The United States’ delegation was headed by Robert Zoellick, the U.S. Bush, however, was not among those in attendance nor was Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, or any other prominent member of the U.S. Lula’s inauguration, held in Brazil’s modernist capital, Brasilia, was attended by numerous heads of state, dignitaries, and high-ranking officials from around the world. Lula spent time in jail in the 1970s, and his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, an affable academic and the son and grandson of military officers, had been forced into exile in the 1960s.
For more than two decades, from 1964 through 1985, Brazil had been ruled by a military dictatorship that had persecuted, imprisoned, and even tortured its leftist opponents. Lula’s election represented a dramatic change in Brazil’s history and a test for the country’s young democracy. For many years his political party, the Workers’ Party, or Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), had advocated nationalization of large firms and banks, deep agrarian reform, and a move toward socialism. Lula was the first trade union leader and self-declared socialist elected to the presidency of a Latin American country. The occasion was solemn and fraught with symbolism. On January 1, 2003, Luiz Inácio da Silva, universally know by his nickname, Lula, was sworn in as Brazil’s constitutional president. A must read for anyone eager to see Latin American countries move towards modern, inclusive and sustainable market economies under a single rule of law.”-Hernando de Soto, author of The Other PathĪn excerpt from Left Behind Latin America and the False Promise of Populism Sebastian Edwards “A masterly analysis that explains why economic populism in Latin America has been unable to reduce poverty-and never will.
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