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What’s Next for Brazil After Bolsonaro?

What Lula’s return could mean for Brazilian bellies.

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Gabriel Rissi
Date:

Just two years ago, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in prison. It’s a fairytale-like comeback story. But his life is also a food story. From a hungry childhood raised by sharecropper parents, Lula made ending hunger a major part of his first two highly popular terms as president.

Now, as he settles into the Presidential Palace once again – he has big plans for strengthening Brazil’s democracy and positioning the country as a diplomatic powerhouse.

Those plans will depend on reaching people through their stomachs.

Listen and subscribe now on Apple PodcastsStitcherSpotifyPocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every two weeks.

Guests: Cassia Bechara, International Relations Committee Spokesperson, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra/Landless Workers’ Movement; Michael Fox, Independent Journalist; Fabio de Sa e Silva, Assistant Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma; Fabiane Ziolla Menezes, Business and Technology Journalist, Brazilian Report

Thank you to Larissa Packer, Rafael Soares Gonzales, and James MacDonald.

Additional Resources:

Lurching From Food Crisis to Food Crisis,” GRAIN

The Rise of Congress Will Have Consequences for Brazil’s Victor,” Lucas de Aragão, Americas Quarterly

Check out the Brazilian Report’s newsletters here.

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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