Throughout his life history, since he led the most important strike of workers against the Brazilian dictatorship forty years ago, Lula has covered a route that is paradigmatic of the new Latin American left. From union leader to the founder of a workers’ party; from the first union leader to be a candidate for the presidency of the republic in Brazil to the first worker president of the country, the best president that Brazil ever had, to the elector of the first woman president of the country as his successor; from the principal leftist leader in the world in the XXIst century to return to the presidency, to becoming a victim of a trial without a basis, a prisoner without evidence.

It is a trajectory that indicates the potential the left and the popular movements have, as well as the risks that they run, as a challenge to the power of the traditional oligarchy and the instruments that they have to resist and re-take the direction of the country. Because, while Lula expresses, to a great degree, these circumstances, his story is similar to that of other political leaders of the Latin American left, among them Cristina Kirchner and Rafael Correa.

Neoliberal capitalism has nothing to give Latin America except fiscal adjustments and social exclusion, without the ability to have political leaders with legitimacy and popular support. It must then manoeuvre to prevent popular leaders from arriving and remaining in government. Neoliberalism reveals how they end up with agreements with the IMF, through which they can neither control of inflation nor balance the public accounts.

There remains, then, the attempts to disqualify the public image of leaders who represent the struggle against the neoliberal model, who have demonstrated that overcoming the neoliberal model is the only way to achieve economic development with distribution of income and social inclusion, and the only way to rescue the sovereignty and dignity of our countries.

Hence, the brutal offensive against these leaders, which is the situation of which Lula is the paradigm. He is, at one and the same time, the great favourite to win the presidential elections in October of this year and a prisoner, condemned without accusations or evidence. There could not be a more paradoxical situation, a more significant one, in which the most popular and democratic alternative for Brazil faces the impossibility of standing in the elections, for which the people want him as a candidate and for him to win, in spite of the absurd juridical manoeuvres and the media.

The right no longer cares about being accused of an attack against democracy and the majority will of the peoples of our countries. What is important to the right is to maintain themselves in government and prevent the loss of this control, in any possible way. International condemnation by a majority of public opinion, including practically all juridical circles, does not matter. What is important to them is to maintain an anti-popular model, one that reflects the interest of the top 1%, represented by private banks and financial capital, and supported by the IMF.

Latin America has not been the same since progressive governments led the way to overcome neoliberalism and the right has obstructed the democratic path through processes of judicialization of politics and a legal war, with political persecution against popular leaders. The destiny of Lula is, in great measure, the destiny of Latin America. His situation exacerbates the condition of other Latin American leaders. This is why Brazil is the axis of the present struggle of our peoples. López Obrador will be very isolated in his efforts to confront the brutal offensives of the Trump government, if he cannot count on other serious allies in the continent. Bolivia and Venezuela will have greater difficulties in resisting the imperial offensives.

Nixon once said that where Brazil goes, there will Latin America go; that was when the United States expected that the route Brazil would take would be that of the sub-imperialist underling power that they needed. Today his words have another meaning: that the destiny of Brazil that is at stake this year will help or impede the continent to assume its democratic destiny, of social justice and solidarity. That destiny, to a great extent, is resting in the prison cell of Curitiba.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Emir Sader, Brazilian Sociologist and Political Scientist, is a Coordinator of the Laboratory of the State University of Rio de Janeiro UERJ).