President Lula in This Election
Lula on September 26, 2026 -- Lula Oficial, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Urariano Mota
Almost no one realizes they are making history while they are living through it. That’s how it was, and that’s how it has been at decisive moments that change the world. It’s not even a matter of being aware that you’ve witnessed something never seen before. It’s more than a glimpse of what is to come. But it would be the awareness of living in the moment that will outlast his days and shape the future. It would be like a madman proclaiming: “Hey, immaterial thing, I already know you’ll be the substance of the coming era.” Madness. Still, the temptation to share this intuition with everyone is strong. It’s the stuff of madmen.
From the night of Thursday, October 1, 2026, until now—when we’ve barely been able to sleep—so many things have happened that we can hardly believe it. President Lula didn’t attend a debate on Rede Globo, but he still won the debate. Absurd. Is that even possible? It was. At the same time, he appeared on the Flow Podcast, which had reached 10 million views on YouTube just a short while ago. But the number keeps growing, since the sequence of natural numbers is infinite. Around the world, he is featured in Xinhua, China Daily, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, The New York Times, Kommersant, and Russia Today as a beacon of hope for democracy. But here in Brazil… “Judicial maneuver derails Globo’s debate,” “Judges’ attack undermines the election’s neutrality”.
What kind of world are we living in? Is the press further removed from reality—from Brazilian newspapers or from Brazilian reality itself? In the novel “Never-Ending Youth”, I wrote:
“I see the eagles growing old, debasing themselves, becoming vile as if they were fulfilling the destiny of their species, not now. I watch the eagles turn gray, see their white crown feathers get weak and brittle and notice they no longer fly as high as they used to. On the pinnacle of time, they do not decay, as if in revolt against biology, against the organization of life which grows disorganized and disintegrates when it nears the end. Parodying Goethe in the poem “One and All,” they were thwarted by the world’s soul and battled it tirelessly, so they could live eternally. They took other forms, obviously, but maintained their youthful being”.
So I see Lula, at 80, calling out and rallying all women and men to the ongoing struggle against fascism. What, then, can we say in harmony with this man who reflects all of us—both the “us” he speaks for and the “us” he liberates? Let us finally align ourselves with what intuition and the streets of Brazil are telling us.
If this madness is a prophecy, then let’s embrace this future—which is safer because it’s closer: President Lula will be elected in the first round next Sunday. And then, ah, then let’s dance to the frevo “Ciranda de Maluco” (Crazy Round Dance):
“Crazy Ciranda here in Pernambuco
It's so awesome
Crazy Ciranda here in Pernambuco
It's so awesome…”
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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