Lula wins and takes the lead of a left-wing America

Not even two points separated Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro in the modern and very quick vote count of the second and final round of Brazil's presidential elections. But the difference is sufficient and decisive enough to stain the Latin American map red: it is the first time that the continent's five major economies are in the hands of the left. With his victory, the most important objective of the Sao Paulo Forum, under the aegis of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, was also achieved: that, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, Latin America would not be swallowed up by the then unquestionable victory of neoliberal democracy.

Lula's victory had been overwhelmingly backed by the panel of international leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with US President Joe Biden, who sees in the former steelworker the only leader with sufficient stature to impose his moral and political authority on the Petro (Colombia), López Obrador (Mexico), Fernández (Argentina), Boric (Chile) and Castillo (Peru), and even discuss the purity of the ideological line of Castro-Chavismo with Díaz-Canel (Cuba) or Maduro (Venezuela). 

Particularly important was the immediate congratulations of the White House tenant, highlighting "free, fair and credible elections". With this phrase, Biden nipped in the bud any temptation that President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters might have to disqualify the elections, not accept the results and take to the streets to contest a third round in the form of riots and disturbances. It was thus made abundantly clear to him from the outset that such a hypothetical action would meet with widespread international condemnation and reduce him to the status of a pariah.

The close result only serves to confirm the deep polarisation of Brazilian society and the difficult task that lies ahead for the new president, who will take office on the first day of 2023. So much so that this is the first time in his three triumphant presidential celebrations that he has preferred to read his speech rather than improvise it, in an obvious gesture of not committing the slightest slip-up that could give ammunition to that half of the country that had preferred his rival. It was written in the text - and this is how he read it - that he would govern for all Brazilians, as well as stressing the need for reconciliation to get the country back on its feet. 

In this new outing on the international stage, Lula da Silva promises to lead the country out of the irrelevance into which Bolsonaro had plunged it. Words that raise hopes in Europe that this may be the last chance for the conclusion of the Mercosur agreement with the EU to come unstuck and not leave the Latin American continent at the mercy of China even more than it already is. 

We will soon know whether the undeniable vitality shown by President Lula translates such hopes and wishes into reality. He himself is facing a radically different national panorama and international context from the one he enjoyed during his two previous terms in office. Neither are we now in that buoyant economic situation nor does the current global instability have anything to do with the tranquillity of that time.

The gravity of the planet's climate situation, in which Brazil is singled out for good and especially for bad, has been accentuated. The devastation and destruction of the Amazon is objectively no less harmful to the entire human race than the fires ravaging the rainforests of Africa or the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo, or even the progressive annihilation of European forests. But there seems to be a general consensus that the planet's true lung is Brazil's, and this has modulated international public opinion to the point of judging the progressive disappearance of its rainforest with a notably stricter and guiltier standard than that of its African, Asian or European counterparts. Certainly, with Bolsonaro at the helm of Brazil, describing him as a "climate genocidal" was an easy epithet to use and spread. It remains to be seen how far Lula's power and influence can be used to reverse this deterioration.