Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, new president of Brazil, has promised to deliver the country from Jair Bolsonaro’s era of “devastation”, establishing a new regime of reconciliation, environmental preservation and social justice.
Addressing a mammoth crowd of supporters gathered at the plaza outside the presidential palace in Brasília, Lula declared the end of “one of the worst periods in Brazilian history” under the former far-right president.
“[It was] an era of darkness, uncertainty and great suffering … but this nightmare is over,” Lula said.
“It is in nobody’s interest for our country to be in a constant state of ferment,” Lula said, urging citizens to rebuild friendships destroyed by years of hate speech and lies. “There aren’t two Brazils. We are one single people.”
“Women are rummaging through the rubbish to feed their children,” said Lula, 77. “Entire families are sleeping out in the open, exposed to the cold, rain and fear.”
“No amnesty! No amnesty!” the crowd bellowed of Bolsonaro, who many want brought to justice for sabotaging Covid containment efforts and vaccination against an illness he called “a little flu”.
“Bolsonaro killed my son. He was 20 when he died,” said one man in the crowd, Waldecir da Costa, his hands shaking with anger as he held up a photograph of his late child on his phone. “I want him to pay for everything he did.”
After he was sworn in, he addressed congress and said, “The criminal behaviour of a denialist and obscurantist government that treated people’s lives with callousness” during the pandemic should not go unpunished.
The former president took refuge in the US and refused to hand the presidential sash to his leftist rival. Instead, this highly significant task was performed by Aline Sousa, waste collector and recycling activist from Brazil’s capital.
Amazon leftist politician, Vivi Reis, was in tears at the new president’s entrance. “After so much tragedy and a government that plunged Brazil into destitution and hunger, we now see that we have overcome this. We are here, we resisted – and we have won.”
Thousands of supporters filled the streets of the capital to celebrate the political revival of a man who was languishing in prison 3 years ago on corruption charges that were later vitiated.
“We feel dizzyingly unfathomable relief,” said the journalist Arimatea Lafayette, 59, as red-clad revellers marched towards the congress building on Sunday morning to toast Lula’s return and the downfall of Bolsonaro, who has taken up residence in the Florida mansion of an MMA fighter. It is unclear when he plans to return.
“We’ve been through four years of terror and now we feel free,” added Lafayette, who had flown in from the northeastern state of Alagoas wearing a T-shirt stamped with Lula’s face.
“The whole of Brazil is here – that’s what Lula’s capable of,” the 25-year-old said after stepping off a bus from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he is part of the landless workers’ movement.
Lula’s American biographer John D French said he believed that after declaring war on hunger – a hallmark of Lula’s first government – the new president’s top priority would be reuniting a bitterly divided nation after a poisonous election campaign marred by violence.
“I think what he’d like would be a generalised reconciliation … and a standing down of the levels of conflict,” American biographer, John D French said.
“The notion that everything is going to be roses and peaches and cream [is misguided]. I think this is going to be a very conflictual period.”
French said that relief was reminiscent of Democrats’ reaction to Donald Trump’s 2020 demise. “[People were] like: ‘Phew, OK – now things can go back to normal.’
“But they didn’t go back to normal in the US. Nothing is normal politically. And it’s not going to return to some sort of placid normality [in Brazil, either].”
“I know it won’t be easy for Lula to rebuild everything that Bolsonarismo has destroyed. But I feel hopeful. If there’s anyone who enjoys the popular support and international respect from leaders around the planet needed to rebuild Brazil’s relationships with the world, it’s Lula,” said Diogo Virgílio Teixeira, a 41-year-old anthropologist from São Paulo.
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