Marcio Barbosa was thirteen years old when in Brazil in the eighties he started to work in a supermarket with a contract, at that time it was legal. Helped put groceries into bags. He also went around his neighborhood in Porto Alegre, offering himself to the neighborhood for all kinds of odd jobs. “Madam, do you want me to clean your patio?” he asked. I cleaned houses, I collected scrap metal...", he remembers. With that little money, he helped at home and treated himself to sweet papaya-filled buns. "I lived with my little sister and my mother, a woman with a lot of drive. And when things got very difficult, my great-uncle helped us so that nothing was missing," he says on the phone from Porto Alegre, in the richest and least unequal Brazil. A 52-year-old small businessman and accountant, Barbosa embodies a profound social and political change in the Brazilian popular classes that is reflected in the polls and helps to understand the strength of the Bolsonaros.
“They call me a Bolsonarist, but I am not. I, Marcio, socially, am a left-wing guy. But for the economic issue, I am right-wing. "I am a right-wing black man," he says. He was the first university student in his family, the first to prosper. He contributed his vote to Lula's first two victories (2002 and 2006). But then came the corruption scandals and disappointment. He turned his back on the Workers' Party... and in 2018 he embraced Jair Messias Bolsonaro.
The childhood of his two daughters is very different from his. Barbosa and his wife, a police officer, followed in the footsteps of any prosperous Brazilian family. First of all, private school. “Because our public school is, unfortunately, very bad. "They teach them to give their opinion when they barely know how to interpret a text, and they don't teach them to be entrepreneurs," he laments. The family's investment in education requires such an economic effort that they gave up having a third child.
She runs a labor agency with two employees to whom she gives incentives for productivity. In line with the Bolsonaros, he wants to slim down the State, but with limits: “Don't misunderstand me when I say reduce the State. Social programs are important, I know. But they should serve to give a boost, not to always depend on them. There are many people who say, 'Why am I going to work at McDonald's for the minimum wage if I can collect Bolsa Família without leaving home?'" He considers this aid necessary in such an unequal country because it has contributed to social inclusion, but demands more oversight and efficiency.
About 1,200 kilometers to the north, live Fábio Souza, 45 years old, and Robson, 36, cousins and hairdressers by profession. They also embody that right-wing conversion among the middle and lower classes. All three dislike the Bolsonaro or far-right label. They are right-wing, conservative, without stridency. Religious, without fundamentalism. One, Catholic; others, evangelicals.
Almost three decades ago, the Souza family opened a men's hair salon in Vila São José, a neighborhood on the outskirts of São Paulo. One of those places that no one arrives at by chance. It has a playground, some restaurants and a small commercial center, but in the privacy of their homes there are families driven by hunger. There are families drowning in debt and families who pressure their teenage children to drop out of school, go to work and bring home money.
For the Souza cousins, Flávio Bolsonaro embodies change, the possibility that the situation will improve, that the path to making ends meet will be less tortuous.
“Flávio wants a change, to fix what is wrong on the other side. Lula promised picanha [meat], but he hasn't delivered, we only have enough for eggs... Is Flávio going to be good? We don't know. But the people want change, they want to bet, you understand?", emphasizes the older man. That is the magic word. Change. Fábio wants a right-wing government, but he also contemplates the hypothesis that the president is re-elected: "We are going to wait, to see who wins. If Lula wins, let him fulfill what he promises. If Flávio wins, let him bring change. We are in a moment to take risks. Sometimes you have to risk some movements, some blows, to see if you get it right,” he adds.
The Perseu Abramo foundation, linked to Lula's Workers' Party, portrayed a decade ago, in a 67-page report, the change in political values that was germinating in the peripheries. The authors discovered that for these Brazilians “the enemy is the ineffective and incompetent State.” They found “a particular liberalism of the popular classes, which needs to be better understood, rather than a deep-rooted neoliberalism or conservatism in the strict sense.” In these precarious homes, “equality of opportunity is the starting point and the defense of merit is the goal.” They believe that "the market is more credible than the State (...) they cultivate individualism more than solidarity (...) they recognize the importance of an effective State to transform taxes into quality services and reduce inequalities."
Lula's party, one of the most powerful on the Latin American left, got the diagnosis right, but has not yet found the treatment to stop the flight of the popular classes towards a right led by the Bolsonaros.
Bolsonaro Sr., a soldier in the reserves, burst in like a hurricane in 2018, an unknown who promised to turn the system around. Four years later, after a pandemic, 700,000 deaths and flirtations with a coup, he obtained more votes, although insufficient compared to a resurrected Lula. The Bolsonaros have just obtained, in the person of Flávio, five million more votes than in 2022 with the patriarch imprisoned and the candidate investigated for corruption. Lula, whom those interviewed see as the system, pure continuity, lost three million votes. “The problem of the left is that it confuses the country project with a power project,” says accountant Barbosa.
It is interesting to cross income with political preferences. An analysis by Folha de S.Paulo indicates that the leftist wins at the base and the top of the pyramid. Lula sweeps among the poorest third (those who earn less than $320 a month) and wins among the richest 4%. Bolsonaro Jr. triumphs, however, in the intermediate range (from $450 to $5,200 per month) and with more margin than his father.
An image summarizes the panorama: Lula wins in that little piece of Rio that tourists visit. Copacabana, the birthplace of Bossa Nova, the neighborhoods of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque. But in the metropolitan belt, where the cleaners and doormen live, they are Bolsonaro territory.
In addition to being a hairdresser, Fábio Souza is a teacher of jiu-jitsu, a very popular martial art in Brazil. Among his fans, countless Bolsonaro voters. He reached the black belt before voting for a Bolsonaro, Jair, for the first time in 2018. In his environment, entrepreneurs are multiplying: that army of Uber drivers, candy sellers, delivery people... "Many people want to work for themselves to earn a little more." And do they achieve it? "Yes. You increase the day a little and you achieve it."
He maintains that, if Lula won in 2022, "it was, according to what we heard then, because there was manipulation to get him out of jail and win. And, look, he won," he says sitting in the hairdressing salon while his cousin cuts hair with scissors or clippers and goes over a client's neck with a razor.
Robson Souza, the youngest, explains his reasons before rushing out to pick up his daughter. The explanation is brief because the reason is one. You want to buy a car, you already know which one. "One day, talking to a client, he told me: And why don't you wait until 2027? The Government can change, and maybe interest rates will go down [13.75%]." That opened his eyes to a hypothesis he had not contemplated. There he decided not to repeat with Lula as in 2022, but to choose Bolsonaro. A bet, without guarantee, as you well know. “It may happen or it may not happen, but if the car went from 50,000 reais to 40,000, let's say, it is a good difference,” he explains.
The hairdresser is open from eight to eight. A gentleman's cut costs thirty reales, about six dollars. His cousin Fábio is worried about taxes, which lead businesses to close or move to inland cities, frequent cell phone thefts, the overload in public healthcare...
This businessman-hairdresser opted for Lula back at the beginning of the century, when the worker turned trade unionist embodied the change, the dreams of workers and northeastern immigrants. She became disenchanted with him a long time ago. He points out that frustration has even spread to the northeast, the key voting ground for Lula and the PT. "People have already realized that in these four years Lula did not keep what he promised. What is he going to bring us again in the next four?" he asks. “My family is from Ceará and there they are beginning to realize that they also want a change.” In effect, the right is opening gaps in the PT's dominance in its most faithful fiefdom.
Barbosa prefers the patriarch over Bolsonaro Jr. He considers him upright, “a guy who was not corrupted.” He suggests that this caused his fall. On the other hand, the older Souza likes Flávio, the heir, more because “he doesn't have those explosions, he doesn't insult, he controls himself more.” The Lula-Bolsonaro duel appears extremely close. The rightist is the favorite. No one who was left behind in the first round has won the Presidency. But it was not easy to imagine that Lula could have a second political life after prison.
If Bolsonaro wins, what should be his priority as president? The older Souza, father of a girl, responds: "Improve education and healthcare. We need a change there so that children have more opportunities to go to university, so that it is not so difficult to embark on new paths."
