Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

📍Ipiranga, São Paulo, Brazil

“Luiz Inácio da Silva was born in October 1945 in Caetés, then part of Garanhuns, in the poor interior of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil, the seventh of eight children of farm workers. In 1952, when he was seven, his mother took the children on a thirteen-day journey on the back of a truck to São Paulo state, where his father was already living. The family settled in the coastal city of Santos and later in São Paulo, and Lula left school to work as a shoeshine boy and street vendor. As a teenager he trained as a lathe operator and worked in factories in the industrial belt around São Paulo, where in his late teens he lost a finger in an accident. He became a union leader in the metalworking towns of the ABC region, led major strikes, and in 1980 co-founded the Workers' Party. He was elected President of Brazil in 2002, and again in 2022.”

Sources: Morel, M. Lula: The Biography (2010), Companhia das Letras; Bourne, R. Lula of Brazil (2008), University of California Press