Lula's Historic Outrage Over His “Nine Fingers”
Lula at the debate on Globo, Lula Oficial, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Urariano Mota
On Friday, October 23, during the debate on Globo with his opponent, Lula made a historic statement on behalf of workers who suffer mutilations on the job.
During the debate, in a moving and passionate moment, Brazil’s greatest leader today once again demonstrated what I noted in a previous article: Lula is an intellectual of a new kind, a man endowed with wisdom born of experience, who speaks truths in the manner of these verses by Camões:
“I have my hand on my consciousness,
and I speak nothing but the pure truth
that living experience has taught me”
I write this because, in his speeches, on more than one occasion, Lula’s universal truth stems from his experience as a migrant from the Northeast—the son of a very poor woman, a fact he never forgets—and as a courageous union leader who proved himself in the workers' struggles.
On October 23, on the eve of the most important election in Brazil’s history, these were his words in response to an insult, to the mockery directed at him by his opponent—the kind of behavior typical of fascists against the working class:
“My opponent said something really stupid, and I’m not going to let it get to me. He called me ‘nine-fingers.’ I want him to know one thing: if there’s anyone here in this audience who knows what the working world is like, it’s me. If there’s anyone who lost a finger at age 17, it was me. Working at night—when I couldn’t work—I won’t let that militiaman call me ‘nine fingers’. I won’t let him! I won’t. He’s never worked a day in his life; he doesn’t know what a professional license is. His first job was a fake one, set up by his father. He worked with his father, but he lived in Brasília (far from the job). And then he comes and calls me ‘nine fingers’...
You’re going to have to apologize to me, because the working people are watching. Millions of workers are injured due to employer irresponsibility, which forces us to work the hours we have to work. I was a minor, and I worked at night, because it was either work or go hungry.
I can't accept that some upper-class—some upper-class with very questionable political practices—would call me ‘nine-fingers’.”
Video here:
Hail Lula! This Sunday and in the Sundays to come, many centuries will accompany you.
Urariano Mota is a Brazilian writer and journalist, born in Recife on September 29, 1950. He is the author of novels about the horrors of the Brazilian dictatorship, such as “Soledad no Recife” and “Never-Ending Youth”
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