[ad_1]
TFive years ago, one of the titans of contemporary Latin American politics embarked on a 2,600-mile bus trip across Brazil to take the pulse of the region's largest democracy and hear the voices of his forgotten masses.
"I have the mouth of a locust and an elephant's ears," promised the future president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as he began a 20-day tour of listening, dubbed "The journey to the heart of Brazil".
Map
A quarter of a century later, while Lula was in prison and Brazil was facing his most unpredictable and heartbreaking presidential election in recent decades, the Guardian traced this historic expedition through seven Brazilian states to get an idea the problems that motivated the vote – and what could happen when the 147 million Brazilian voters go to the polls on October 7.
Recife
The journey begins in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, the birthplace of Lula and the launching ramp of his 1993 caravan.
Northeast Brazil is the second most populous region, with more than 39 million voters. Traditionally, they have been loyal to Lula, the man who still enjoys hero status here for his crusade against poverty during his presidency from 2003 to 2011. Until Lula, who is currently serving a sentence 12 years in prison for corruption, was prevented from running, polls showed that about 60% of voters had supported him.
Matheus Henrique Santana Souza is not one of them. Chairman of a group called Direita Pernambuco (right pernmabuco), he is one of tens of millions of conservative and predominantly male voters supporting the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who heads the polls with about 28% of the votes.
"It's a cultural war," says Souza, a 22-year-old student of history, in an interview in a luxury beachfront apartment in the capital of Recife, Pernambuco, belonging to one of the wealthy benefactors of the group.
Souza criticized Lula as a "fool" who, along with his comrades of the Workers Party (PT), deceived the Brazilian people and plunged Brazil into economic turmoil.
The "Caravan of Citizenship & # 39;
On 23 April 1993, Brazil's future leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arrived in the northeastern city of Recife to launch an historic expedition called the "Citizenship Caravan".
For the next 20 days, Lula and a group of left-wing politicians and thinkers recounted the 1952 trip his family had taken on the road, as they had fled rural poverty in northern Brazil's prey drought for the city of Santos.
The trip, made in two passenger buses, was partly motivated by politics. Lula hoped to get support before the presidential election the following year.
But it is also an attempt to shed light on some of the most disadvantaged and forgotten corners of Brazil; dilapidated urban favelas; riparian gold mines; villages burned by the sun and hit by famine, like the one where Lula's unlikely rise to the presidency had begun.
"We are changing the way you do politics in this country," Lula told one of the journalists who accompanied the trip.
After the inaugural caravan – which led seven states from Pernambuco to São Paulo – Lula organized six subsequent expeditions, including a "Water Caravan" across the Brazilian Amazon.
"Today, it can be said that nobody knows this country like us," Ricardo Kotscho later recalled about what was called "The Journey to the Heart of Brazil." –
"He's a crook! A thief! Agreed another member of the group, Maxwell Cavalcanti.
Polls show that 60 percent of the northeastern residents are so disgusted with Bolsonaro's poisonous views of gender, race, and sexuality that they would not even consider voting for him. "It's a diabolical goat," sneered an elector. "A rat fever," said another.
But for Souza and many others, Bolsonaro represents the deliverance of what they say to be a communist cabal determined to decriminalize abortion, blood sugar criminals and indoctrinate students with leftist values. dangerous.
Further up the beach, activists from Bolsonaro, waving banners, had settled near Brasilia Teimosa, a seaside favela known as the home of Lula's support. Alfeu França, a speed sports bank employee with a Brazilian flag resting on his shoulders, said that he had voted Lula in 2002 but that he had now become Bolsonaro. "The truth is [the PT] has become a criminal faction … in the service of evil.
Garanhuns and Iati
With Lula apart, he relies on his substitute, Fernando Haddad, to derail Bolsonaro's heavyweight. But for this to happen, Lula must persuade her supporters to support her replacement – and quickly.
Haddad has skyrocketed in polls since being confirmed as Lula's replacement and is now in second place, with over 20% of the votes cast. Among the members of the Southeast Brazilian intelligentsia, the 55-year-old former philosophy professor is admired for creating hundreds of kilometers of bike paths while the mayor of São Paulo.
But in Lula's hometown – the official starting point of the 1993 caravan – many still have no idea who he is.
"That's Bada. Dada. Is not it funny? Smiles Geraldo Alves de Araújo, a 53-year-old fruit seller.
"Never heard of him," said Arlindo Pereria da Silva, a 64-year-old painter. "But Lula says it's a good idea."
Towards the west, along Highway 423, in the disadvantaged suburb of Iati, where many lack running water and some of which eat protected birds to survive. However, few of them had doubts about the support of the Lula team. "If Lula supports a donkey, I will vote for a donkey," said Paulo da Silva, a 54-year-old subsistence farmer, who survives, like many of them, with a monthly allowance of 95 reais (£ 18) called "Bolsa família" which was deployed under Lula.
"Lula left this place on a full stomach," said Maria Laurentino, a 49-year-old mother of Rua da Taba, a favela that Lula visited in 1993, in Garanhuns.
And Bolsonaro? "He is a demon," she replied, as her neighbors nodded. "He is not good."
Delmiro Gouveia
The next section of the caravan crosses Brazil sertão, a hinterland burnt with cactus and carcasses of cattle long known as the stronghold of ruthless oligarchs.
During Lula's visit, hungry peasants eating cactus besieged his convoy of two coaches and asked for help. "Hunger for my problem, sir," said a woman.
Lula blamed a "shameless" clique of corrupt politicians for letting such persistent poverty persist. "Brazil's political elite has failed," he proclaimed, in language similar to Bolsonaro's.
Hunger has declined for twenty-five years, but Lula is behind bars and the fight continues.
In June, the former mayor of Canapi, a city visited by Lula, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for embezzling millions of public funds. Further west, in Delmiro Gouveia, the mayor was forced to resign in 2013 for misuse of public funds.
"Politics should be an art, not a trade, "complained Tony Cloves, Socialist Party and Freedom Party (Psol) candidate to Delmiro, who spoke out against the theft.
The fact that this region, like Brazil as a whole, is grappling with a problem of chronic corruption, is obvious in the display at the entrance of the city: "It is not politics that transforms a candidate as a crook. It's your vote that turns a scammer into a candidate.
Cloves, known locally as Obama do Sertão or Backlands Barack, lamented the fact that politics is a way to enrich: "We feel it everywhere, from Delmiro's municipal council to the national congress. It is a corrupt system. "
Cloves says powerful caciques (leaders) continued to dominate the region's politics; a vote could be bought for 100 reais (about £ 19), which would make it almost impossible for influential politicians to come to power.
Meanwhile, murders related to political contracts remain common, with two councilors have been shot dead in recent months.
While Brazil is shocked by one of the biggest corruption scandals in world history, presidential candidates have pledged to clean up their country's politics.
But such promises have already been heard. "There is so much pilfering," said Marinita de Menezes, a 64-year-old housewife. "The whole thing should be in jail after all they stole."
Feira de Santana
Two hundred miles south of Highway 110 is the assassination of voters.
Feira de Santana, the second largest city in the state of Bahia, has experienced a sharp increase in its homicide rate and is now one of the deadliest cities in a country where 63,880 lives were lost. last year.
A duel between drug factions means that hardly a day goes by without murder.
Forensic police reporter Gleidson Santos, whose blog tells of the spilling of blood, said many were turning to Bolsonaro to find radical solutions to the violence.
But Santos, a journalist voting for the PT – who is running on motorcycle crime scenes with a sticker of Lula and Haddad – said Bolsonaro's iron grip would only speed up the slaughter of young black men . "He is not the way to go. I am certain."
Zé Neto, a local PT politician, agreed that solutions were not the answer. "[We need] more education, more social projects. "
But in the poor suburbs of Feira, there are few signs of this help. "We are totally forgotten," complains Gisélia Miranda, leader of a shabby favela. "Politicians only remember us when elections are held."
Two days earlier, a boy had been shot dead just meters from where Miranda was – the 296th murder victim of Feira this year. A t-shirt hanging on a nearby clothesline bore the name of a man that many consider a potential savior: "Bolsonaro Presidente!
Teófilo Otoni
Catholic social worker Maria Graciela Bartesaghi Silveira was part of the Movement for Marginalized Women when she started working with sex workers in Teófilo Otoni. brothels in 1981. She gave her life to defend some of Brazil's most vulnerable women and children.
To this day, she remembers the day that Lula and her caravan went to O Ninho, the social project she founded here, near Highway 116, to protect the offspring of sex workers who She supported it.
"The kids loved it," said Silveira. "Lula is really a very special person … it was a joy to have her here."
Twenty-five years later, this joy was replaced by the fear of seeing the election of Bolsonaro, which described rival women as idiots, vagabonds and unworthy of rape, for the Brazil and its 108 million women.
Women represent 52.3% of Brazil's electorate and could decide on the October vote. Yet many have lamented the lack of proposals on women's issues in this year's race, let alone their participation.
Of the 13 candidates, only two are women. Four of the 13 electoral manifestos do not even mention the word "woman"; Bolsonaro's 81-page document mentions it only once.
Silveira, 73, said the lack of proposals reflected a broader lack of progress: "Women always come in second place. We see it all the time on television: women are beaten, women are killed, women are raped. I think the situation has changed very little.
"I just do not understand how a woman might want to vote for Bolsonaro."
In the town of Governador Valadares, eight kilometers away, Cleuzenir Barbosa said she could not understand why a woman would not do it. Millions of people joined the # EleNão (#Not Him) campaign to foil Bolsonaro's bid for power but Barbosa – a black candidate in her social-liberal party (PSL) – denied that her leader was a chauvinist.
"He is a wonderful person," said Barbosa, a 46-year-old Christian evangelist. "These feminists who preach the destruction of the family and the abortion … they twist the words of Bolsonaro."
A photo attached to the bumper of his car shows the right-wing populist flashing a Churchillian V sign. "Brazil has spent nearly 20 years under a leftist, almost communist regime," she said. "We can not take more."
Duque de Caxias, a suburb of Rio
Haddad's key campaign commitment was to bring back "the good times" of Lula's years of prosperity. Few places need it as much as Parque Vila Nova.
A shabby, ribbed sewer, better known as Favela do Lixão or the Rubbish Dump favela, the community is just 18 miles north of Ipanema Beach but looks like another world.
Alessia Almeida, president of the Residents' Association, said that most of the 11,600 inhabitants of the colony found themselves without help, with the help of Bolsa Família. "Without that, I do not know what they would become," she said.
Paulo César Gomes, a long-time member and resident of the PT, was among those who helped organize Lula's visit in 1993, hoping to introduce the abandoned community. Twenty-five years later, "we are still invisible," complains Gomes, whose red-brick cabin overlooks a black sewer slough.
As Brazil struggles to emerge from the worst recession in its modern history, 13 million people are unemployed and extreme poverty increases again, Haddad's commitment to "make Brazil happy again" has reached record highs. .
"When Lula was in power, there were jobs for everyone – so the crisis came and went," said Eliane Oliveira, a 23-year-old mother of two.
Nearby, three other unemployed young mothers – Angela, Yasmin and Raiane – sat with their babies and said they too would support Haddad.
"In Lula's day, all you had to do to find a job was to walk down the street. Now you walk and walk and walk and you can not find anything, "said Raiane, who has been unemployed since 2011.
Yasmin, 17, agreed: "Lula flew but he helped like hell."
Almeida, the community leader, said that she also dreamed of a Haddad victory – and as a transsexual woman, she has more reasons than most. "I'm afraid of what could happen if Bolsonaro is elected," she said, adding, "Did you know that Brazil is the country that kills LGBT people the most?" Imagine what will happen if this man becomes president. "
São Paulo
After 20 days of driving – and at least one case of food poisoning due to goat meat – Lula reached his final destination, the state of São Paulo, where he had started an unlikely political career that had leads to the presidency, then to the prison – and may still contain some surprises.
Twenty-five years later, eight pretenders to the old Lula throne gathered in a television studio on a hilltop on the outskirts of the capital of São Paulo for one of the last presidential debates.
For an hour and a half, candidates discussed everything from tax policy, job creation and health care to Brazil's "genocidal" war on drugs and the need for more women in politics.
However, two absentees dominated the proceedings: Lula, who was expelled from the race by his controversial incarceration, and Bolsonaro, confined to a hospital 15 miles to the south after being stabbed during a campaign on 6 September.
One by one, the candidates have sworn to save Brazil from the toxic fissure that has broken out between those who love Lula or Bolsonaro and those who love Bolsonaro or simply hate Lula.
Ciro Gomes promised to end "this hateful confrontation that leads our country to violence."
Geraldo Alckmin said he could save Brazil from the economic incompetence of the PT and its "candidate for discrimination".
Marina Silva, Lula's former ally and environment minister, said that a "brave woman" was now needed to "put order in the house".
Once the cameras were off, Silva lingered on the stage and reflected on the state of her bitterly divided nation.
"We have to be very careful not to be between the hammer and the anvil," she said. "The corruption rock of the PT government and the harsh place of authoritarianism and disrespect for democracy and the women that Bolsonaro represents."
While his rivals were coming out of the auditorium, Silva insisted: "We can choose a politically democratic, socially just, culturally diverse, ecologically sustainable and economically prosperous country."
Similar ideals inspired Lula's grueling pilgrimage across Brazil 25 years ago. But with the rabid, disillusioned and desperate Brazilian voters, it seems unlikely that values will decide that, the most vindictive of the races in power.
