recommendation should lead to a siege of Lula by the union hierarchy. Frei Chico, who understood Lula well, had noticed that whether Lula was playing soccer or at work, he had a natural gift for leadership. The principal figures in the union all tried to persuade him, encouraging him to attend courses and meetings. Lula held out for a long time, telling them that all he wanted to do was to get on with his life. Lourdes's worries did not make his choice any easier; like him, she dreamed first of a small house of their own, backed up by steady wages. But by the end of 1968 the die was cast. Lula talked it over with Lourdes and disarmed her concern.
With the support of the leadership, therefore, Lula went on to be elected one of a union directorate of twenty-four. From 1968 to 1972, Lula still worked at Villares, and when fellow workers brought him questions he could not answer, he would stop by the union offices at night to speak to lawyers and others who might solve their problems. It was a humdrum, undramatic apprenticeship in union affairs, far removed from heroics on the national stage.
Yet Brazilian heroics burst into international consciousness on 4 September 1969, when a group of urban guerrillas succeeded in abducting the U.S. ambassador, Charles Burke Elbrick. The world's media suddenly became aware that Brazil's military government, a close ally of the United States, was not all-powerful. It faced armed opposition. In fact, following Costa e Silva's incapacitation by a stroke, Brazil was temporarily being ruled by that standby of other South American countries, a military junta.
What was more embarrassing was that the government, with all its soldiers, police spies, and capacity for torture, was unable to find and release Elbrick. It had to make a deal. It agreed to free an eclectic group of leftists—including José Dirceu, then a student leader, who had been arrested in São Paulo—in return for the ambassador's release. A famous photograph of thirteen handcuffed political prisoners was taken at Rio's Galeao airport, as they posed in front of the Hercules plane that would fly them to Mexico. When a policeman yelled, “Smile, you sons of bitches,” they all glowered at the camera. Many of those involved in the kidnapping and many among those released in consequence would play a part in the growth of the prodemocracy movement and the debates that led to the foundation of the PT.
It is worth pausing at this stage to consider what sort of a person Lula was at age twenty-four, married, and on the brink of his true career. Had one met him then, he would have seemed like thousands of other young men—soccer-mad, relatively unambitious, close to his extended family. In matters of personal belief, his Catholicism would have seemed more important than any other political or ideological allegiance, of which he had virtually none. He was physically strong and shared the pride in survival of many of those born in the northeast, who see themselves as the truest Brazilians.
But there was much more to his experience. His family support network was vital in helping him and the other da Silvas to keep going through periods of hunger and poverty. His mother had faith in him. The absence of a father he disliked was—if the psychology of other successful men is anything to go by—another spur. His brother Frei Chico, who did not hesitate to call him a “vagabond” during one of his spells of unemployment, liked and promoted him.
The insecurity of poverty, and the poverty of Brazil during the era in which he was growing up, were also a crucial context. It was part of that “biography” that was to enable him to empathize with other Brazilians, and for millions to empathize with him, when he came to run for the presidency. He had genuinely known hunger. He had been a shoeshine boy and had had to sell peanuts on the streets as a child. He had lived in small, poor shacks that were not rain-proof and were liable to flood. Money was hard to get and vulnerable to the constant devaluation caused by rampant inflation. Educational advancement, without the lucky SENAI break, would have been out of reach.
At the same time, for the da Silvas as for the country, there was an enormous desire for progress. The excitement of the Brasilia boom had come and gone. But when the da Silvas and other retirantes (internal migrants) had come down from the northeast to the central south, they had wanted to partake in a richer, more developed Brazil. Lula had longed for the “monkey-suit” of a well-paid engineer in an auto factory. The positivist national slogan, “Ordem e Progresso”—order and progress—influenced all parts of what was still a conservative society. It infected the anticommunist ideology of the military takeover of 1964, whose officers were also fed up with politicians' populism, bureaucratic muddle, and outdated systems from telephones to public finance.
And Brazil was doing things. The onward march to megalopolis of São Paulo, with its factories and skyscrapers, was symbolic. In 1970, amid national rejoicing, Brazil would win the World Cup in soccer. A better future seemed achievable.
Yet Lula had learned about the dark side of what military apologists would call the Brazilian economic miracle: poor safety in factories, depression of living standards, and an environment in which those who stood up for the rights of workers were spied on and arrested, and could lose their own rights. He himself had lost two jobs when trying to stand up for his own rights.
He had also been drawn into trade unionism in a way that was not exactly democratic, but which mirrored an enduring element in the country's politics and society. It reflected a widespread tradition of patronage and the significance of family connections. He had been invited to become a member of a union executive before he was even a union member, before any election, because he was Frei Chico's brother, and he was put on the winning ticket.
His own take on the military regime at this stage was much hazier and less confrontational than Frei Chico's. It was a world away from the leftist ideologies of the middle-class students and their professors, wrapped up in arcane Marxist disputes, moving toward different schools of armed revolution. To most Brazilians, a little fearful of the military regime and keen to keep their heads down and go about their business, the small guerrilla groups seemed eccentric if not threatening. In 1969, Lula's attitude and the anxieties of his new bride, Lourdes, were probably typical of a large chunk of Brazilian opinion. His own political education had hardly begun.
2 STRIKE LEADER
Both Lula and his mother cried when the newlyweds departed for their honeymoon. Lula and Lourdes seem to have been very happy together. Lula had been her first boyfriend. With a loan from the Villares firm's social fund, they were able to get their own two-room house in Vila das Mercês, close to Dona Lindu. Lourdes, who was working at a firm in Ipiranga, kept their home spotless. Lula's sister Maria and her husband, who was then out of work, stayed with them. But tragedy was about to strike the young couple.
Lourdes became pregnant. In her seventh month, in 1971, she started vomiting seriously. Initially the doctors said this was normal. She was then taken to the Hospital Model, in São Paulo, where she was diagnosed with hepatitis. The doctor in charge was an inexperienced trainee. Lula visited her and found her crying out in pain, with no nurse or doctor to attend to her.
On a Monday, he received a call to take clothing for mother and baby, as a cesarean birth had been scheduled. But when he arrived at the hospital, he was told that both mother and baby—a little boy—had died.1 Naturally, he was distraught. He would not permit a postmortem autopsy. Perhaps surprisingly, his father, Aristides, came up from Santos for the funeral; his mother stayed away.
The loss of his wife and baby, when he was only twenty-five, had a huge impact on Lula. It was a life-changing event. He was bitter about the hospital and its lack of care. This made him realize the importance of social assistance work for the union, his first portfolio as a full-time official. He felt that health services for the millions of Brazil's poor were utterly inadequate and second-rate.
Personally, he was depressed. For at least six months he would not go out. He did not want to meet people. Every Sunday he would place flowers on the grave. Many years later, the deaths of his first wife and baby still brought tears to his eyes. Dona Lindu, worried about him,
