‘Viscerally dedicated to social issues’: behind Lula’s drive to win final term in Brazil’s crunch election

Longtime friend tells of president’s obsession with social justice and fears for country’s future under another Bolsonaro presidency On 1 January 2023, a few hours after being sworn in for his third stint as Brazil’s president, a ravenous Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sneaked away from a celebratory cocktail party packed with politicians and diplomats to grab a snack with one of his oldest friends. “This is your penultimate term,” that friend, the Dominican theologian and writer Frei Betto, recalls telling Lula as the pair chewed the fat in a back room of the foreign ministry in Brasília. Continue reading...