Lula's 'love for the poor' keeps Northeast backing despite vote dip

Walter dos Santos, a 56-year-old resident of Maranhao state, credits Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with transforming his life from illiteracy and hunger to a family of professionals, reflecting the enduring appeal of social programs in Brazil's poorest region.

From hunger to doctorates

Walter dos Santos was 25 years old the first time he ate his fill, having watched siblings die of hunger in a mud-and-thatch home without electricity in Brazil's historically impoverished Northeast. Today his daughter holds a doctorate in biotechnology and his son works as an agronomist, achievements the 56-year-old attributes to Lula's social policies. "Everything we were denied, our children can now have," Dos Santos told AFP from his painted yellow house in Quilombo Piqui da Rampa, an Afro-Brazilian community descended from enslaved people.

Dos Santos said Lula was the "father and the mother and the grandfather" of the community, adding that government assistance provided an "enormous help" to those who knew hunger. "Even if people call it handouts, for us they were an enormous help. Because anyone who has ever gone hungry knows not to take these programs for granted," he said.

Economic gains, new demands

Maranhao stretches from the Amazon rainforest to the Atlantic coast, encompassing the white dunes of Lencois Maranhenses and a population that once survived on subsistence farming and barter for sugar or tobacco. Before Lula first took office in 2003, residents worked backbreaking hours cracking babassu palm nuts while mothers rationed single kilos of rice to feed large families. "Mom would cook a single kilo of rice to feed everyone. She'd just take a small portion — a little ball of rice — for herself to eat," said Dos Santos, one of 16 children.

Maria de Fatima Mendes Ferreira, 54, who lives in the Padre Trindade community, lost a six-month-old baby to malnutrition in her twenties while working long hours processing coconuts. Her husband, fisherman Antonio Carlos Lima Ferreira, 51, said Bolsa Familia and government produce-purchasing programs had transformed their prospects. Lula "has a genuine love for the poor. That's the crux of it," he told AFP.

The poverty rate in Maranhao dropped from 67 percent to 49 percent between 2012 and 2025, according to researcher Vitor Hugo Miro at the Brazilian Institute of Economics. But economic opportunities remain limited and major criminal factions have expanded in the region, prompting voters to weigh security concerns alongside social benefits. "People are beginning to weigh other dimensions of their lives when deciding how to vote," Miro told AFP.

Runoff test

Lula won nearly 64 percent of votes in the Northeast during the first round, but shed over 250,000 votes compared to his 2022 election performance. Nationally, right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro defied polling expectations to come out ahead, setting up a tight runoff scheduled for Sunday. While families in Maranhao continue to depend on Bolsa Familia, Larissa Bianque, a 32-year-old voter in the regional capital Sao Luis, told AFP that young people "aspire to something beyond just the aid that covers basic necessities."

For supporters, Lula's personal history growing up dirt poor in the Northeast gives him unique credibility in a region often mocked as backward. "He is the quintessential Northeasterner ... yet he never forgot his roots," said Zacarias Neto de Moraes, 58, a coordinator with Lula's Workers' Party. The runoff election is scheduled for Sunday as the campaign grapples with record abstention rates among young voters who never experienced pre-Lula hardship.