Bolsonaristas calls “nine fingers” on social media today, lost his little finger in an accident at work in a screw factory.
If Lula, who described himself as president, “a walking metamorphosis”, referring to the music of Raul Seixas, changed profession every year, teenager Jair Messias, whose family had meanwhile exchanged Glicério for the larger Eldorado, would be well aware What I wanted to be: Military. He says that in 1971, at the age of 15 – Lula had already been convinced by a brother to enter union life – he helped the army search for the hideout where the guerrilla Carlos Lamarca had set up a resistance camp against the military dictatorship. .
However, in the same year, 1977, when Bolsonaro graduated from the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras, in Rio de Janeiro, where he would make his political career, Lula began to prepare the strikes of metal workers in the suburbs of São Paulo that led to his arrest. , first, and politically, after that.
In 1986, Lula had already founded the Workers’ Party and had been elected a federal deputy, Bolsonaro was also sentenced to 15 days in prison, after writing an article in Veja magazine entitled “The salary [dos militares] is low” and articulated barracks bombings to enforce the increase. And like today’s rival, the cell served him as an antechamber of politics.
From 1989 to 2018, he was a low-clergy parliamentarian who, in nine parties, cultivated a loyal electorate of military, police, and whoever used guns. Rarely taken seriously by his peers, he gained media power thanks to the constant and shocking public interventions – he defended the shooting of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, elevated torturers to national heroes, lamented that few people died during the dictatorship, said he preferred to a dead son of a gay son and starred in scenes of misogyny and racism before deciding to run for the 2018 presidential election, for which he left as a outsider.
By then, Lula had already lost three and won two. After ruling much more downtown than her union history would have suggested, she still helped Dilma Rousseff win over so many others. During his tenures, he created programs that put 40 million Brazilians into the consumer society, took Brazil off the hunger map, gained international recognition and ended his term with more than 80% approval. But a compulsive pragmatist, he joined the worst politics, which he had criticized so much in the opposition, and got involved with the Mensalão, which, if it didn’t shake his popularity, at least damaged his reputation.
Following the traumatic accusation of his successor, Lula, like Bolsonaro, was preparing to run to the Planalto in 2018 when Operation Car Wash, which condemned 100 politicians over scandals at state-owned Petrobras, ordered him to be ordered by Judge Sergio Moro. Bolsonaro, taking advantage of the frenzy of the operation, an effective but disloyal internet campaign and the wind that blew from the United States with the rise of Donald Trump, his idol, was eventually elected with a reactionary program in customs and liberal in the economy , very “God” in the speech and Moro in the government.
During the tenure of Bolsonaro, who has been married three times like Lula and has five children like his rival, the Supreme Court deemed Moro’s role in Lava Jato a violation of the constitution due to partisanship. And Lula, convicted of passive corruption and money laundering, was released after 580 days – a period during which he became a widow for the second time and lost a brother and a grandson of 7 – in a cell in Curitiba.
With his political rights resumed, the former orange seller took the lead in the polls for 2022, ahead of the Palmeiras star’s namesake, worn out by the economic crisis, the pandemic’s suicidal behavior and attacks on democracy, in a violent duel announced in the stars.
But for Bolsonaro, who overcame a knife attack during the 2018 election campaign, and for Lula, who survived larynx cancer in 2011, today’s election is just another battle.
Source: DN
