John French takes on a complex and admirable task in his biography of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, broadly known as “Lula.” His subject is arguably one of Brazil's most consequential political figures, along with Dom Pedro II and Getúlio Vargas. Unlike those other men, Lula is not only still alive—he is also mounting a campaign to return to the presidency, which he occupied from 2003 to 2011.
French is the ideal scholar to undertake a project such as this. He has long focused on the politics of organized labor in Brazil, and he is a keen observer of the relationship between unions and leftist political parties. And, that orientation shapes this biography. The real strength of the book, and in some significant ways also its weakness, is the focus on Lula's style of leadership at the union level. This biography is a throwback to the old days of “Great Man” history, which French makes clear in an afterword defending that focus. Indeed, the question usually posed by biographies of people who lead social and political movements is whether that person made the movement, or the movement made the person. Unlike most biographers who see some nuance in this equation, French is clear throughout that Lula and his “politics of cunning” made the movement and altered Brazilian politics.
The book has several strengths that make it a valuable contribution to the historiography. French concentrates his research and analysis on Lula's childhood and young adult years, along with his rise to prominence in the Metalworkers Union in São Paulo's industrial suburbs. The material on Lula's early years is very well done, but French is at his best in describing his early work years and his introduction to life in the union. In these chapters, Lula learns much from his more radical brother, Frei Chico, and the union functionaries and leadership, especially its long-serving president, Paulo Vidal.
As well done as these sections are, the real genius of the book is in French's careful reconstruction of Lula's rise to the union presidency. The book painstakingly details the personalities and politics that Lula navigated in the 1970s and the ways changing national politics and São Paulo state politics shaped his rise. French's account is based on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, as well as oral histories others conducted with many of the actors. This small-bore analysis of union politics is the book's greatest strength. Unfortunately, this focus on union-level politics obscures broader questions that Lula and his fellow metalworkers faced. French, although expert at providing a close analysis of the local, fails to provide the context to understand Lula's story more fully.
Although wages and the rate of inflation were the central concerns for most of these workers in the 1970s and 1980s, French provides few details on them. Moreover, he ignores perhaps the most important point of contention for workers and the unions, the imposto sindical. This highly unpopular and deeply problematic mandatory tax is mentioned only in passing, and just once (109). The development of shop floor-level organizing into factory commissions is not analyzed. Even though French mentions the role of DIEESE (the independent, union-backed statistical agency) in the late 1970s, he does not connect its history, which stretches back to union insurgencies of the early to mid 1950s and forward to the labor insurgency of the late 1970s. Indeed, French's focus on Lula's rise to union leadership leads him to ignore the broader context for his rise. There is little on the Abertura and nothing on the shifting perspectives of foreign and domestic industrial relations officials at this time.
French's analysis of the Workers Party (PT) also suffers from his dogged focus on Lula as the driver of Brazilian history. The question of how dependent the PT was on Lula's popularity is shunted aside. Lula is the sun around which everyone and everything revolves. French may be right that the PT is more a personalistic vehicle than a national political party, but he does not address that debate and simply focuses on the party's leader. The book is also limited in that its real focus is on Lula's rise to prominence within his union. The 384 pages of text include very little material on Lula's two presidential terms, with almost no analysis of policy during the PT's rule. Chapter 16, for example, focuses on debunking Lula's intellectual critics, particularly Jorge Casteñeda, and on connecting Lula's politics to the politics of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. The next chapter includes a five-page discussion of how Jair Bolsonaro conflated the politics of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula, ignoring the important differences between the two. It is unclear how this focus clarifies Lula's life and work, and French does this at the expense of not analyzing Lula's government's most significant policy innovation, the Family Grant program (Bolsa Família). French does little more than mention some political discussions of the program without studying how it moved significant numbers of Brazilians out of poverty and has served as a template for similar policies elsewhere in the Global South. And so, French misses an obvious opportunity to tie Lula's past as a trade unionist who benefited from Fordist employment policies in the metalworking sector to his promotion of state Fordism as Brazil's president.
The book is not really a biography of Lula, given its narrow focus. It is instead a terrific study of his early life and his rise to prominence as a labor leader. The failure to detail his life after the union as a politician limits the book's scope. But its focus on the earlier period makes it an essential book for the study of the internal politics of Brazilian trade unionism during the 1964–85 military dictatorship.
