Lula’s Reason for Living and His Age
Image via video screenshot
By Urariano Mota
In the days leading up to Brazil’s most historic presidential election, my ability to concentrate on writing is very low. But with effort, enjoyment, and sacrifice, we’ll give it a try.
I was inspired to write these lines after watching a speech by our president on October 22. Please watch Lula in the video with Janones from last night, when the president spoke to the great actress Marieta Severo—starting at the 16:21 mark—with the utmost simplicity: “What makes us grow old is the lack of a cause.”
I had already noticed before that Lula was a genius, a true storyteller, just as Gordo (the Fat friend) was during our early youth in Recife. But now I would add that 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 metalworkers’ struggles. But he says, “What makes us grow old is the lack of a cause”, It made me jump out of my chair while I was watching the video of your interview with Janones. Luis Buñuel once said that he would jump out of his seat whenever he saw Antonio das Mortes on the movie screen in Glauber Rocha’s film. But I—who could never even come close to Buñuel—can say that I jumped out of my chair when I saw a politician with a genius comparable to that of Glauber Rocha.
The reason was that, upon hearing and noting Lula’s statement—“what makes us grow old is the lack of a cause”—I was immediately reminded of the struggles of socialists, who do not grow old because they keep the vision of change alive until the end of their days. And the most intimate, almost personal reason was that our president’s words reminded me of my novel “Never-Ending Youth”, when the narrator speaks to the character Luiz do Carmo:
“- I am not an elderly person. None of us who survived are old.”
And Luiz do Carmo replies, masterfully:
“- I know. Our desire to change the world continues.”
That’s how you understand the deepest and most universal meaning that inspired me to write these lines today. We’re fighting for hope in Brazil, and in doing so, we haven’t lost our passion for changing the world.
On the eve of Lula’s 81st birthday, which he’ll celebrate on October 27, following the elections on the 25th of this month, we’ll receive the gift of his reelection. But a gift for whom, exactly?—A gift for Brazil. We are the ones who need this role model of ours the most—the fighter Lula, in his “Never-Ending Youth”.
We want to see your turnaround again, just like in 2022, which we saw in Olinda. In the crowd, jumping to the beat of the frevo.
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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