Lula’s party turns 40 in midlife crisis

It has been 40 years since former trade-union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva founded the Workers’ Party, the most successful Brazilian political group in recent democratic history. It is hard to overstate the importance of the party to Brazilian politics—of the country’s eight democratic presidential elections since the end of the military dictatorship, the Workers’ Party won half of them, and was the runner-up in all the rest. It ruled Latin America’s biggest country during its most prosperous decade—but it also oversaw failed economic policies that helped push Brazil into its worst recession on record.

For many, the Workers’ Party—and Lula, its leading figure—is the only major political force in the country which has looked to the country’s poorest people, giving scale to social policies and lifting millions out of poverty. For many more, it is the representation of some of the country’s worst vices, with the party accused of using its progressive banners as a cover for pillaging the Brazilian state, a view corroborated by the uncovering of a series of corruption scandals.

These days, it is hard to find anyone in Brazil who is indifferent to Lula or his party. 

As it turns 40 years old, the Workers’ Party is undergoing the toughest spell of its history and is trying to resurge from the crisis caused by Operation Car Wash, economic hardship, the impeachment of Brazil’s first woman president, the imprisonment...