Clara Ferreira Marques, Columnist

Challenge Begins Now for Brazil’s Comeback Kid

Lula is back, but the struggles ahead, from healing deep social cleavages to fixing Brazil’s fiscal woes, should not be underestimated.

October 31, 2022 at 9:29 AM UTC

By Clara Ferreira Marques

Clara Ferreira Marques is a managing editor for Commodities and Energy in Asia. Previously, she was a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member.

He’s back.
Photographer: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg

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“They tried to bury me alive and here I am.”

By the time former-president-turned-Brazilian-president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spoke on Sunday night, celebrating an unlikely comeback at 77, his gravelly voice was even more hoarse than usual. It’s been a grueling, grimy and occasionally violent campaign, but his words were the right ones, calm, grateful, preaching economic progress and reconciliation. He promised to govern for all Brazilians. “No one,” he said to the crowd, “wants to live in a country that is in a permanent state of war.”