Stormy Times in Brazil

On the evening of 30 October, when Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva appeared before the press in a hotel, he had a big smile on his face. You could hear cheering, fists were raised into the air, a chorus of voices chanted “Olé, olé, olé, olá, Lula, Lula”.

A few minutes earlier, it had been announced that the former union leader had narrowly won the run-off election against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Representatives of social movements stood next to party officials on the stage. Many activists had campaigned for months, contributing to Lula’s victory.

He will be sworn in in the capital, Brasília, on 1 January 2023. How do things stand in Brazil after almost four years of Bolsonaro? What hopes does the left have for Lula and how much room for manoeuvre will there be for left-wing politics? What role will social movements play during Lula’s presidency?

Bolsonaro’s Grim Legacy

Bolsonaro’s presidency was a catastrophe for broad swathes of the Brazilian population. His government cut social programmes, weakened unions, and refused to raise the minimum wage despite galloping inflation. It also privatized state-owned enterprises, abolished programmes to fight hunger, implemented an unpopular retirement pension reform, and is responsible for almost 70,000 deaths due to its disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bolsonaro has had a paranoid disdain for the Left since his youth. When he took office, social movements and left-wing figures feared the worst. At an election rally in 2018, he grabbed a microphone stand, held it like a machine gun and bellowed before a cheering crowd: “we are going to shoot the petralhada”, using a derogative name for members of the PT, or Workers’ Party.

As president, the army captain did everything he could to criminalize left-wing movements. But even if it is undeniable that things worsened under Bolsonaro, no social movement was banned or classed as a criminal organization, and a much-feared attempt at toughening anti-terror laws failed. And Bolsonaro’s thuggish approach to politics even had a countervailing effect: the more he meted it out to social movements, the more people showed solidarity with each other. The red cap of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) thus became a symbol of resistance.

Now many people are hoping for a 180-degree turnaround — and one is in the offing in a number of areas. For example, Lula promised to make tackling poverty and inequality his top priority. Poverty massively increased during Bolsonaro’s presidency. Everyday necessities like gas cannisters for cooking are too expensive for many, and studies report that 33 million Brazilians are going hungry. Many look back longingly to Lula’s previous terms as president, in which — thanks to a boom in raw materials — poverty drastically decreased. His social programmes were internationally renowned. Now Lula wants to continue that work. He has announced, for example, his desire to reintroduce the housing construction programme Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My Home, My Life).

Expectations are also high for Lula regarding environmental politics. Bolsonaro will leave behind a trail of destruction. In his 2018 election campaign, he announced that “not one more centimetre” would be reserved for indigenous territories, and even called on Brazilians to illegally expropriate land. He denied that deforestation was on the rise, fuelled scepticism about climate change, and spoke of “environmental psychosis”.

He didn’t only grind the axe rhetorically: upon taking office, his government deprived the environmental agency Ibama and the indigenous agency Funai of their power by cutting their already scarce funding, placing loyalists in leadership roles, and firing employees with technical or environmental policy expertise. The result: fewer and fewer controls and fines. Land invaders have understood this as a green light. More and more excavation diggers are rolling through the rainforest, armed gold miners are forcing their way deep into indigenous territories, and beef farmers are appropriating huge swathes of land. There is an atmosphere of impunity in many regions. Little wonder that both deforestation and land conflicts have rapidly increased.

Lula’s Challenge

It won’t be easy for Lula to turn these processes around. But the former union leader explicitly declared that he would make the struggle against climate change a priority for his government — even though it is usually only a minor issue in Brazil. Lula travelled to the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt together with his former environment minister Marina Silva. There, he called on industrialized nations to supply 100 million US dollars in funding to allow countries like Brazil to tackle deforestation.

But Lula was not always the environmentally conscious politician he is now being celebrated as. Deforestation did gradually decrease in the course of his previous presidency. This was facilitated by new technologies such as satellite surveillance, which enabled illegal clearing to be quickly identified. But big hopes for far-reaching changes were disappointed.

President Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff did not break with the logic of growth. On the contrary: the government cultivated links to agribusiness and legalized genetically modified soy. A controversial project was the Belo Monte mega-dam, which displaced thousands of people and destroyed natural areas. As author Eliane Brum writes: “Only the PT could build Belo Monte, because no one believed that they would build it.”

Lula now appears to want to categorically leave that period behind him, drawing up a 26-point plan with ambitious targets, including reducing greenhouse gases and the establishment of protected indigenous and ecological zones. He has also repeatedly stressed his desire to establish a ministry for indigenous people — one led by an indigenous person. That has long been a central demand of indigenous activists. He has also promised to put an end to illegal logging.

Many other governments were openly relieved by Lula’s win, not least due to a hoped-for turnaround in environmental policy. The stalled negotiations on a free-trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries may also gain new momentum following Bolsonaro’s loss. Numerous EU members are currently blocking the agreement due to increased deforestation in the Amazon.

But how much room for manoeuvre does Lula have to implement his ambitious plans? The country’s economy is not going well, the halcyon days have long since passed. Although Lula’s PT has rallied, Bolsonaro’s defeated party will constitute the strongest opposition faction in the Chamber of Deputies. Many right-wing politicians also managed to secure places in the senate and won numerous state gubernatorial races. The three largest federal states — São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais — will be governed by Bolsonaro loyalists. Despite his electoral victory, Lula will have to fight hard for majorities in the starkly divided parliament, and will have to make many concessions to his conservative partners.

It was already clear before the election that Lula would have to make substantial compromises. In order to return as the head of the largest country in Latin America, he forged a broad coalition that included conservative and economically liberal elements. His deputy was the conservative, business-friendly ex-governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin. Economic liberals such as the former president of the central bank also offered Lula their support. While the financial markets rejoiced at this anti-Bolsonaro bloc, alarm bells were ringing for the Left. Fears loom large that his next term will be marked by orthodox economic policy. Lula has not yet settled on a minister of economics — the nomination may well be decisive for the course the new government will take.

Lula has also taken ambiguous positions on other issues. In an interview he said he was against abortion. His comments may well have been an attempt to appeal to evangelical voters, many of whom support Bolsonaro. Pentecostal churches are increasingly influential in Brazil — also because Bolsonaro vested them with so much power. Lula will not be able to ignore them. It will be tough to implement feminist demands, such as a relaxing of the country’s strict abortion laws.

It Won’t Be Easy

Many activists hope that, with Lula in charge, at least the profile of the government will change. Under Bolsonaro, a notorious racist, white men set the tone. Indeed, many black activists and politicians will be included in the new government. Yet even in the PT, almost all leadership figures are white, and only a few black and indigenous people can hope to land ministerial positions.

During the election campaign, social movements had agreed to refrain from criticizing Lula too vocally in order to defeat Bolsonaro. Now they must discuss their relationship to the incoming government. “Of course, the victory was important for all progressives in Brazil”, Gilmar Mauro, an MST coordinator, told the RLS. “But we will not be part of the government.”#

According to Mauro, no MST leaders have demanded positions in the Lula government. The movement will continue to struggle for agricultural reform — including in the streets. Members of other social movements have announced their desire to critically observe the Lula government. In recent months, the priority was to vote out Bolsonaro. Now they need to start doing their own politics again.

But that will not be easy, as Bolsonaro has managed to gather an extremely active movement behind him. Immediately following his defeat, his supporters set up street blockades to demonstrate against the “stolen election”. Most freeways have since been cleared, but many Bolsonaristas continue to demonstrate on the streets of Brazil every week. Some are openly calling for the military to intervene. “We must realize that we will have to deal with an extremely radicalized right-wing for a long time to come”, Mauro says.

One thing seems clear: Bolsonarismo will remain strong, even when Bolsonaro is no longer president. Lula should expect to have a stormy presidency. Mauro thinks so too. The Left cannot relax after winning the election. “I hope that the Lula government and the popular forces of Brazil succeed in tackling the most urgent issues — so that in four years’ time we will be able to elect a government that is even further to the left.