Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in intensive care after emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, is the poster child for a leader who rose from nothing to run one of the world’s biggest economies.
Life has often not been easy for Lula.
Over his 79 years he has experienced poverty, labor struggles, an amputated finger, various health problems, widowerhood, prison and according to a police investigation an alleged plot by his predecessor to overthrow him, possibly involving an assassination bid.
Throughout, he has championed the cause of the downtrodden, advocated global action to roll back hunger, and sought to slow the destruction of the Amazon.
He has also earned the enmity of Brazil’s conservative classes, and unease in the West for his alignment with China over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The hospitalization of Lula, who underwent emergency surgery for an intracranial hemorrhage linked to a fall he suffered in October, marked another point of drama in his already eventful life.
Lula is currently serving his third term as president, after beating his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro in a bitter 2022 election that deeply divided Brazil.
It was a spectacular comeback for the bearded left-wing icon who was controversially jailed between April 2018 and November 2019 for corruption. The conviction was overturned when the judge in charge was found to be biased.
Bolsonaro, 69, is accused of having “actively participated” in a 2022 “coup” plot to prevent Lula taking office.
In parallel with the conspiracy, which police said failed because of lack of support from military chiefs, was an alleged plan by a group of elite soldiers including a Bolsonaro aide to kill Lula, possibly through poisoning.
The country’s attorney general is currently weighing the evidence to determine whether charges should be laid against Bolsonaro and at least 36 alleged co-conspirators.
Lula previously served as president for two terms between 2003 and 2011, a blue-collar hero who presided over a commodity-fueled economic boom that helped lift 30 million people from poverty.
His first administration mixed trailblazing social programs with market-friendly economic policy, gaining him a reputation as a moderate and pragmatic leader.
At the end of his time in office, his approval rating stood at 87 percent, a level not seen before or since.
Since his return as president from January 2023, he has overseen a Brazilian economy that is significantly weaker, hobbled by high inflation, unsustainable public spending and a weak currency.
Lula grew up in deep poverty, the seventh of eight children born to a family of illiterate farmers in the arid northeastern state of Pernambuco.
When he was seven, his family joined a wave of migration to the industrial heartland of Sao Paulo.
Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and peanut vendor before becoming a metalworker at the age of just 14.
In the 1960s, he lost the pinky finger on his left hand in a workplace accident, when a mechanical press broke.
Lula rose quickly to become head of his trade union, and led major strikes in the 1970s that challenged the then-military dictatorship.
In 1980, he co-founded the Workers’ Party, standing as its candidate for president nine years later.
Lula lost three presidential bids from 1989 to 1998, finally succeeding in 2002 and again four years later. Former US president Barack Obama once described him as “the most popular politician on Earth.”
Healthwise, though he has said he wants “to live to 120,” he has faced several issues.
He has suffered from hypertension, was treated for throat cancer in 2011 with chemo- and radiotherapy, and in 2023 had a hip replaced with a prosthesis.
Then there was the October 19, 2024 fall in a bathroom in his presidential residence which dealt him a concussion, several stitches and the hemorrhage that landed him on the operating table this week.
In 2017, he lost his wife of four decades, Marisa Leticia Rocco, to a stroke. It was his second marriage and the second time he was a widower.
In 2022 he married Rosangelina da Silva, known as Janja, a sociologist and activist in his Workers Party 21 years his junior, with whom he started a relationship months after Marisa’s death.
Lula has five children from his various relationships.
bur/rmb/bfm
Amazon.com
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
