Lula, like Joãozinho Trinta: the people like luxury.

By Mauro Lopes

Shortly before Carnival in 1980, in January of that year, the immortal carnival designer Joãosinho Trinta (1933-2011) wrote an article with a sentence which caused enormous controversy: "The people like luxury. Those who like misery are intellectuals." It caused a furor and he was harshly criticized by sectors of the left.

Forty years later, Lula returns to Joãosinho Trinta. In fact, he has been revisiting the theme here and there. But in an interview with Rádio Progresso FM, from Juazeiro do Norte (CE), broadcast throughout the Cariri region, on the 17th, the former president formulated the issue in a more comprehensive way: "Everyone has the right to the result of what they produce. Everyone should be able to buy what they produce. That everyone can live well, study, eat, work, travel, have access to culture. That is what the people dream of. Unfortunately, João Hilário [from Rádio Progresso], the elite think that the people are born and resigned to being poor, that the people don't like luxury. No, the people do! The people like to eat well, to work well, to earn well, to dress well, to have a car, to have a motorcycle, to have a well-raised, well-structured family. That is what the people like."

Lula is causing a stir on the left with this position. Of course, the criticism on the left isn't as intense as that directed at the carnival designer. But there is a common criticism on the left, albeit somewhat archived, that was a central theme right after the coup in 2016, and that confronts Lula's view.

This is the view that, during his administration, Lula "only" concerned himself with the concrete living conditions of the people and neglected "political education." The spirit of the criticism directed at Joãozinho Trinta in 1980 was not very different.  

Regarding the PT governments, The Dominican friar Frei Betto summarized the criticisms. From various sectors, claiming that Lula and Dilma had not "promoted the political literacy of our people" and that "a consumerist mentality was created much more than that of a politically active citizen."

For people from the so-called middle or upper classes, for the intellectuals denounced by Joãozinho Trinta, "political education" would be as important as, or even more important than, the right to consumption. For Lula, it's not. The right to consumption and the fight against hunger are the top priority. As Lula says, those who have experienced hunger, those who live in a favela, in a tenement, those who are unemployed know very well what their priority is. 

The people are not content with hunger, with misery. And they want luxury, they adore luxury. It's obvious that luxury, for the poorest, is different from the luxury of the rich. For the latter, luxury is an armored car, a private jet, five-star hotels in Europe. For the former, as Lula indicated, it's eating well, dressing well, living well, traveling, having access to culture, a car, a motorcycle. It's a well-raised, well-structured family. For Lula, all this constitutes, from the outset, a political education, an education for citizenship, which has been denied to the poorest throughout history.

Lula never accepted the criticism regarding the lack of priority given to political education. 

The PT governments reduced extreme poverty (people living on less than US$1 a day) by 75% and poverty by 65%. This is an unprecedented global success story. In terms of educating the Brazilian people, what was done had never been seen before. The budget for the Ministry of Education tripled, going from R$49,3 billion in 2002 to R$151,7 billion in 2015.

At Lula's suggestion, the money from the pre-salt oil reserves, discovered in 2006, was earmarked for education. In 2013, 75% of the oil royalties and 50% of the Pre-Salt Social Fund were allocated to education.

ProUni and Fiesper allowed millions of low-income students to enter private universities. In 2015, there were 8,03 million students in higher education, compared to 3,52 million in 2002. Furthermore, the profile of university students has changed. With the Quota Law, approved in 2012, in 2019, for the first time in history, Black and mixed-race people became the majority of students in federal universities.

A revolution.

There are Black, trans, and other graduates with doctorates, people from all walks of life, prepared and ready to assume strategic roles in Lula's future government, should he be elected in 2022.

It is not the function of a government to provide "political education." That is the role of political parties, social movements, and inclusive and critical education in schools. 

The people of Joãozinho Trinta and Lula like luxury and detest poverty. This "life of luxury" is in itself a form of political education. 

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