Portuguese Blog

The Brazilian elections are coming up in October, and along with senators, congressmen, and governors, this election will also decide the nation’s new president, ending Lula’s eight year term in office. Today we’re going to take a look at the presidential candidates. Keep your eyes on the news this weekend, since the first round of voting takes place on Sunday. The winning candidate will need a majority in order to avoid a final round of voting on October 31st.

Dilma Rousseff

The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant and a schoolteacher, Dilma was raised in Minas Gerais and is a trained economist. She was an active member of the left wing resistance against the military dictatorship in the late 1960s and early 70s, and was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by the regime. After her release, she studied in Rio Grande do Sul, and then began her political career there working in the state capital. She quickly advanced through the ranks, and became State Secretary of Energy in 1990, and thirteen years later, she became the National Secretary of Energy working for President Lula in Brasilia. She became Lula’s chief of staff in 2005, and left this year to begin her run for president, just a year after surviving early-stage lymphoma. As a member of the Worker’s Party and Lula’s hand-picked successor, she has pulled ahead in the polls and is expected to win the elections, most likely in the second round of voting.

José Serra

Second in the running is the seasoned São Paulo politician, also the child of a European immigrant (his father hailed from Italy). He studied engineering at the University of São Paulo, and also received a Masters in Economics from the University of Chile and Cornell, where he also received a Ph.D. He also studied at Princeton, and then taught economics at the University of Campinas. He began his political career as the São Paulo State Secretary for Economics and Planning, and later became the mayor and then governor of São Paulo. He’s running for the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, but has been lagging in the polls.

Marina Silva

Marina Silva was born in the Northwest state of Acre, where she was raised in an impoverished community of Amazonian rubber tappers. Her parents died when she was young, and she moved to the state capital as a teenager to work and to get an education. She graduated from college at age 26, and became a political activist, working with Chico Mendes to protest against destruction of the Amazon rainforest. She became a city councilwoman in 1988, and then became a national senator in 1994. She worked as the National Minister of the Environment from 2003 to 2008, working alongside Lula and Dilma. She was a former member of the Worker’s Party, but is now running for the Green Party. She is a distant third in the polls, but could potentially pull critical votes away from Serra and Dilma in the first round of voting.