Following a stunning, inspiring turnaround driven by mass mobilization of the Brazilian people, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won his fourth presidential election. This achievement marks an unprecedented shift in Brazilian political history: never before has a candidate who trailed in the first round managed to come back and win.

The election — which pitted Lula against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently imprisoned for an attempted coup d’état following his defeat in the 2022 elections — was marked by obscene interference from the Trump administration, with Big Tech companies like Meta acting shamelessly in favor of the far right. All this in a context where other interventions in the region by Trump were successful, leading to the election of far-right presidents — most notably in Colombia — which created the sense of an invincible Trumpist wave across Latin America.

Defeated by about two million votes on October 4, Lula gained more than ten million new votes on October 25, while Flávio Bolsonaro received just over three and a half million more than in the first round. Lula increased his vote share in virtually every Brazilian municipality after having been written off just three weeks ago. What changed in such a short time provides a lesson for socialists the world over.