On Oct. 25, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won an unprecedented fourth term, defeating the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 % of the vote, a margin of nearly 4.4 million votes.
asserted
president → win → votes
For the 80-year-old Lula, who had trailed his opponent by 2.2 million votes in the first round of elections just three weeks earlier, the victory was a remarkable comeback.
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victory → trail → elections
Brazil is the largest country and economy in Latin America, and the contest had become a test of whether the region’s rightward shift could be stopped.
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shift → become → America
Lula’s victory interrupted that drift and dealt a setback to President Donald Trump’s ambition to build a hemisphere of governments aligned with his politics.
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victory → interrupt → politics
Yet interpreting the result as a triumph for the left would be a mistake.
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interpreting → interpret → left
Consider the first round of the elections in Brazil: more than 33 million Brazilians did not vote in the first round, an abstention rate of 21.08 %, the highest for a presidential election first round since 1998.
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Brazilians → consider → 1998
Millions more cast blank or invalid ballots.
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Millions → cast → ballots
Voting is optional for Brazilians aged 16 and 17 and for those 70 or older, but the scale of abstention points to a broader problem of political alienation.
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scale → point → alienation
The high rejection rates for both candidates suggest that, for many voters, the election was not about electing a president but to ensure his opponent is not elected.
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opponent → suggest → president
Flávio, whose father and former president Jair Bolsonaro is serving 27 years in prison for crimes against democracy, won the first round, with 2 million more votes than Lula, and his Liberal Party’s formidable showing in Congress in early October shocked the liberal world.
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showing → serve → world
He ran as his father’s proxy.
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He → run → proxy
He promised to pardon his father and his accomplices and to carry forward his political legacy.
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He → promise → legacy
The new expectations of Lula’s children
It seemed puzzling that Lula needed such a dramatic comeback to win re-election when unemployment in Brazil stood at 5.3 %, near a historic low.
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unemployment → seem → low
The International Monetary Fund projected that Brazil would become the world’s eighth-largest economy in 2027.
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Brazil → project → 2027
Poverty in the country had fallen substantially during Lula’s third term, while real wages rose and food insecurity declined.
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insecurity → fall → term
Violent deaths had fallen to their lowest level in over a decade.
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deaths → fall → decade
Deforestation of the Amazon had fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1988.
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records → fall → 1988
Incumbents have been re-
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Incumbents → re → ?
The children of Lula’s social policies came of age in a rapidly changing world, and in a country where formal employment, labor unions, and traditional social protections have struggled to serve an increasingly informal workforce.
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employment → come → workforce
Some turned toward market-oriented politics.
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Some → turn → politics
Others found a sense of belonging in conservatism, part of a broader rightward turn among young men around the world.
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Others → find → world
Brazil’s left governed for much of their formative years.
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left → govern → years
Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016 amid a bitter political crisis and corruption scandals that implicated political figures across party lines.
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that → impeach → lines
For many Brazilians, the political establishment became synonymous with impunity and self-preservation.
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establishment → become → impunity
They saw Lula’s Workers’ Party as the establishment.
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They → see → establishment
And while Lula’s earlier corruption convictions had been annulled, the allegations continued to shadow him.
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allegations → annul → him
Meanwhile, lethal violence had become a defining feature of everyday life.
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violence → become → life
Brazil had urbanized rapidly without addressing deep inequality or reforming a public-security system inherited from the military dictatorship.
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Brazil → urbanize → dictatorship
Overcrowded prisons became recruiting grounds for criminal factions.
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prisons → become → factions
In Rio de Janeiro, militias made up largely of serving and former police officers and other security personnel initially claimed to protect residents from drug traffickers.
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militias → make → traffickers
They evolved into criminal enterprises that extorted communities, struck deals with drug factions, and infiltrated local governments.
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that → evolve → governments
Yet responsibility for confronting them remained fragmented.
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responsibility → confront → them
State governments control most policing, leaving the federal government with limited direct authority over local law enforcement.
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governments → control → enforcement
Flávio understood how to exploit voters’ distrust and frustration.
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Flávio → understand → distrust
His promises of tougher security resonated with Brazilians desperate for protection.
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promises → resonate → protection
His campaign drew comparisons to the hardline model of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
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campaign → draw → Salvador
Yet Bolsonaro Jr. also faced questions about his own associations with criminal figures in Rio, undermining his claim to offer a solution to the country’s security crisis.
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Jr. → face → crisis
During the campaign, new revelations about his ties to Daniel Vorcaro, the disgraced banker and owner of Banco Master at the center of a vast financial scandal, added to those doubts, even as he denies wrongdoing.
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he → add → wrongdoing
Flávio's brother, Eduardo, had lobbied the Trump Administration to punish Brazil over the prosecution of their father.
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brother → lobby → father
Washington imposed tariffs on Brazilian exports, explicitly linking the measures to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro.
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Washington → impose → Bolsonaro
…and 32 more, not listed.
The Aporia
