Thread by @etiene_d

Ex-president Lula's condemnation was annulled yesterday, which means he regained full political rights. Today he made a speech. This is a pivotal moment in Brazilian history.

https://twitter.com/etiene_d/status/1369674378821181448

I find hard to explain to people in Europe what the regaining of hope in Brazil means to me. When I left Brazil in 2014, I had a full study abroad scholarship paid by the federal government of Dilma Roussef to invest in my education.

My dad is a taxi driver working 10-12hrs daily and my mom was a primary school teacher who became a housewife after many years of unemployment. An exchange program in Europe was absolutely not something I would ever even have dreamed of.

I didn't simply immigrate to Europe. I came in exchange with the plan to go back. While I was here there was a coup d'état and everything changed. I decided to stay a bit longer. Then everything got even worse. So I stayed here a tad more.

It's very hard to not be at my home country and not thinking it's a good place to be. I didn't end up in London because of a planned move in my career. I ended up here because my visa in Germany expired and I took the first job with Visa sponsorship that I found.

Everyday when I miss home and want to go back, I am hit by the rationalisation that this simply isn't a good idea. It's a process that's extremely heartbreaking.

Brazil has a very young democracy, almost as young as me, the dictatorship ended a couple of years before I was born. I had import formation years during the years of worker's party leadership, when Brazil was "the country of the future", an emerging power with vast resources

But those years were a mere blip in its history. A short dream of sovereignty for a country with decades of dictatorship, centuries of slavery, and centuries of colonial and imperialism abuse in its past.

I was naive to expect that the positive paths laid out when Brazil was governed by Lula couldn't be so easily dismantled. After the last years of Temer's and Bolsonaro's governments, I have just accepted it is what it is.

At the time, I criticized so much the fact that the Brazilian left did not properly prepare for a replacement of the symbol that Lula represents and a continuity of their program.

I did not look at the bigger picture, at the immaturity of Brazilian's democracy, and how hard it is to find another Lula. There is no other Lula. And there isn't going to be one for a while.

In this short period that I have been away, Brazil was set back by maybe 50 years. I'm not sure what happens now. But today is as pivotal in a good direction as the day Bolsonaro paid tribute to a torturer during Dilma's impeachment was in a bad direction. Today I celebrate.