Lula's electoral propaganda in 2002: how participants see Brazil today

In early October 2002, a few weeks before winning the presidential election for the first time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) aired an advertisement on TV that became an icon of the country's electoral marketing. Pregnant women dressed in white walked through a wheat field on a farm in the Maringá region, northwest of Paraná, under the strong sun and the wind produced by mega-fans.

Models, mothers and children advanced through the plantation to the sound of "Bolero", by French composer Maurice Ravel. When the music subsided, Chico Buarque asked voters which country they wanted to leave to the next generation.

"You can't choose whether your child will be a boy or a girl, but one thing you can choose: what kind of country you want for him," he said.

In the end, Chico appeared to conclude: "If you don't change, Brazil won't change either."

The recording brought together around 50 people. Not all women were pregnant, some wore foam bellies. Each participant received between R$25 and R$40, values ​​equivalent today to approximately R$100 and R$160, respectively.

Among the participants was Juliane Souza, aged 26 and pregnant with Gabriela. Model, she accepted the invitation from the agency that represented her. He was not a militant, but he was moved by the production and voted for Lula that year. “I had that hope that now it goes, now it changes”, he remembers.

On the eve of the government's ninth month, Juliane told Folha that it was necessary to have "a mother's patience" to wait for the results. "The government is in its infancy. It has to wait the last few months to find out whether it has changed or not. It has to have hope", he declared at the time.

Advertiser Duda Mendonça (1944-2021), responsible for Lula's campaign, created the piece as part of the strategy to soften the image of the candidate, then in his fourth attempt at the Presidency. The campaign relied on a discourse of conciliation, a shift to the center and the slogan "hope will overcome fear".

For former minister José Dirceu (PT-SP), who coordinated the 2002 campaign, the film was part of a strategy to change the party's communication. According to him, the team sought to exchange negative propaganda for messages that combined emotion and an idea of ​​the future.

"The emotion had to serve some perspective. The film was designed based on three ideas: the family, the woman and the future of the country", he says.

With José Alencar (PL-MG) as vice-president, Lula led the first round and, on October 27, defeated José Serra (PSDB) with 61.3% of the valid votes, becoming the first president elected by the PT.

More than two decades later, Juliane Souza estimates that the approval phase for Lula only lasted "two or three years". At 49 years old, he works as an app driver in Maringá and does not intend to vote for Lula again.

She emphasizes, however, that the transformation of life cannot be attributed solely to the governments that have followed one another since the filming. Her routine turned upside down, especially in 2008, when she became a widow and had to return to the job market.

During the pandemic, with the drop in the number of passengers, he started delivering masks produced by his mother and transporting patients for treatments in Curitiba and São Paulo. Both activities helped support the family during the period.

The three children reached higher education. The oldest is a biomedical doctor, Gabriela—who was in Juliane's belly during the filming— is an advertiser and the youngest is studying systems analysis and development.

Gabriela, 23, like her mother, seeks financial security. "We never went hungry, far from it. But you don't have peace. It seems like you always have to be doing it one day to pay it off the next, for the bills to fall into place."

Mother and daughter are looking for an alternative to polarization and follow names like Renan Santos (Missão) and Ronaldo Caiado (PSD), but have not yet decided on their vote.

Another woman who participated in the recording, a businesswoman and resident of Maringá, asked not to be identified. She says she was selected by an agency and claims she never had any ties to the PT.

In her assessment, the country "got much worse" under PT administrations. He says that, if the president continues, "Brazil only stands to lose."

L. was two years old when he appeared on his mother's lap in the 2002 commercial. Today, at 26, he says he never watched the entire advertisement.

He studied in public schools since kindergarten. To enter college, he got a full scholarship from Prouni (University for All Program), a program created during the first Lula government that grants scholarships to low-income students at private higher education institutions.

She says that she was favored by the change of government and that the family stabilized, with access to social programs in childhood.

Although he claims to follow politics little, the young man identifies with center-left ideas and states that inclusion issues, such as access to education and work, guide his positions.

In the presidential election, he sees Lula as the "least worst" option. He classifies Maringá as a conservative city and says he moved away from right-wing speeches because he views ideas such as meritocracy critically.

Another participant in the production, Tatiana Vanessa Soria, worked at a modeling agency when she was called to film. The son Rafael, still a baby, appeared in his mother's arms in the advertisement.

At 48 years old, Tatiana is a biologist, master, doctor and teaches in the state network of Paraná. She says that, since 2002, she has voted for PT candidates in all presidential elections.

Troubled by the conduct of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) during the Covid pandemic, she participated in political training courses, studied Marxist authors, and joined the PSOL.

"Before studying, I thought the PT was left-wing. Then I realized that I believe in something much more left-wing than it really is. I felt I needed to organize myself with a group of people who thought like me for things to change."

Today, Tatiana has little contact with PSOL. In the classroom, it seeks to encourage students to check the information they receive and reflect on the candidates' proposals.

"I don't want them to think like me. I just want them to think. Do they want to defend a right-wing party? Do they want to defend Bolsonaro? They can defend it, just if they defend it with substance."

Despite criticism of the PT, she continues to vote for the party as she considers it the electoral force with the greatest chance of victory and closest to the ideas she defends.

Between 2014 and 2015, Tatiana participated in Science without Borders, a federal program created under the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government, through a sandwich doctorate in the United States. The scholarship paid for a year of studies abroad, during which Rafael attended an American school and learned English.

After completing high school at a public school in Maringá, Rafael decided, at the age of 18, to take the entrance exam. He lives in another city and attends a public university.

For Tatiana, her son's trajectory helps explain why education occupies the center of her political choices and why she continues to consider it right to have voted for Lula in 2002.