RIO DE JANEIRO -- Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the leftist labor leader, has run in Brazil's last three presidential elections. All three times, 41-year-old Dario Barberio -- along with a majority of his countrymen -- voted for someone else.
But as Brazilians prepared to head to the ballot boxes for today's vote in which Lula, 56, appeared poised for victory, Barberio found himself lining up in the colonial heart of Rio to buy a Lula campaign pin in the shape of a little red star. Like millions of other mainstream voters in Latin America's largest nation, the tall, laid-back Barberio now supports Lula and his Workers' Party.
Barberio, a former telecommunications equipment salesman, summed up the reason for his change of mind in one sentence: The downside of globalization has hit this country hard.
Like many others, Barberio initially embraced the "Brazilian dream" promised by globalization. When the economy began opening up here under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1995, Brazil saw the upside of globalization, and Barberio's family of three prospered. Large-scale foreign investment helped stabilize the economy, stemming runaway inflation, creating new jobs and fueling strong economic growth.
"We bought a new Fiat and refurbished our apartment," said Barberio, who, like millions of Brazilians, had access to credit for the first time in his life. "For us, life was good -- for a while."
But Barberio has been struggling to get by since he lost his job three years ago. That was when Brazil slipped into the currency crisis that exploded in 1999 after foreign investors panicked as they contemplated economic meltdowns in East Asia and Russia. Brazil's economy, the world's eighth-largest, has mostly floundered since then, sending average real wages tumbling 1.8 percent since 1998 and unemployment rising to 8.9 percent.
This nation of 170 million people is now weathering another economic crisis as its currency and bonds undergo another pummeling by investors, who fear Brazil may default on its $260 billion national debt in a repeat of January's financial collapse in neighboring Argentina.
The surge in the popularity of Lula -- a longtime opponent of free market economics whose party maintains warm relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba -- has helped fuel the investor panic. But ironically, the turmoil has aided Lula's campaign. Many Brazilians see the nose-diving currency and reports of pending economic doom as yet another example of their lives being hijacked by faceless financiers.
"Every time it seems like we're moving ahead, something happens in the world and Brazil gets into trouble again," Barberio said in downtown Rio as Lula's campaign song blared from a huge speaker, promising voters he was "worth the wait."
"We feel as if we can't win no matter what we do," Barberio continued. "We have just as much economic uncertainty and social exclusion as ever, but now, we don't even have control of our own nation. That's why I think it's time to give Lula a chance."
Those sentiments underscore what analysts predict will be a critical shift to the left today, which would mark the first time Brazilian voters have opted for a non-centrist leader since the restoration of democracy in 1982. Opinion polls show Lula could win an outright majority of the votes in the first round, which he needs to avoid a runoff. Even if he is forced into a runoff -- which would be held on Oct. 27, his 57th birthday -- Lula is likely to go into it with an overwhelming head start.
Top polling firms show him with a 25-point lead over his closest competitor, Jose Serra, the government-backed candidate and a centrist. Serra himself is locked in a dogfight for second place with the surging Anthony Garotinho, a militant leftist and former governor of Rio de Janeiro state who says that Lula has gone too soft on globalization.
Such a shift in Brazil would dramatically alter the political and economic landscape in Latin America, robbing the momentum from leaders, such as Mexico's Vicente Fox and Chile's Ricardo Lagos, who have championed U.S.-backed free market reforms. Instead, it would give impetus to a bloc of Latin leaders who are now resisting "the Washington consensus" -- a package of policies that emphasize free trade, long touted by U.S. policymakers and international lenders as keys to prosperity for the world's poor.
Lula, for instance, has made opposition to the Bush administration's plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, one of his key campaign promises.
"The [FTAA] proposal as it is does not mean integration," Lula said in a statement, "but an annexation of the Latin American economies to the economy of the United States."
Comments like those have played well with Brazilian voters from across the political spectrum. Even Brazil's most powerful business association, the Sao Paulo Federation of Industries, released a study last month showing Brazilian companies stand to lose millions of dollars if a free trade agreement is struck with Washington.
ALCA -- as the FTAA plan is known by its Portuguese initials -- has become a household word from the Amazon jungle to the plains of Brazil's Deep South. Many Brazilians appear to echo Lula's reservations, partly out of fear of lost jobs because of a deluge of less expensive imports from leaner U.S.-based companies. But many more Brazilians simply doubt that Washington will agree to do away with agricultural subsidies that protect U.S. family farms but seriously hurt Brazil's leading exports.
"I'm totally against ALCA," said Tania Maria Luiz Santos, 25, an unemployed secretary filling out an application at a busy employment agency in downtown Rio last week. A few months ago, before the campaign started, she had never even heard of ALCA. "From what I understand, the U.S. would get everything and we would get nothing. We're tired of being told what to do with our economy by foreigners. Brazil should be left alone to make its own decisions."
But almost no one, including Lula, is advocating a complete reversal of reforms. Rather, he and like-minded Brazilians are calling for slowing down the reforms, including an end to further privatization of state-run industries and a new focus on battling social inequality.
Lula has also tried to calm investors by describing himself as a "matured" leader. He has indeed altered his most radical positions. He now says, for instance, that he is grudgingly prepared to work with the International Monetary Fund and will continue servicing Brazil's foreign debt.
Investors appear not to believe him, and many have called on Lula to prove his sincerity by keeping Brazil's market-friendly Central Bank president, Arminio Fraga, in place. But Lula has balked, saying the markets are engaging in "economic terrorism."
That has not played well on Wall Street. "Look, Brazil chose to invite investors in during the 1990s, and after you do that, you can't send the wrong signals because the market gets spooked easily," said Thierry Wizman, managing director of global emerging markets at Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York. "What Brazilians are failing to understand now is that their vote is damaging their relationship with investors. That relationship is essentially just like a bank which has lent a lot of money to a company and later demands a seat on the board. You can't pick a CEO the bank doesn't like."
But many here -- including Cardoso, who won reelection over Lula in a 1998 landslide -- insist that Brazilians have short memories. Though times are tough now, the population has reaped benefits from eight years of free market reforms, many of which they seem to have forgotten.
Although Brazil maintains one of the worst disparities of wealth in the world, the poverty rate has edged downward over the past decade. In 1993, a year or so before reforms started, 44 percent of the population was living on less than $1 a day. That figure was 35 percent in 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
Privatization has also improved many public services. One example is Telemar, the telephone company that serves Rio and 15 other Brazilian states. Before Telemar was sold into private hands in 1999, it took years to get a new phone line and could cost up to $2,000. Now, installation costs have dropped to about $12 and it takes about two weeks to get a new line. As a result, the number of phone lines in Telemar's region has jumped from 10 million to more than 18 million since 1999, according to company statistics.
But poor regulation of prices and services has left many consumers with the impression that things have not really changed for the better. For instance, although the cost of getting a new phone has gone way down, the average monthly phone bill in Rio has soared 290 percent since privatization, according to Rio's consumer ombudsman's office.
"I don't think this is an issue of Brazilians never being satisfied," said Leandro Antunes de Oliveira, the office coordinator. "I think there are genuine concerns that the private sector and investors are doing whatever they please in Brazil, and the current government is complacent about it. We feel we have gone as far as we can under this model. Now, Brazilians want a government of the people. They want real change."
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