It Could Happen Here - The Brazilian Election Part 1: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

In part 1 of our series on the recent Brazilian election we talk about the origins and career of one Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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sort of. This is a special episode about thing that happened where thing that happened is the brazilian election and with me to talk about this is garrison hello and james hello so i i think i think people probably know by now i louise anassio lula de silva better known as lula has defeated jr bosonaro in a absolutely terrifying squeaker of a presidential election um this is like by far the closest election that lula a former two-term president of brazil has ever won um part of this is a campaign of last minute voter suppression that bolsonaro and his supporters did where like like basically like the Brazilian federal police started setting up like they set up like 550 roadblocks to stop people in the little strongholds from voting. not mattering and right now as as a time of recording which is uh 1 p.m 1 30 p.m pacific on halloween uh bolsonaro is missing in action there's no like no one's seen him the only the

only thing the the only sign of life that there has been from him is he unfollowed his wife amazing stuff it's it sounds like he just locked himself in the in the presidential palace in is he unfollowed his wife. Amazing stuff. It sounds like he just locked himself in the presidential palace and turned all of the lights off. Yeah, he's missing it. Nobody's seen or heard from him. So by the time this episode comes out,

there's like a small chance there's been a coup. There's like a small chance he's died from COVID. I don't know. Probably neither of those have happened but you know so lula won his election like he he won like like 50.8 percent of the vote roughly and okay so there's a lot of voter suppression but even voter suppression cannot explain why lula who won his last elections with respectively 61 in 60 percent of the vote, was reduced to like 50.8 percent this time. And OK, so this begs two questions. Who is Luis Anasio Lula da Silva and how did we get to this election?

So the first episode of this is going to be answering the first question, and the second episode is largely the second question. Okay, so who actually is Lula? Lula is born in 1945, actually his birthday is a few days ago, to a desperately poor family in Brazil's Northeast. And this family moves from the Northeast to what became known as the ABC region of Brazil, which is Santo André São Bernardo. Sorry. Santo André São Bernardo. Jesus.

Who can't say names of Brazil now? Okay, here's the thing. This is not a famous name. This is São Bernardo. Wait, wait. Are you conflating Brazilzil and argentina which are famously not the same country also different languages here's the thing if this was in spanish i could do this i'm gonna make my i'm gonna make this disclaimer here uh all of my

pronunciations of this are based on my terrible knowledge of spanish the problem is uh brazil famously speaks portuguese a language that is not spanish so yeah but okay so there's this thing called the abc region because there's three cities there that are at abc um got it as part of this sort of mass migration which is popularly remembered as like this mass migration of people from the northeast of sao paulo but the the sort of the action that that's a popular memory of it the the actuality is that millions of people flow into sao paulo like from all across brazil um the abc region becomes brazil's sort of industrial heartland like every story you read about this we'll call it like brazil's detroit and that's kind of true and kind of not true like i don't know every everyone who writes about brazil is like how can we make this the u.s and like god forbid other countries have their own realities yeah and like okay like

there is an extent to which brazil is also like the ex-slave colony thing right but no like thing, right? But no, Brazil is its own country. However, comma, the ABC region becomes the core of Brazil's massive metalworking industry. This industry is just, like, from the 50s to the 80s, just, like, purely expanding. The historian J.D. French notes that the ABC's population

increased by 800% from 1950 to 1980. So Lulu arrives in the middle of a veritable industrial revolution. This is going to end in one of history's sort of great built industrial working classes. But when he's there, that's kind of not what's happening. The other thing I should mention about this region is that when I say metalworking, so the reason there's so many Detroit comparisons is that this is a region that is massively involved in Brazil's auto industry, which in this period is expanding and is very large. I think I've actually talked about this in the neoliberalism episodes a little bit.

But yeah, so Lula like leaves school in fifth grade to basically find whatever work he can in the street. And this is another sort of very famous thing that everyone talks about, about Lula, about he has a great school education. And that's sort of true. It is true that he never went to school past fifth grade, mostly. Although we'll get to some other stuff that he did later. What happens basically is that his mom's able to get him into this government metalworking sort of apprenticeship program that is teaching young people how to basically become skilled metalworkers. And this also is an education, right?

there's a lot of very interesting sort of like theory stuff about this about how these people like are are also kind of worker intellectuals because in order to like be a metal worker and to do all this stuff you have to know a shit ton of stuff you have to know you have to know a bunch of tactical stuff about how metal works you have to know there's you know it's it's very highly skilled very high like degree of knowledge you have to have so you know he he gets this kind of education um and he becomes a very, very good metal worker. And he's he's part of a like a highly skilled and the academic literature will call it highly paid. Although like, OK, this is highly paid compared to like someone like someone who is a worker, but who's not like a metal worker, like one of the sort of skilled, quote unquote, metal workers. They're not like these people aren't like lawyers.

work like one of the sort of skilled quote-unquote metal workers um they're not like these people aren't like lawyers right like they're they're they're so closer to the actual sort of working class than you know some like people who are sort of like auxiliary parts of the ruling class and he enters you know he enters this sort of manufacturing boom as part of what's called the brazilian miracle well okay so he's there a bit before the sort of Brazilian miracle starts. But there's this period under the military dictatorship, which takes power in 1965, where they kind of like luck into a functioning economy. Although I should mention this now. Okay, so in this period in Brazil, like inflation being good and under control is inflation is at 20%. Like when inflation is at 20%,

everything's considered fine. And when it goes up from 20%, it's like, Oh no, we've lost control of inflation. And this, this kind of like, this is a survivable thing because people's wages are sort of indexed to,

um, like they're indexed to cost of living increases to some extent, which is a thing that like, yeah, it will never happen here. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess if you do the kind of stuff these guys do, you can probably get some of this. But, yeah, the sort of interesting thing about what's happening here is you have a very large industrial working class, but it's not really very militant for most of the time lula's in it except for sort of right around the military like coup in 1965 lula sees some of kind of like the old radicalism like he he talks about like you know like watching people like storming factories because they're on

strike uh the the brazilian working class does there's a lot of fun stuff that they do like they do things like okay so they everyone will show up to a protest with like uh a bunch of like pockets full of marbles and when it when a calvary charge starts they'll just roll they'll all roll marbles down the street and the horses will step on the marbles and fall um that's a it's an og battle maneuver. Yeah, yeah. My absolute favorite one. This is just like pure Looney Tunes shit. They do this thing where... Okay, so they'll string piano wire up

like between light posts and then they'll bait cavalry units into charging at them and then they'll run under the thing and the guys will just get fucking clotheslined. That's brutal. It's so good. Yeah yeah that's pretty great it's horse cops you don't see horse cops in america but not no no no well they you see them sometimes like i i have i have seen some horse cops portland's horse cops only like stopped existing a few years ago yeah yeah in the uk up until very recently they used them to police protest yeah yeah i mean yeah there was footage from 2020 of people getting

run over by horses in the in the states yeah yeah yeah they still do this yeah it fucking sucks there's actually okay i think the the the most famous police horse related story in the US is a Philly sports fan, I think of like 2014, punching a police horse. What a city! Yeah. The most famous British police horse thing is the horse humping the cop. Oh god! Critical support to the horse? Yeah, I'm just going to quickly copy

the image into the chat so you can all enjoy it I'm glad that we've taken this episode in this direction holy shit that oh my god okay that is much more graphic than I thought it was going to be holy shit

do you know what else will take a cop and bend it over and nope all right well here's here's some we can't promise that garrison here is some advertisements welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. And we're back with other things that will scar my soul forever. Oh, boy. Up until sort of 1965, there had been a kind of left-wing government in Brazil, and then the military coup

just overthrows it. And the left is kind of just annihilated from this. And it's not just from the pure political repression, which forces, like, all the communist parties are forced underground. But one of the things, one of the real things that sort of like really shatters the brazilian left is that like the coup happens and the left you know the left sort of knows there's a coup coming

right but they expect that when the coup happens there's going to be strikes and like the working class is going to fight them and they're going to beat it and everyone kind of just like in the factories kind of just shrugs and nothing happens and they just get rolled over and this is the start of this period of sort of like you know this kind of like the workers movement like nothing is happening again there's some sort of radical student groups trying to do stuff but like i don't know there's a brazilian version of may 68 but mostly what happens there is like one factory gets occupied and then the army shows up with guns and they get owned and it's really grim and you know you have these sort of like like tiny like actually okay you have these tiny catholic maoist groups for these maoist

student groups wait yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll just go straight through that, alright. It's nuts. Normal, totally normal. Yeah, I, yeah, and you know, they're trying to do like guerrilla insurgency stuff and the army just sort of like kills them all. They're horribly destroyed.

So for almost a decade and a half, like, you have a very depoliticized industrial proletariat and and lula's part of this right like from from like when he enters the workforce until like the late 70s he is not political at all are they doing the thing under the dictatorship where they have like pet unions i guess when it's like one mandated union for the industry actually i was about to talk about this um yeah so the brazilian labor system then and the thing is, this wasn't set up under this military dictatorship.

It was kind of set up under like a previous one. But this, yeah, is still sort of a thing. All of the unions have to register with the state. And when they're doing contract negotiations, right,

they're not negotiating with the corporations or negotiating with the state. And so this means that like the state is setting wage rates, which is going to become important later. But yeah, there's a really

interesting sort of problem here because there's this entire class of basically sort of like government union guy who's like basically a bureaucrat and is like really corrupt we love you and yeah well and this is like and like like a lot of people just hate them because like that like you know because because they like literally what these people are are like they're a guy who's doing this job to get ahead and then their job is to sort of like like you know, because they, like, literally what these people are, are, like, they're a guy who's doing this job to get ahead, and then their job is to sort of, like, you know, technically it's, like, mediate the class struggle, right? But, like, what that actually means is, like, make sure that, like, there isn't actually sort of, like, make sure the union isn't actually sort of a source of class conflict. And, you know, this is the whole sort of thing behind this, because before, like, the 1940s brazil had this really really built

and like uh labor movement they had a bunch of anarchists like the anarchist tractor so the government a couple times they have these huge general strikes there's a communist party is like a real thing and then the government tries to like bring all of like you know okay fuck it we're gonna bring all the unions under our control and it's still also true that these are like they're still technically unions so there are people who are sort of doing union organizing in them, right? Like they, they still do some regular union stuff and yeah,

we're going to talk about this a bit more later, but there's, I don't know. These unions are fucking weird. Like they're not like unions anywhere else I've ever seen. Yeah. But so, cause if you ever think like Lula in this point,

like is a political, right? People, people keep trying to talk to him about politics and he's like, I just want to play soccer and like chase girls. And he talks about this, like drinking, like in speeches a lot, but his brother who's known as Frey Chico is a Brazilian communist party militant for like his entire life. And being, being, being a PCB militant in like the sixties and seventies, this is like

life-threatening. The party is outlawed everyone is so clandestine that like fray chico's own wife doesn't know that he's a communist and finds out that he's a communist when he gets arrested like it's it's this this is like this is like the level of like clandestine shit that everyone that that like you know the sort of communist parties are working on under here um but fray chico's also, like, an open union activist, and everyone knows he's, like, he's a leftist, basically, because, you know, even sort of, like, the unions are sort of, like, split between, like, there's sort of left factions that are, like, trying to actually do union stuff,

but, like, for, towards sort of leftist goals, there are, like, more moderate people who are, like, bread-and-butter trade unionists, and then there's also just, like, a bunch of people who are, bread and butter trade unionists and then there's also just like a bunch of people who are like just the corruption faction um but yeah like lula doesn't like lula like doesn't care about the union at all like he's not even in the union until free chico like his brother just like like literally just like drags him kicking and screaming into running for an elected position in the union because uh like he he needed a guy to run on a slate but he couldn't run himself because everyone knew he was a leftist so he was like okay i'm gonna your brother you run uh you're you're not like openly a leftist you can actually win this and this is you know and then this works and he gets elected and this is where lula

like learns politics um from the book lula and His Politics of Cunning, quote, Lula would have to master the mundane aspects of union life, including bureaucratic routines, budgets, services, and preparing union assemblies. Lula would also undergo a gradual politicization through relationships with fellow directors, union lawyers, and staff, an activist central to the union's turbulent internal politics. Finally, Lula would need to learn about the repressive dimension of working class life under military rule, including close supervision and surveillance by police, employers, and labor ministry officials. And what's interesting about this story is that everyone around him when he joins this

union, including basically his boss in the union, a guy named Vidal, who's a very powerful union leader, his brother, everyone thinks he's going to be this sort of like compliance like obedient fingerhead and instead what they have done is they have created arguably the greatest politician of the 21st century um one of the things that's important to note here is that like okay so like the unions are like fucked up right and everyone kind of understands they're fucked up these are still probably the most like like these are probably still the most competitive democratic elections that are happening in brazil like brazil technically has elections there's these sort of like two official parties so okay so it's kind of weird that the military like

is in power but like they have this sort of veneer that they're not and they technically they technically sometimes have a civilian president they have these sort of veneer that they're not and they technically they technically sometimes have a civilian president they have these sort of like parties that are kind of real but you know the union actually has like there are like leftist slates there are conservative slates like there's actual sort of politics going on and lula is actually able to sort of like make his mark through through his ability to just like make friends with people on both the sort of like radical and moderate side of the union um union sort of political aisle and this is because lula like lula is just is funny he loves playing soccer he loves just like dancing and hanging out and this lets him like win his election slate like pretty easily because you know she's just she's just very popular so these are things

that like i don't know like the other workers in the factory a lot of times don't care that much about union politics but they do care about like that you care about soccer a lot and so lula was able to build a bunch of support and this lets him sort of easily take a position in a union system that like i it's basically a miniature state like the unions have their own welfare programs they have they have their own education system and you know this is part of the thing about people talking about like lula's like completely uneducated it's like no it's not like he he spends a bunch of time like in classes that like the the union like puts on basically like university and academic classes right for for its workers and for other people sort of affiliated with them so he spends a bunch and this is like you know part of

where he learned sort of politics and where he learned political economy is like is through the through these classes the union has and he sorry he the union also like you know i talked about like they they run welfare programs right so he's like he's like a social worker right trying trying to sort of like help workers and pensioners with his job he gets this position that like everyone hates like he he has this position basically like running running their sort of like like welfare program and like nobody wants it but he like does it and he does it really well and this makes him really popular because he's the guy that like you know if you're like a pensioner right like he's the guy you go to to figure out pension bullshit he's the guy you just go to in order to sort of

get stuff done and yeah you know this means he's spending a bunch of time doing paperwork and negotiating with government bureaucracy, and this makes him a very, very effective politician. Here's from Lula's Politics at Cutting again. But Lula also gained access to an even larger constituency at the union headquarters, a working-class public sphere. Do you know how many people pass by the union daily? He asked a journalist in 1979. At minimum, 1,500. Those frequenting the union did so for many reasons. Often for various sorts of assistance or assistencia, which I think is, yeah, like government, like union assistance stuff.

Yeah. Assistencia. But also to complain about work shoot the breeze or catch up with friends some union directors often arrived late to the headquarters and were off always busy when they did the gregarious lula by contrast maintained an open door policy and his office became a gathering point for rank and file workers factory activists and fellow directors still linked to production and this is another thing that's sort of important about this is that like okay like once you reach like a certain position in the union like you're just a full-time a union guy and

so there's a lot of people who like join the union become like union people because it means like it takes you off the shop floor and they're this you know the government does this deliberately right because it means it you know you're creating you're they're they're the thing they're trying to do is create a certain bureaucratic layer between the working class and their union. But Lula's still really connected to what's going on on the shop floor because he's just talking to everyone all the time. And

the product of this is that Lula becomes a very, very... He becomes a trade union leader. He becomes a very, very powerful one. He rapidly becomes the president of his union after some... Vidal, who's his boss boss there's this whole thing where he's trying to stay in power but he doesn't run for president of the union because of some complicated political maneuvering and so

lula ends up as the head of the union vidal's like it's fine i'm still going to be in control here and that is not what happens like you you, you, you, you have just, you have just given the presidency to like, like a, a, a genuinely, truly singular, like political figure.

Um, but, but there's something, there's something that's very, very important about Lula that you need to understand to figure it, to like, to understand anything that's about to happen here. And basically sense Lula is not a communist.

This, this, this is very important um he could not have done what he's about to do which is you know become literally like the living symbol of one of the largest strike waves in brazilian history he could not have done this if he was a communist the military if he was a communist the military would have you know tortured and possibly executed him like they've done with thousands of other communists his brother fray chico was kidnapped and tortured horribly by the military although he like he will insist that he didn't have it as bad as like a lot of other people did which is true but also like they tortured the shit out of him and it was fucking horrific and the fact that like every single like person like the fact that every single fucking member of the military dictatorship was

not fucking like taken out behind a fucking shed shot and had their like corpses fed to dogs is like genuinely one of the reasons why we're here right now this stuff is awful it is familiar theme of the podcast yeah yeah what to do with dictators

you know Lula and Chico's wife are eventually able to sort of get him released because he's not like a very high like he he's in the PCB, like he's in the communist party, like his brother, like, but he's not like a high ranking guy. And, you know, the sort of cruel irony of it is like they knew that he didn't know anything that they didn't already know, but they just tortured the shit out of him anyways. But one of the important things that happens here is his brother, like under torture, like insists that Lula is not a communist and like continues to insist this because he isn't. And, you know, and like people who are like that and people in the military leadership like believe this. Right. Because like that, like they're you know, they have a really extensive sort of intelligence network. Like at this point, they've basically like they've basically destroyed the Brazilian Communist Party.

They've like captured and killed most of their cadre and because he's not a communist lula's able to stay in the labor movement even if in the short term after his brother gets arrested he loses his job in the union because and he's able to do this because like beyond his brother who like his brother has literally been like saying communist stuff at him for decades and he's just been like, I don't care. And like a couple of other people, he's just quite a kind of friends with like Lula, like he has no connection to the organized left. Like he's not sort of like like he's not like a leftist. Right. Like in that sort of conventional sense, like he's not tied to one of sort of the old left political factions. tied to one of sort of the old left political factions and this means that he can stand in as a kind of sort of labor leader that the the the more moderate factions the military dictatorship

have been looking for which is this sort of like non-communist like quote-unquote genuine trade unionist and okay so like talking about like a moderate faction of a military dictatorship is always kind of fraught because you know know, it's a military dictatorship. But like, like all these people suck. It's also true that there were there were factions within the military dictatorship who. So there's a faction called like the dungeon, which is like the people torturing all these people to death. There were other people in the military dictatorship who are like, this is really fucking gauche. Like, why are you guys doing this?

Like, this makes us look bad. Also, why are you torturing these people? And those guys look at Lula and they're willing to work with him because, like, what they think they're doing is creating this sort of, like, authentic non-communist labor movement that will like work with them to stop communism like sort of like the afl-cio like specifically you talk about this like in the in the way that the afl-cio does in the u.s like working as an anti-communist force they think that they can get lula to do this and lula does a lot of stuff that like looks like collaboration to the sort of like surviving leftists around him he develops like literally like personal relationships kind of friendship it's not really friendships but like develops personal relationships and professional relationships with members of the regime and you know again it like it looks like he's collaborating but that's not that's not what's

actually happening what's actually happening is that he's holding these negotiations in order to sort of increase the power of the union and build this like safety network like that because he has these personal relationships with people in the regime it means that he's not going to get fucking disappeared and his people aren't going to get disappeared. And this had happened to a lot of, even a lot of sort of other regular union activists who didn't have this kind of connection, just like vanished. And the people he was able to build connections

with, like, keep him from being, like, vanished and keep his trade unions from being slaughtered. And, you know, like, the people in the military dictatorship, like, really think that, like, okay, they've gained, you know, like the people in the military dictatorship, like really think that like, OK, they've gained that, you know, they're gaining an ally in defeating communism. The thing they are actually doing is producing their own gravediggers. OK, you know who else?

But before, yes, there we go. You know who else is creating their own gravediggers garrison? The Advertising Industrial Complex? Yes, they have produced us. before yes there we go you know who else is creating their own grave diggers garrison the advertising industrial complex yes they have produced us we can dream welcome I'm Danny Threl won't you join me at the fire

and dare enter nocturnal tale from the the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact,

here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez

and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Unbelievable. Well, in the meantime, so inside the new Batman game, you play as the four sidekicks after Batman allegedly dies.

Batman allegedly dies. And the weirdest thing is that they, because three of the sidekicks don't usually have capes, they don't do any kind of mass gliding feature for city traversal. Instead, you have a really slow bat cycle, and then you have an almost Spider-Man-like grappling hook. And it locks onto anything around you. It's really confusing.

And are we back? Okay. Yeah. All right. And we're back. We should leave in, like, just, like, two minutes of Batman talk. It was completely baffled.

So, okay, the other thing about Lula, just as a person, is that fundamentally he's a negotiator like his style is almost like biden-esque in the sense of like biden sort of believes like talking to everyone across the political aisle etc etc except like okay the key difference here is that lula is actually charismatic um yeah but like you know he will just sit there like with people across the aisle and like talk things out negotiate with them he'll talk with employers we'll talk with members of the military dictatorship but you know the other difference is that like okay so biden is like is a consummate politician right like when

he talks about like talking with people across the aisle he means like strum thurman right when lula is talking with people he's talking with everyone like he like literally everyone he runs a class he's talking with random people at like union halls at meetings at picket lines at like soccer games at bars and because he spends all of this time talking to people constantly he gains this just like incredible ability to read crowds and like tailor message messages for them and like figure out what sort of like like what what sort of things will work with whatever person he's saying and he gains this like absolutely incredible ability to sort of charm people and it works on people even on people who fucking hate him like there are there are like journalists who will spend literally their entire careers trying to destroy him and who but when they're asked about him they're like well i

mean like he was a person he's really charming like he's a nice guy. And, but, you know, so part of what he's doing in this period, this is the late 70s going into the early 80s. He's playing this, like, this very specific, like, game of respectability politics of, like, not directly criticizing the government. And, like, so there are these, like, there are these strikes that start happening because, okay, so it turns out that the military government has been trying to get inflation like the the whole sort of economic system they've been doing starts to fall apart and inflation starts to come back and they start doing these like measures to combat inflation and the unions okay so originally no one would believe them but the union has like has like a like they have like a think tank kind of right they have like a social sort of like center with a bunch of sort of like sociologists and economists.

And they figure out that the union has been lying – sorry, the government has been lying about how bad inflation is. And then the IMF in the late 70s confirms this, that the military dictatorship has been lying about how bad its inflation is by doing subsistical stuff. And this matters because they've been setting cost of living adjustments by a lower level of inflation that's that then what's actually happening and this pisses everyone the fuck off because they're like literally the government is robbing us like they've been lying about how bad inflation is like like there is and it's this is like it's like a 30 income drop right for these workers and this pisses everyone the fuck off and suddenly there's these massive like protests there were like hundreds of thousands of people like a hundred thousand

people will show up to a soccer stadium as part of a strike like but you know lula has to make sure that everyone doesn't get murdered and so he does these things like he'll like he avoids directly criticizing the government he has this whole thing about how like he wants to negotiate directly with the employers he like kicks out like leftist student groups who are like trying to like distribute like communist students who are like trying to distribute pamphlets at the rallies because he's trying to make sure that the strikers aren't seen as like communist subversives and instead is sort of like they're seen as like good upstanding hard-working citizens and yeah here's from uh that book again given the diverse outlooks, Lula represented himself as a thoughtful, righteous man who

disparaged riotous behavior as unworthy and counterproductive. Like all honest workers, he called for the strikers to be disciplined and counseled against classes with the police. He continually framed their fight as one with the companies, not the government or the policemen. And this like works because any more radical action probably is going to get everyone killed and i mean like like when the strikes are going on there's like like they're they're getting buzzed by helicopters there's like fucking army trucks everywhere um but you know he manages not to get everyone killed and the result of this is

that lula immediately becomes the most famous worker in brazil he's like on tv he's leading strikes everywhere like there's these massive rallies and you know there's some really like there's some really like genuinely adorable stuff that's happening or like when he's giving his first speech to one of these rallies it's like it's fucking raining the soccer stadium is just mud like his podium is literally sinking into the mud he's trying to speak and this is like the first time he's addressed a crowd this loud and he's nervous and people start leaving and like oh so they're doing one of the other things i learned about this is how old this how old the crowd mic is so they're doing this thing that becomes known as the crowd mic where like you don't have a microphone or you

can't reach everyone so each so okay so some the the speaker says like a sentence and then each person in the crowd says a sentence and it just sort of moves back through the crowd from everyone repeating it and he's trying to give the speech it's not going great and like the person in the crowd says a sentence and it just sort of moves back through the crowd from everyone repeating it. And he's trying to give the speech. It's not going great. And like the workers in the front row start like yelling like, hey, you can do this, Lula. Don't worry, you got this. And then he like, yeah, and then this is like absolutely adorable moment. And then he sort of like, like, you know, like gets better at it.

And like by like the second one of these like people are just like in love with him he is unbelievably popular he's an incredible speaker he's like you know and it's very easy to and you you see writing about this at the time that are like that look at him and are like well this guy like this guy is literally like like people people are like calling him literally the messiah of the working class. This is the kind of sort of like a claim that he has. Like there are – after one of his speeches, like the entire crowd literally carries him on their shoulders from one end of the soccer stadium to the other. Like there are people like walking on stage and calling him like father and saying Hail Marys. Like it's fucking wild.

stage and calling him like father and saying hell marries like it's it's fucking wild um but you know but like and it's in like when when when like sort of rich and educated people look at this they're like oh these people are like blindly obedient to him they're like they have this client patron relationship he's like manipulating the masses and that's not what's happening like that that's just that's not what's happening like he actually like the union votes against him like a couple of times like it because because he's he's trying to do negotiations right and there's a there's a thing where i if i'm understanding the story right i think what happened is that he's trying to like negotiate like people coming back to work negotiations can continue it's like a show of good faith or

whatever and the union's like fuck no we're not going back to work and just like votes him down and so like this kind of stuff happens right like that you know like people respect him enormously and he he is like literally in some sense he's like the avatar of the industrial working class like working class people look at him and like and they see themselves in him and they see they they see the power that he's able to sort of exert how many people he's around there and they're like oh shit the union is strong like we are strong we can actually sort of fight back but it's not like a sort of client patron thing he he's it's just like he's at the head of a workers movement that is a force in and of itself and has its own agency and capacity to act and lula has to like negotiate with that and like he has to sort of like rebuild their trust after

he you know is taking a sort of more moderate line he he eventually gets like arrested in 1980 although he gets released after like a month and from there he gets to work founding like every important leftist organization for like the last 40 years um so in 1980 he's one of the people who founds the workers party uh in 1983 he founds the cut or uh the english translation of it's a unified Central, which like to this day is Brazil's like National Trade Union Center. Like it's like it's like their big union federation. And this is illegal at the time. But you just like fuck it. We're doing it anyways.

Like these people are losing the the dictatorship losing control in the CUT like plays a huge role in how the dictatorship loses power. So does the PT to some extent. The PT, as a party, are powerful enough that they're involved in drafting the constitution.

He's there for the founding of the Landless Workers Movement, which is a social movement that seizes land that's not being used as a leadership, as it's for workers. He's heavily involved in the campaigns to sort of force the military out of power. And as the military like kind of falls apart and democracy like kind of like fully returns to brazil in 1989 he goes like full intellectual politics but the the problem is that like he's kind of too early for his politics um he he spends

like the entire 90s just like getting his ass handed to him in elections over and over again. And part of what's happening, you know, part of literally what he's doing in the 90s is he's like rebuilding the entire Latin American left like from ground zero

after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sort of like global defeat of the left in the 80s. He's one of the founders of the Forum of Sao Paulo, which is the first of this series of sort of like meetings of leftists from latin america and the caribbean which is trying to figure out like okay like hey what what is socialism now that like the berlin wall is down

and everything's sort of going to shit and in 1990 that's a really bleak prospect like neoliberalism is completely ascended nationalism has destroyed socialism like every sort of former socialist state's falling apart like capitalists are running rampant across the globe like literally entire communist parties are just like disbanding and all of their sort of cadre are becoming liberals but you know as the 90s go on and people actually have to sort of like live under this they increasingly realize that it sucks ass and that i you know what living under neoliberalism means is like imf structural adjustments and like like the economy like there's there's the asian market collapse there's a bunch of other market collapses and you know as after

zapatista sort of go on the take like are the first like part of the left to really go on the offensive after their uprising in 1994 the left kind of starts to put itself back together and this left like i i think like this version of life it's kind of dead now but like i think there are people who are old enough to remember it or like remember sort of like what it used to be like the the slogan of this sort of whole like like left like the one of their big slogans is another world is possible which is sort of like the anti like the anti-sla it's a response to like thatcher's there is no alternative it's like another world is possible is this is the sort of like alter globalization left like this is a left that does the battle of seattle in 1999 and lula's there for like all of it like after seattle

he helped after the battle of seattle like he helps found the world social forum which is just like giant meeting place for like international social movements um and you know and so you know through this whole period like the left is sort of gathering a strength everywhere like well okay in latin america and also like i mean it is in a lot of places right like in india um it's like indonesia to some extent the u.s although the u.s has this problem that 9-11 happens and yeah that's a shit show yeah it just it's amazing how that this movement existed almost everywhere else but not to my knowledge as significantly here yeah well i mean we had we had seattle right but then when 9-11 happened the big unions like pulled out of doing any direct action shit and then it kind of everything kind of got

ate by the anti-war movement which yeah and then the green scare yeah yeah then that led to ad busters doing and uh stuff at occupy wall street and then yeah and that's that's the last one okay i i would say this i i think there's i think think there's a, there's a break here. Like I think, I think occupy is when that kind of politics died because when, when occupants went under, and this is the sort of irony of this and we'll get you next episode is that like you, you can, there's a good argument that the place that that politics actually died was in

Brazil when the workers party fucking like tear gassed and rubber bolted the absolute shit out of a bunch of protesters who had been who were like the brazilian wave of sort of like that series of protests and they crushed the shit out of them it is horrible like this is one of this is like one of like my foundational political memories is like fucking tanks rolling down the street people shooting rubber bullets at people like seven-year-olds getting tear gassed it is a it is a fucking shit show but in in 2002 like you know it's not that we haven't gotten there yet like even the sort of like most cynical trotskyite like can't

imagine the fucking pt rolling tanks through the favelas which is what they're gonna be doing in 12 years and when we had that was when i can't quite remember when tony blair i think it was 97 but like brit the british tony blair right like represented this other vision for the left yeah well and everything is like people like i like one of the books i was reading was like people talk about obama as being like the end of the same wave except obama sort of like the like even more so than any of the other politicians we're talking about is a sort of like recuperation of this right like yeah he's the guy who takes all his energy and is like yeah and and okay so we're we're gonna get into like the negative side of all of

this shit next episode but like in some sense lula does play a similar role in brazil and we will get there but right now you know okay so there's another part of this that like doesn't get talked about that much which is that in the early 2000s in latin america it's not just that in the early 2000s in Latin America, it's not just that like the left is winning elections. Like there are open revolutions going on. Like, I mean, there's, there's, there's a bunch of them. There's a, like, like arguably like the last communist revolution like ever happens in like the last sort of like the last gas of the classical workers' movement happens in Argentina in 2001.

There's this huge revolt against the IMF and Austerity and like this is this is the last time like in world history that like people occupy factories and then attempt to like like take them over and use them as a way of seizing the means of production people occupy factories in Bosnia and Herzegovina in like 2014 but

like by that point like those guys are occupying factories and then having like occupy meetings in them they're not like attempting to sort of like seize production yeah but you know like these there's are real revolutions right like there's there's there's there's a coup against hugo travis that gets overturned by another popular revolution um there's the water and gas wars in bolivia which culminate in like literally the like the capital is like entirely blockaded off from the rest of the country and surrounded by roadblocks and the fucking government like

this is in 2005 the government is like fucking imploding the military's falling apart like you know like very like and this is this is this is the sort of chain of events that brings evil moralis into power but like they very nearly just destroy the entire uh believing government the cycle sort of ends with the oaxaca uprising in 2006 where like like the people of oaxaca just fucking take the city and hold it for like i think of like a few months and like run it through democratic assemblies and then like the army shows up and they get yeah but like you know like like there there is a point like that that was like i i i think like like in my lifetime like the workers of a city fucking just took it over like this is stuff that like yeah you know like i think now we're we kind of like we have problems like i think most people sort of forgotten about this stuff like this this was a moment in

which like like revolution and the destruction of capitalism was on the table yeah and like i did a lot of it i'm not super i lived in venezuela for some of this time uh briefly but i it felt very possible in a way that like it probably hasn't since right like yeah it was fascinating to see like and the cooperation between those countries was very real right like um obviously cuba like cuba cuban doctors are fucking everywhere right if you travel yeah resourceful thing there but it was fascinating to see like people from here coming here and i think they had that sao paulo forum right where they would where these ideas would be exchanged and it it yeah it that was very formative for me it genuinely felt like it was possible for something as a result of this like ghoulish imf policy that we'd had for the

previous 20 years people like no fuck this we're doing it our way yeah and yeah yeah didn't turn out okay but this is this this is what's really weird about lula because lula is running in 2002 and he's watching all of this happen. And his strategy, his response to this is basically the analysis because he, okay. So he spent the entire nineties lose running leftist campaigns and losing. Right.

Yeah. And his strategy in 2002 is he's going to move the PT, the workers party to the right, both in terms of messaging and in policy. So as not to sort of like scare voters. And he finally convinces the rest of the PT to to do something he's been advocating for for like decades which is allying with sort of like liberal or conservative like non-leftist parties which they do in this election and uh we're gonna see how that goes uh later because oh boy but you know okay so like why why why are they sort of doing this

there's a few reasons partially it's because lula's been like losing elections as being like okay we have to do something different partially it's because the pt is a product of the collapse of like okay the pt like in in the 2000s like the the the base that had formed that party has basically collapsed. The PT's core constituencies are leftist groups, there's left-wing Catholic groups, and the giant trade union stuff, the giant workers' movement that Lula was a part of. But by 2002, the Catholic Church has swung back to the right. The left Catholic people are on the retreat. There's very few of them left. We're going to talk about this more later, but the giant industrial unions that Lula had been ahead of

and that Lula's career and the PT itself comes from have been shattered by deindustrialization and the collapse of Brazil's industrial economy. And the product of this is that without its sort of social basis like lula keeps losing elections so he goes okay so his solution to this and the pt understands this right like they're they're aware of the fact that like part of what's happening with them is that like they've you know they're losing parts of their working class base because that that working class literally doesn't exist anymore they're gaining a bunch of sort of

middle class like leftist activists but they they need to find a way to sort of broaden their appeal and so like he promises like openly gives us like speech about how he's not going to do like a rupture with the economy which is what this party have been campaigning on because you know the ptr leftist right the whole point of another world is possible is we don't have to live very capitalist anymore lula's like no no no no no guys hold on hold on i didn't mean that like we're not going to do a rupture and instead what lula does is pledges to and like stays in the brazil's commitments to the im, including like fucking insane shit, like maintaining primary budget surpluses, which is nuts. And he, instead of like, yeah,

yeah, he stays in the, and you know, so Argentina famously, like Argentina's solution to the sort of uprisings that are happening is that they default on their debt to the IMF. They're like, fuck you, we're not paying. And Lula's like, nah, we're paying, like, it's fine, we'll just keep paying it. And like the PT itself is like what the

fuck is going on like what what is happening here why is this happening here like why why is he doing this and you know it's just like well okay we need to take power we need to do this take power and so he does and and weirdly in the middle of this cycle of sort of like the resurrection of the left he's running increasingly to the right. And, you know, okay, part of what's happening here is that there's an inherent problem that leftist governments have when they take over the state,

especially when they take over a capitalist state by winning an election, which is that if you are in control of the government, right, if you control the state, your job is now to keep the economy running. And in theory, this isn't incompatible with leftist beliefs, but if you stop and think about what this actually means for a second, keeping the economy running means keeping the economy growing. And economic growth, right, means that capitalists have to

keep making more money every year than they did last year. Like that's what economic growth is, right? And this is a real problem if you are a leftist taking power. Because if you don't do this, you will A, lose elections because regular people get pissed off because when capitalists don't make more money, they start firing people. only ever grudgingly accepts the left as sort of like a legitimate power in the first place if you're if you're if they're if they're not getting more money every single year they will overthrow you and you know lula knows this right but the the solution to this problem that these sort of like pink tie governments come to is basically to let a faction of the sort of national bourgeoisie the sort of national bourgeoisie, the sort of national capitalist class, the people who are like capitalist domestically, like they let them into this product of sort of like this nationalist developmental project. And so what this means

essentially is you are like, you are buying a section of the ruling class off, right? You are giving them access to state contracts. You're doing state investments in infrastructure that helps them like expand things like mining so they can, you're doing state investments to infrastructure that helps them expand things like mining so they can take some of the profits from it. You're giving them preferential access to government contracts in exchange for supporting you. There's a lot of ways this can look. The MAS

in Bolivia, for example, starts bringing these elites directly into the party with their sort of developmentalist faction. In Brazil it looks like an alliance of something called the Centro which is like centro sorry my portuguese is not good um which is this like this sort of like ever-present force in brazilian politics which is like the corruption faction it's like this this series of sort of parties that are like kind of loosely knit who kind of vote together but you don't like they

don't their parties nominally have ideology, but like their ideology is I am, I am like a local political, like powerful political person and you are going to pay me or you will not be able to pass literally any bill ever. And okay. So they, they, they, they have to form an alliance with sort of these parties. And the other thing they start doing is that they are just literally bought, like they just literally start buying people off. And this leads to sort of like a bunch of corruption scandals that we're going to get to next episode.

But while Lula is in office, this seems like it's working really well. He's able to sort of pay off the bourgeoisie and fund these social welfare programs for the Brazilian working class. And this has a massive impact, right? Like this lifts something like 20 million people out of poverty and okay and i i i and other people will argue about what it means to like lift people out of poverty and how poor they still are but you know it is true these people have a massive increase in quality of

life like people are getting running water in their homes for the first time like people are having electricity for the first time um uh it's also worth pointing out that lula who is white spends a fucking shit ton of time fighting like fighting against racism and fighting for educational job opportunities for black people even though okay there's like an asterisk next to that that has to do with the police that we'll get back to yeah oh it's it's fucking oh boy it is worse than you can possibly imagine um but you know like he's trying to end hunger he has this very famous program called the bosa familia which is basically like if you're poor enough and you agree to send your kids to school and get them vaccinated like the government will just give you money and you know there's also a micro loan part of this which is my dot dot dot uh this won't go oh yeah uh nothing bad will happen from the the brazilian

government attempting to get a bunch of people to take micro loans um this this does not lead us into fascism at all i but you know okay like this works right lula is able to grow the. Like, Brazil's economic growth in this period is like 7%, which is fucking nuts, like, year on year. He leaves office with, I've seen it alternately said it's like an 85 or a 90% approval rating. He's unbelievably popular. Everything looks good, right? Kind of. From inside Brazil, it looks like the PT has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of everyone. They've been a successful social democratic party in that they've lifted a bunch of people out of poverty.

There's people who are alive today who would not be because the PT was in power, right? And, you know, there are people who don't starve. There are people who don't go hungry. There are people who have opportunities, like educational opportunities, who have opportunities to advance themselves for the first time ever.

And it's a successful capitalist government, too, because, again, 7% year on year growth. Right. Like, this is fucking nuts. Like, this is this is a kind of economic growth that is, like, unimaginable in most parts of the world. in most parts of the world. However, comma, if this at all actually worked, we wouldn't be here right now with

I, you know, the fascist president going into like hiding. And so next episodes, you know, March, I've been talking about gravediggers sort of this episode, right? There's a famous part of the Communist Manifesto where Marx talks about like capitalism producing its own gravediggers sort of this episode, right? There's a famous part of the Communist Manifesto where Marx talks about

capitalism producing its own gravediggers. And capitalism has never done that, right? To this day, right now, capitalism has yet to produce its own gravediggers. Social democracy has produced its own gravediggers in every single fucking country anyone's ever done it. And in the next episode, we're going to

watch the PT produce its own gravediggers, and we're going to watch them attempt to bury Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the rest of the Brazilian working class alive. Oh, good. Do you want to do a Bolsonaro update? Because he's apparently left the building. Oh, shit. Okay, yeah.

Bolsonaro, wait. Bolsonaro has left the building? Hold on. Breaking news? Yeah. He left the palace, finally. Yeah, in a convoy of black SUVs. Oh, he's expected to break the silence?

Yeah, so I'm looking at Benjamin Fogel, who's pretty good on this. Yeah, he's expected to break the silence, but not to congratulate Lula on winning. Jesus Christ. I have lost, goodbye. Okay, so, yeah, there might be a... I don't know what we're going to do,

if there's a coup in between, in between this episode and the next episode, it will be hopefully not. I don't know. I mean, I want one thing that like, I will say, and that I think we're going to talk a bit about next episode.

Is it like part of what's happening right now? That's very important. Is that Biden is an office in the US and the Brazilian military has a long history of doing coups but usually when they're doing coups they're doing coups with the backing of the US government and Biden like just on a personal

level fucking hates Bolsonaro and there is a very real chance that this is a significant factor in why we haven't seen a coup is literally the president of the United States personally does not like the fascist president of brazil and this is a fucking batshit state of affairs right like the fact that like the like personal inclinations of the president of the united states has this much of an impact on like the politics of an entire country is nuts um this happened in the other direction for a while

right like it's i guess not personal it's just the personal inclination of the president in that case yeah well there's weird things here too because like like lula was weirdly friendly with with bush which i think is why part of why he never like they never tried to cue him as opposed to chavez who called him the devil yeah which is really interesting because chavez are friends yeah right but then chavez gives the speech about how like everyone has their own like at the at the world social forum gives a speech about how everyone's existing in their own like conditions so you can't expect like you know you can't expect lula to be chavez you can't expect chavez to be uh castro like stuff like that yeah yeah but it's it's weird um hopefully

bolsonaro fucking leaves office if not i don't know but either way i don't know things are the history of brazil during this period is also kind of bleak, but after this period is way the fuck bleaker. So yeah, we're going to talk about that tomorrow. And yeah, we'll update you if there is a coup. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeart Podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

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