Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, who is running for reelection, and his running mate Geraldo Alckmin raise their arms in unison at the end of their final campaign rally, a day ahead of the presidential runoff election in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Friends,
I've been following this election closely, and what happened in Brazil this week genuinely moved me. I assess this as one of the most significant political turnarounds I've seen in Latin America in years.
Here's what I'm seeing: President Lula da Silva pulled off a record fourth term, defeating far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro by over 4 million votes in Sunday's runoff, a stunning reversal after Bolsonaro had actually won the first round just three weeks earlier. Bolsonaro, son of the imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro (serving 27 years for plotting a coup after his 2022 defeat), is now refusing to concede, citing a last-minute two-hour extension of polling hours due to bad weather, an extension his own campaign had reportedly requested.
I underscore how important this is for the whole region. Brazil and Mexico are now the two largest countries in Latin America still led by progressive, left-wing governments, even as Honduras, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia have swung right toward Trump-aligned leadership. Journalist Michael Fox put it plainly on Democracy Now: this is "an absolute game-changer for the region," and together Mexico and Brazil represent half of Latin America's total population. I see Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum being among the first to congratulate Lula as a telling sign of that shared progressive axis holding firm against a rightward regional tide, and against direct pressure from Washington (including Trump's since-reversed 50% tariffs on Brazil and his broader interventions across the region).
What strikes me most, though, is the organizing itself. I assess this as a masterclass in grassroots people power. After Lula's first-round loss, students hit the streets within a single day, memories of their fight against education budget cuts under Jair Bolsonaro still fresh, and that sparked weeks of unprecedented door-to-door canvassing, rallies, rides to the polls, and online organizing to counter what supporters say was algorithmic bias from U.S. tech platforms favoring the Trump-aligned candidate. Turnout surged by millions of votes in just three weeks. One voter on the ground called it simply "the power and strength of the people."
I want to underscore this last point directly: this is exactly the kind of grassroots mobilization the United States can learn from. When ordinary citizens, especially young people, organize block by block and neighbor by neighbor against entrenched power and media bias, they can overturn what looked like a done deal. Brazil just proved that's possible.
This is exactly what I attempted to accomplish during my campaign for Congress in the 2026 Democratic primary, and it's why I'm running again in 2028. I'm a student of the people power that Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and most recently Greg Casar have shown can move mountains. My platform is universal economic and political rights from cradle to grave, a modern Marshall Plan that pays every American a monthly citizens' dividend, a freedom dividend, a UBI of $1,300, funded by making corporations that dodge their fair share finally pay it. Some say this is too idealistic. But I was born in the fields; my grandfather was a bracero during WWII, and so was my mother. I'm the first in my family to achieve a lot of things, and the first to survive a lot of setbacks too: dropping out of college, homelessness, the criminal justice system, surviving on SNAP and minimum wage. Dreaming big is what turned my setbacks into a road toward Congress. Like Rocky Balboa, we have to turn our society's setbacks into the most audacious transformation of America since the New Deal. Our economic inequality and the climate emergency demand that we dream big. There simply is no other option.
In Solidarity,
Gamy Enriquez, MPA
2028 Congressional Candidate
Nevada’s Second Congressional District
