by Emir Sader and Pablo Gentili
A book about the 10 years of an administration that has profoundly transformed Brazil cannot avoid giving a word to its principal protagonist, the person without whom this process would not have been possible and certainly would not have achieved so great a success. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a practical and intuitive statesman who seeks concrete solutions to problems. It has been in good measure due to this ability that Brazil has witnessed a political achievement that has made possible to the prioritizing of social aims, the attainment of egalitarian policies, the assertion of Brazilian sovereignty abroad, and the recovery of an active role for the state in creating rights for its citizenry.
These advances are analyzed in a recent book (Filmus et al., 2013) and interpreted by Lula in the following interview, which took place in the São Paulo office of the Lula Institute on February 14, 2013. It provides elements to help us understand a fundamental decade of Brazilian history. The vision of someone who has been and continues to be an outstanding figure of world politics in the twenty-first century helps us interpret an era of exceptional value in the struggle to build in Brazil a more just and democratic society.1 How would you assess the years in government of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) and its allies?
These years, even if they were not the best ones, were some of the best years that this country has lived through for a very long time. If we were to analyze all the shortfalls we are still suffering from, the vital needs of the people that in most cases have been long overlooked by this country’s governments, we would find that we still have much more to do to ensure that our people receive …
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Latin American Perspectives
March 2016 vol. 43 no. 2 Abstract 220-237
