Lula: Embattled working-class hero
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An anti-government demonstrator (left) shouts slogans against a supporter of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff during a protest in Brasilia, Brazil, on Wednesday. Adriano Machado / Reuters |
An ex-metalworker who became one of Brazil's most popular presidents, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is now putting his increasingly threatened legacy on the line for his embattled successor.
Lula, as he is known to all Brazil, left office in 2011 as a blue-collar hero who presided over a watershed boom and helped lift tens of millions of people from poverty.
Now, his image tarnished by corruption charges, he is swooping back into active politics to help his embattled protegee Dilma Rousseff face an impeachment battle, mass protests and the breakdown of her coalition.
Rousseff named Lula her new chief of staff on Wednesday, the highest post in her government.
Brazil's first democratically-elected left politician, Lula was so widely admired as president that Foreign Policy magazine called him a "rock star" and his US counterpart Barack Obama once referred to him as "The Man".
Known for his charisma and common touch, Lula's popularity in Brazil and the success of the economy during a period of high commodity prices helped him ride out numerous corruption scandals.
When he stepped down after two terms, he basked in 80 percent popularity ratings.
Lula grew up in deep poverty, the last of eight children born to a family of farmers in the arid, hardscrabble northeastern state of Pernambuco.
He had little formal education as a boy, quitting grade school to help his family get by.
When he was 7, his family joined a wave of migration to the industrial heartland of Sao Paulo state, where Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and street vendor before becoming a steelworker.
He rose to become president of his trade union, less than a decade after joining. In 1980, he co-founded the Workers' Party, first standing as its candidate for president nine years later.
Lula made three unsuccessful presidential bids from 1989 to 1998, each time chipping away at the establishment parties and the idea that a poor, uneducated labor leader could never be president of Brazil. The fourth time, in 2002, he succeeded, taking office on Jan 1, 2003.
