Brazil’s Poor Love Lula. And They May Be His and Rousseff’s Salvation
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By Michael Smith
Bloomberg Businessweek
Tuesday, Apr 12, 2016
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walks with Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff as he is sworn in as chief of staff on March 17 in Brasilia.
Photographer: Igo Estrela/Getty Images
On a hilly, scorched plot of farmland in Brazil’s destitute
northeast, there’s a replica of the mud-and-stick-walled hut where Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, who went on to serve two terms as president, was
born. It’s in places like this, where emaciated cattle graze on sunbaked
scrub, that Lula and his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, are
mustering their forces to fight Rousseff’s impeachment and defuse
multiple corruption scandals.
Lula, perhaps Brazil’s most popular
leader ever, spent his first seven years in the hut with his mother and
six siblings. There was no electricity or running water, no proper
bathroom or shoes. In 1952, the family piled onto a truck for a one-way,
13-day journey to São Paulo. Millions made this exodus south in the
20th century as government after government failed to provide enough
relief from drought and hunger. Lula sold peanuts on the street, worked
in factories, was jailed by dictators for leading a union, and founded
the now ruling Workers’ Party.
In 2002, Lula won the presidency by
a landslide. He expanded welfare, credit, crop support, and housing
programs for subsistence farmers and slum dwellers, as well as
universities, health care, and jobs programs for their children, all on a
scale never seen before. This safety net, largely maintained by
Rousseff, pulled 36 million people out of abject poverty, especially in
the northeast.
These poorest
Brazilians gave Rousseff her narrow reelection in 2014. Today, along
with unionized workers and civil servants, they are a largely loyal
force that Lula and Rousseff hope will help them block efforts to oust
her and keep him from running for president in 2018.
In early
April, Lula will visit the northeast to tell supporters that efforts to
implicate him in corruption scandals and impeach Rousseff are a coup
attempt. The Workers’ Party is going door to door to urge Brazilians to
pressure their congressmen by taking to the streets in support of the
government. “This is their base, and they’re trying to rally them. And
it may help,” says Brasilio Sallum Jr., a University of São Paulo
sociology professor who published a book in 2015 on the last president
to be impeached in Brazil, Fernando Collor de Mello. “But it steps up
the level of social conflict, which is very worrisome.” People wearing
red, the Workers’ Party color, have been jeered on the streets,
lawmakers have scuffled in Congress, riot police have tear-gassed
protesters, and the former president’s Lula Institute has been
vandalized.
The makeup of the demonstrators shows the impeachment
battle is being fought along class and racial lines. In São Paulo on
March 13, half a millon protesters called for the president to step
down; they were 77 percent white, and more than half were considered
high-income, a survey by pollster Datafolha found. Brazil is about
47 percent white, with the rest being black or of mixed ancestry. At a
pro-government march in São Paulo on March 18, Rousseff drew more black
and mixed-race supporters, and almost half were lower middle class or
poor, a Datafolha survey shows.
Rousseff may have the poor on her
side, but there are signs she’s losing support within the 114
million-strong emerging middle class. Forty-four percent of them are
upset that she has scaled back some of the social programs Lula started
that got them to where they are, according to a recent survey by the
polling firm Data Popular.
If
Lula and Rousseff prevail, it will be thanks to Brazilians like Jose
Erminio da Silva, whose farm is 15 miles from the former president’s
birthplace. “Without Lula, we would have been condemned to hunger,
poverty, nothing, like everyone before us,” he says. Since the early
2000s, Da Silva—no relation—has used a government credit program created
by Lula to purchase 4.8 hectares of land, build a barn, and acquire
about a dozen cattle. He’s one of 3 million subsistence farmers who’ve
received such financing. Da Silva says “no president has helped the poor
in Brazil like Lula. Those who want to impeach the president just want
to take it all away. We can’t allow that to happen.”
In March, Congress started
impeachment proceedings against Rousseff for allegedly tapping state
bank coffers to mask budget deficits, in violation of the law. Rousseff,
who’s denied any wrongdoing, named Lula her chief of staff, entrusted
with overseeing political and economic policies. The move could give him
immunity from prosecution in a lower court. The Supreme Court is
deciding whether to allow the appointment. A major party left Rousseff’s
ruling coalition on March 29, and the stock market has surged on hopes
that Rousseff will soon be out of office.
According to a March 19
Datafolha poll, about 68 percent of Brazilians want Rousseff replaced.
Lula has more support and not just in the northeast. In a nationwide
Feb. 25 poll by São Paulo-based Datafolha, 37 percent said he was the
best Brazilian president of all time.
In Caetés—whose average
rural household income of 77 reais ($21) a month makes it one of
Brazil’s poorest spots—the opposition to Rousseff’s ouster runs deep.
The family of Maria de Socorro Florentino is one of 13.9 million who
received Lula’s cash handouts, which got paid on condition that children
be vaccinated and go to school. Florentino says the cash saved them. “I
remember running out of food, really running out of food when my kids
were little,” she says. “If it weren’t for Lula, and Dilma after him,
I’m sure I would have died of hunger. Maybe she wouldn’t have survived,”
she says, pointing to her daughter.
The impeachment process might
come to a vote by mid-April, but it’s by no means certain, says
University of São Paulo’s Sallum. To make it to the senate for a trial,
the motion to impeach must pass by a two-thirds majority in the
fractious lower house. “That’s incredibly hard to get, which is why Lula
and Dilma want to get their base to pressure Congress,” he says. “My
big concern is what will happen if she wins? How will she govern?”
Back
at the hut, one of Lula’s second cousins, Eraldo Ferreira dos Santos,
says the poor have too much to lose not to fight. “Before, you had no
choice but to flee, flee, flee the hunger and desperation,” says Santos,
whose family migrated to São Paulo in 1969. “Now you have people who
have what they need to stay. And that’s a legacy we cannot allow to be
taken from us.”
—With Anna Edgerton and Sabrina Valle
The bottom line:
The impoverished northeast region of Brazil remains a bulwark for Lula
and Rousseff. It may play a role in their political survival.
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