The victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) over Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) this Sunday was treated by the international press as a brake on the conservative wave in Latin America and a setback for the American president, Donald Trump.
Defeated in the first round, Lula secured his fourth term with a turnaround that major foreign outlets highlighted and which had no precedent in presidential elections since the return to democracy.
The relationship with Washington was at the center of the headlines. The Associated Press presented Lula as a “critic of Trump,” while the American network CNN highlighted that the PT leader defeated a “Trump ally” and kept Brazil on the left in a region that has been moving to the right.
The Washington Post stated that the result interrupts this swing, by preventing the largest Latin American democracy from joining it. For the British Financial Times, Lula’s victory is a blow to Trump’s ambition to expand U.S. influence in the region.
The narrow margin also drew attention. The British network BBC and the Financial Times described the vote as a vote-by-vote contest, and the American Wall Street Journal treated the result as a surprise that prolongs one of Latin America’s longest political careers. The Spanish El País spoke of an “epic turnaround,” which halts the far-right advance in Brazil and gives “a lifeline” to the left worldwide.
For the New York Times, the result is a message to the conservative movement that has been winning presidencies in Latin America, celebrated by Trump. Lula’s victory interrupted a streak of seven consecutive right-wing victories in the region over the last 18 months. The paper recalled that the PT candidate openly confronted the American president, who used tariffs and sanctions to try to prevent Jair Bolsonaro’s imprisonment, condemned to 27 years for coup attempt after the 2022 election.
The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal also noted that, for conservatives, it is a bitter disappointment. “However, it is important to note that, when Lula takes office on January 1, the Brazilian right will have gained more space. Bolsonaro surprised pollsters by finishing first in the first round, on October 4, with 47% of the votes, ahead of Lula’s 45.2%. In other electoral contests, the right performed even better. (…) In a highly fragmented Legislature, in which more than a dozen political parties compete for power, these results are notable,” the publication notes.
The French Le Monde stated that Brazil, unlike Argentina, Chile and Colombia, governed by presidents backed by Trump, did not shift to the right and remains one of the rare progressive strongholds in Latin America. According to the paper, Lula dispelled the forecasts by reversing the first-round deficit, partly by attracting voters who had abstained. Voter abstention fell from 21.08% to 19.21% between the two rounds.
For the Argentine Clarín, Lula’s victory in a dramatic second round is an extraordinary feat and, at the same time, opens an unexpected scenario in a region that seemed to have a homogeneous profile.
For the newspaper, “Lula’s victory thwarts the plan of the North American president Donald Trump and his ally Marco Rubio — who aimed to control the region, which, in the last seven elections, resulted in the victory of leaders aligned in a vertical manner to the White House. Among them is the Argentine head of state, Javier Milei, who engaged in the campaign by launching a series of insults against Lula — thus attacking the main trading partner of his own country and bringing the relationship to the brink of rupture. The big question is: how to retake the path from here?”.
(com jornal O Globo)
