The Trumpist and evangelical right in Brazil had a swan song written for Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Brazil’s Nova Republica. The Bolsonaro team had a Plan B ready as well. After all, former president Jair Bolsonaro had plotted a coup to remain in power in 2022. His son, Flavio Bolsonaro, who led in the first round, was vocal about “redemocratising” Brazil, seeking to introduce his father’s authoritarian project, including robust caucuses in both houses of parliament and curtailing the powers of the supreme court.
Flavio, now a fugitive, has made himself a laughingstock, claiming to be Charles de Gaulle and “true president-elect”.
The New Republic, a democratic pact that emerged from the debris of a two-decade-old military dictatorship, was incorporated into the 1988 constitution. Since then, Brazil has been a shining example of a vibrant democracy and rule of law. By re-electing Lula, Brazil has rebuffed Trump's dirty game of regime change in the country.
Lula’s victory by a margin of 4.4 million votes after trailing in the first round is a major boost for the left in Latin America, which has been on a losing trail for the past few years. Besides Lula in Brazil, only Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, Yamandu Orsi of Uruguay, and Bernardo Arevalo of Guatemala represent the left. Cuba is a socialist state, and Nicaragua is a Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo dynasty. Latin America is no more “red hot”.
But is the Pink Tide over? It would be misleading to characterise the recent victory of the far-right in Latin America as a genuine right-wing ideological shift. The election of Keiko Fujimori in Peru and Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia, with a razor-thin majority at best, explains a deep political polarisation. The left is far from discredited. They have a substantive presence in parliament. The far-right’s recent victories must be seen as a backlash against the left advancing the feminist and indigenous agendas.
It is also a victory of “Bukelismo”. El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele has exported his political ideology to countries of Latin America. It incorporates crude strategies of Latin American authoritarian populists and has traits of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Rodrigo Duterte. Bukele has taken control of the parliament and judiciary and made El Salvador Trump’s “offshore prison colony for deportees”.
Costa Rica now has a populist Laura Fernandez as president, whose tough-on-crime politics is modelled on El Salvador. Nasry Asfura won in Honduras after Trump’s endorsement as a partner in the fight against “narco-communists”. Even Chile’s Jose Antonio Kast has pledged to build a massive border wall. Flavio Bolsonaro, too, had met Bukele’s security minister Gustavo Vilatoro in Sao Paulo.
Latin America is currently dominated by the fourth wave of post-war far-right politicians. And it is fast mainstreaming in the region. It is in power in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.
Lula’s spectacular win in the second round has turned the tables on the right. It is a strong rebuff to the “Donroe Doctrine”. His spectacular triumph marks the biggest setback to the evangelical right in the Global South, particularly Latin America. Lula’s victory message, “This country will not accept being anyone’s backyard,” says it all. Above all, Lula’s victory is a victory for democracy, which is otherwise in retreat elsewhere, including in India.
Lula, the “Pele of progressivism”, is a unifier and a consensus builder. He is a pragmatist, and to govern, he has resorted to a “Rooseveltian dream” for Brazil: dedicating himself to democratic ideals.
While Lula drew energy from the streets, his victory is also a victory for Taylor Swift and other pop icons. She herself didn’t say anything about Lula or Brazil. But her fandom did the trick. The fan accounts of Swift, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, and others ignited Lula’s campaign.
The Pink Tide has dimmed. But it would be wrong to characterise the recent victories of the far-right in more than half a dozen countries as a genuine right-wing ideological shift. The razor-thin majorities for the far-right in Peru and Colombia can be described as a deep political polarisation.
As Eduardo Galeano once wrote, using an Argentinian joke from the 1970s, “Power is like a violin. It is held by the left hand and played by the right.” Both left and right in Latin America have traditionally suffered from caudillismo (uniting around a strongman). They don’t have ideological axes or gravitas. They are unable to propose alternatives.
Lula is an exception. He has remained relevant and popular by reinventing the left, even building coalitions with smaller parties of the right. Bolsonaro treated him, after he was awarded a 12-year sentence, like a hardened criminal. The media unanimously pronounced him politically dead and buried in shame.
Brazilian voters have rewarded Lula for his good performance. He has all along believed that democracy is the only viable path to dealing with extreme inequality. His transformative policies like ‘Bolsa Familia’, 'Fome Zero’ and ‘Minha Casa, Minha Vida’ have revolutionised social welfare.
His foreign policy can be summed up by what finance minister Fernando Haddad once said, “Brazil will not take sides between the US and China since it is ‘too big to be choosing partners’.”
Lula is the most credible voice for the Global South, and his pragmatism and experience have guided BRICS. He has refused to be bullied by Trump like many other self-serving leaders. In his very first global outreach, Lula had told the G8 Summit in Evian, France, in June 2003, “Hunger can’t wait” and that “we are not here to lament or to simply join the chorus of recriminations”.
Lula reinvented himself by reaching out to sections of people who were not his traditional supporters and formed broad coalitions from the left to the centre-right. He has fought onslaughts from his adversaries, including Bolsonaro, in the spirit of the 1963 verse by Brazilian poet Thiago de Mello, ‘Faz escuro mas eu canto’ (It is dark, but I sing).
The author comments on global affairs.
