Word: lula
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With their endless string of pearl beaches, heavenly climate and sensual bossa nova culture, Brazilians consider themselves uniquely blessed. So when the first of two gigantic oil fields was discovered off the coast near Rio de Janeiro last fall, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva saw it simply as further proof of a celestial bond. "God," Lula gushed, "is Brazilian...
That kind of good fortune, divine or not, has helped Lula, 62, a former steelworkers' union leader and high school dropout, become Brazil's most popular President in a half-century. The oil find could make Brazil one of the world's largest crude producers, but even without that bounty, the economy has been growing as vigorously as a guava tree in the Amazon rain forest, allowing Brazil to start reducing its epic social inequality. Economic strength has also allowed the country to flex its diplomatic clout as the hemisphere's first real counterweight to the U.S. Lula...
...Lula is aiming for membership in the world's most exclusive club, the group of nations with permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, part of his effort to "change the world's political and commercial geography." Brazil, the world's fifth most populous country, has begun lobbying more ardently for membership, and in his speech to the General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 23, Lula argued that the council's "distorted representation is an obstacle to the multilateral world we desire...
That may be a dream too far for the bearded, gravelly voiced President, but Lula's self-confidence is understandable: he has pulled off other unlikely feats. When he was first elected in 2002, many feared that Lula and his leftist Workers' Party would trash Brazil's emerging economy by pursuing socialist policies. Instead, Lula shrewdly embraced fiscal sobriety, strengthening Brazil's currency, the real, and reforming a bloated civil service pension system. Those policies and a windfall in commodities fueled a boom--the economy will grow 5% or more again this year, and inflation is historically low. Even...
...Lula enters the homestretch of his presidency - it ends in 2011 - many of Brazil's oldest problems remain unsolved. Chief among them is its education system, which despite increased funding remains a dysfunctional shame. There's also rampant corruption, exorbitant taxes, Amazon deforestation and one of the world's most wasteful public bureaucracies. Lula, who many Brazilians hoped would tackle those plagues more forcefully, blames "a [political] structure that has been there for centuries" but which "we are trying to dismantle." To do that in the two years he has left, however, may require more divine intervention...