🎊 Lula’s risky parade

When the Acadêmicos de Niterói samba school parades through Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome tonight, its 3,100 dancers and musicians will be telling the life story of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from his impoverished childhood in the country’s arid northeast to his rise as a union leader in São Paulo’s industrial belt.

It is a tribute that borders on hagiography, and it has ignited a legal firestorm over the delicate balance between freedom of expression and electoral fairness.

Carnival has always been political in Brazil, a raucous celebration where satire and social commentary flow as freely as beer and confetti. 

Presidents have been featured on the Sambadrome before, sometimes in tribute, sometimes in mockery, both during their time in office and after. Lula’s anti-hunger policies were celebrated by samba school Beija-Flor in a parade that won the 2003 Carnival championship. In 2012, after he had left office, his biography inspired Gaviões da Fiel in São Paulo — though without a podium finish. In 2023, a samba school in Minas Gerais also drew from his life for their parade.

But this year’s homage comes with a twist…

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