Contrary to what I normally do, last night I went to bed early. Instead of staying up past midnight to watch the presidential debate between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro — or, as I call him whenever someone asks me to explain Brazil, Bolsonaro Jr. — I slept.
This morning, when I went online to see what people were saying, I was instantly served three clips of Lula mogging Bolsonaro Jr. The most popular showed Lula saying he wishes all of Brazil’s prisoners voted for him, including his opponent’s father, Bolsonaro Sr.
In another, he presses Bolsonaro Jr. on why, as a senator, he joined the legal defense of a military police officer accused of shooting a five-year-old girl with a rifle bullet. In the third, he challenges Bolsonaro Jr. to open both families’ bank and phone records before election day.
I kept scrolling and found very little about Bolsonaro Jr.’s own performance. My algorithm may well know I’m not the biggest fan of the Bolsonaro family and decided to feed me reactions from Lula supporters. But even if analysts say there was no clear winner on the stage, Lula is winning the conversation online.
I hope no one takes offense that I’m not a Bolsonaro fan. I’m not a Lula fan either. But one is about to finish his third democratic term, while the other’s father is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup. I wish we didn’t have to choose between corruption and autocracy — I wrote more about this in the first issue of LatAm Explained — but I want to be honest about where I stand before I get to the facts.
Anyway, after seeing that, this is the first time I’ve actually asked myself whether Lula can win the race. For weeks, polls have shown the gap getting smaller, and I’ve been skeptical.
No one can predict what Brazil will do this Sunday. What we can do is look at what history tells us in Brazil and across Latin America.