Three weeks before Brazil’s presidential runoff, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old leftist icon, looked finished. He’d lost the first round to Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president. On October 25, he won a fourth term anyway.
Prof G Media’s Laura Janer, reporting from São Paulo, sits down with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and vice president of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, to unpack how it happened. They discuss the WhatsApp army behind Lula’s comeback, the corruption scandals hanging over both camps, and why Brazilians feel worse about an economy that looks strong on paper. Plus, why Brazil broke from Latin America’s rightward turn, and what American campaigns can take from it.
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