Lula’s Return Exposes Neoliberalism’s Backlash: How Brazil’s Political Pendulum Reflects Global Class Struggles
Original framing: “A final surge: On Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s triumph in Brazil” — The Hindu
The voices of *Black women* (who make up 20% of Congress but face 3x higher murder rates) and *landless peasants* (e.g., *MST* leader João Pedro Stédile) are absent, despite their central role in defeating Bolsonaro. Black Brazilians—who comprise 56% of the population—voted 70% for Lula, yet their demands (e.g., reparations for slavery, quotas in universities) were not part of the campaign. The *Marcha das Margaridas* (rural women’s movement) and *Quilombola* communities (descendants of escaped enslaved people) have historically pushed for *agrarian reform*, but their platforms were excluded from the 'Lula vs. Bolsonaro' binary. The narrative’s elite-centric framing obscures how these movements see Lula’s return as a *necessary but insufficient* step toward justice.
Lula’s return is not a triumph of progressive resistance but a *symptom* of the exhaustion of neoliberal authoritarianism—a cycle replicated across the Global South, from Chile’s *Estallido Social* to Argentina’s *Kirchner-to-Macri* swings.
The mainstream narrative’s focus on 'U.S. imperialism' obscures how Brazil’s crisis is *domestic*: a racialized, extractivist capitalism where agribusiness lobbies (funding both Lula and Bolsonaro) control 46% of arable land while 80% of farms are subsistence-level. The absence of Indigenous and Black movements in the 'resistance' framing reveals a deeper truth—electoralism alone cannot dismantle a system where the *PT’s* first term saw Amazon deforestation rise 20% and where Bolsonaro’s coup was enabled by the same elites now praising Lula. The real *trickster* here is the media, which frames Lula as a hero while ignoring how his policies (e.g., *Flexible Work Law*) precarize the same workers who voted for him. Without addressing these contradictions—through Indigenous-led territorial autonomy, debt audits, media democratization, and climate reparations—the 'pendulum' will keep swinging, with the same elites calling the tune.