From Rio de Janeiro
No, it’s not the Brazil of soccer, yet. We lack technical football and fans but we can learn from Argentina. Lula likes a phrase that summarizes well, in her opinion, the current movement in Brazil. To return, which means that the country went to another place, it was absent, it stopped being where we had already been.
Where was Brazil? The country had been taken into hitherto unknown territory. That of international isolation, that of defending positions absolutely contrary to those that the country had traditionally defended. That of the predominance of private banks in the economy. That of the rich above the poor. The one of the abandoned people in the streets.
A country that did not know itself. That it stopped being a cordial country, friendly with others, happy. That it ceased to be what it had been to become a monstrous thing, which denies universal values, beginning with democracy.
The country of music, soccer, art, and partying was no longer recognized. We became a country that no longer recognized itself. We had governments in which we did not recognize ourselves, that we had not elected, that spoke to themselves and not to the Brazilians.
The rulers were the most hateful people. The people, the teachers, the women, the blacks came to be hated by the rulers.
It was six years that seemed like an eternity. She lived each day with a weight that seemed eternal. Not only the country was not the same. We all felt like strangers, cut off from ourselves.
Lula got people to shout in the demonstrations: “Brazil is back! Brazil is back!”
The one who returns now to take possession of the Brazilian presidency is the so-called Lula 3. A tense ceremony. Because despite the fact that Bolsonaro, consistent with his attitude since his defeat in the ballot, completely absented himself, practically resigned from what was left of his mandate and traveled to Orlando, the most radicalized part of his co-religionists insist with the demonstrations of the.
The entire programming of the ceremony had to be reviewed – from the itinerary to the armored or open car, with or without a bulletproof vest for Lula. Because of the climate created by the attempted terrorist attack a week before Lula’s inauguration.
Even so, the assumption occurs in a festive atmosphere. It’s not just a new year. It is a new time, hard conquered.
But from now on we have a president who represents us. Whose life practically describes the history of the country.
We resume the path interrupted by a blow. We return to democracy, with a democratically elected president for the third time.
Brazil will have a happy 2023.
The feeling that Brazil has returned fully reached everyone. We all left feeling Brazilian again, fully.
