President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
It took nearly twenty years of trying before Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - or Lula as he is generally known - won election as president. He swept to victory on his fourth attempt last year, winning 61% of the votes. Lula, now aged 57, won because he largely abandoned his leftist rhetoric and convinced voters that he had mellowed with age and could be trusted to follow a moderate policy path. Lula knew hardship from an early age. He was the seventh of eight children born to a family from the drought-stricken interior of Northeastern Brazil. They migrated to São Paulo, the country's industrial capital, in the 1950s. Lula began working at age 12 in a dry cleaning store, then as an office boy and shoe shiner. In the 1960s, he found work in factories in the city's industrial belt and...
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