Luís Inácio Lula da Silva

Originating from the impoverished north of Brazil, the family of Luís Inácio da Silva (nicknamed Lula) immigrated to the State of São Paulo in 1952. In his teens, Lula worked as a shoe shiner and as an office boy. He studied at a technical school and in 1966 received a job with the Indústrias Villares, a major metallurgical enterprise. In the early 1970s Lula became a trade union activist and was elected (1975) president of a trade union of metallurgy industry workers. In 1980 Lula founded the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) and was prosecuted by the military authorities, spending a month in prison. In 1986 Lula was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a representative for the State of São Paulo. He was a runner-up at three consecutive elections of President of the Republic in 1989, 1994 and 1998. Making a bid for the presidency for the fourth time in 2002, Lula emerged as a triumphant winner of the runoff election and was inaugurated on 1 Jan 2003.