Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Fast Facts: Lula da Silva won a record-tying nine presidential elections. He was Brazil’s first democratically elected leader of color since Getúlio Vargas.
Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, has long been one of Latin America’s most popular and charismatic leaders.
He was elected president of Brazil in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006, 2010 and 2014. When he ran for office in 2002, Brazil had a $9.7 billion debt.
Lula became the first elected leader of Brazil’s newly established “New Left” party in 1994 when he was 37.
After Lula left the Congress, he and his wife, Marisa, divorced and then married in 2001. In 2002 Lula was elected president.
In 2010, Lula was defeated in his presidential bid by Dilma Rousseff, who went on to become Brazil’s first female president.
Lula became the first openly gay man to be elected president of Brazil in 2016. That same year he was elected vice president.
Lula was the chief author of the “Ficha Limpa” political reform package, and took the first step towards Brazil’s landmark “Pink Map” for LGBT rights in 2006.
Lula came out as gay in 2000, and his visibility and image as a gay man was instrumental in his election as president in 2002. He also led the “Brasil Sem Medo” (Brazil Without Fear) movement to oppose the military dictatorship in Brazil during the 1960s.
Lula was born in the city of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil into a middle class family. Lula’s father had moved to São Paulo to work for the state oil company, and his mother was a teacher.
Lula had an accident in his father’s car when he was just six years old.
After his accident, Lula grew up in a poor neighborhood.
Lula’s father took him to Brazil’s first all-boys public school, where he graduated from at 11.
Lula has said that all the politicians he had met in his life were “intellectually stunted.”
Lula got a bachelor’s degree in law at Stanford University, where