an election won and a cultural battle in suspense

The numbers seem simple. In the second round of the elections in Brazil, the leftist candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Lula, surpassed the president who was seeking re-election, Jair Bolsonaro, by two million votes, a narrow percentage of 1.8 percent. And yet the left and right categories do not fully explain the complex electoral canvas that can describe Brazilian society.

On the one hand, the miraculous return -from the grave, as he said- of former President Lula to win a third election. And, on the other hand, the consolidation of Jair Bolsonaro, as the undisputed leader of the right, a group that includes exactly half of the Brazilian voters.

The very fact of the candidacy of the former President, Lula da Silva, is an acknowledgment that only a figure like his could defeat the acting President, not only because of the power and exposure that being the head of the Executive gives, but because Bolsonaro has managed to awaken the rupturist impulses that were sleeping in the soul of many of his followers. Lula’s candidacy was in itself a recognition of a new political reality and of the fragility of the young Brazilian democracy.

Bolsonaro is not a conservative in the old way, he is not a right-winger with a scapular, a rosary and prayers to the Virgin. The former military man is more of a Trump-style insurgent, by the way, his great inspiration. His values ​​are the apparently traditional values ​​of “God, Country and Family” —to which he adds “Liberty”—, but now dressed in Trumpian machismo. Instead of a procession carrying the Virgin, a demonstration of hundreds of motorcyclists riding Harley Davidsons, with Bolsonaro in the lead. Instead of candles and rosaries, pistols and rifles recently released under his management with the same arguments of the National Rifle Association, NRA. He subtracts his alliance with agribusiness, an activity whose importance has grown in Brazil due to the “Dutch disease”: the growing deindustrialization of the country, legacy of the decade of high prices for raw materials. This alliance is one of the main causes of the disproportionate increase in deforestation in the Amazon.

In such a way that on the category “right”, we must superimpose those of identity movements that care less about the results of the president’s disastrous management and more about feeling represented in that disruptive insurgency.

In the face of all this, the feat of the alliance led by Lula da Silva grows, of defeating Brazilian Trumpism. She triumphed but in very limited conditions. Bolsonarism captured 38 percent of the Chamber of Deputies compared to 24 percent of the Lulista coalition; they are also in the minority in the Senate. In the Chamber of Deputies there remains the so-called center that leans more towards Bolsonaro, but four years of the PT in the Presidency are a good incentive to negotiate. The panorama in the governorships is more balanced, with all the main forces present in one or more states.

The tightness of the victory and its minority in Congress will force the PT to agree to move to the center and carry out a more orthodox economic policy, as happened in 2003, the first year of its first presidency. In fact, he had already accepted it by giving the Vice Presidency to Geraldo Alckmin, a traditional center-right figure with deep roots in the state of São Paulo, one of Brazil’s economic engines. It is possible that Lula compensates for this forced moderation, with a very active foreign policy and a little more “left”.

Just as the world breathed a sigh of relief when Biden triumphed, many of us rested when learning the electoral results and confirming Lula’s victory. A little known fact is that Brazil is the fourth oldest democracy. Let it continue to be: a democratic and prosperous Brazil is good for Brazilians and for the world.