Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a vocal critic Donald Trump, was reelected Sunday in a result that provides relief to critics of widening U.S. influence in Latin America.

With 100% of the vote counted, Brazil’s electoral court announced that the soon to be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes over opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, giving him 51.8% of the total vote. Bolsonaro quickly refused to concede defeat and asked for the election results to be annulled after an evening of chaos at some polling places that followed a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours.

Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whom Lula defeated to take the presidency in 2022.

Lula’s triumph bucks a regional trend of victories for right-of-center presidential candidates allied with Trump. It also means Latin America’s largest economy, with a GDP of $2.6 trillion per year, will likely continue defying Trump’s demands, despite the pressure of increased tariffs.

  • LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    It takes special liberal gymnastics to leap over 80% of the dictatorships America is directly arming to land on these half-baked examples.

    • Jiral@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I have no idea what you are talking about, above poster was posting about fascists always being sore losers. Those are just two relevant examples from Europe that occurred very recently. They are not representative but they do prove a point that fascists are sometimes much less entrenched in power than they want to make everyone believed to be. Also Vucic was hardly “America’s” man, he played the US and Russia both at the same time.

      • LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml
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        17 hours ago

        I’m saying that liberals use democracy and fascism selectively. We have direct control over governments we’re directly arming, who are much worse examples, but their kneejerk war boner goes directly toward nations that haven’t already handed over all their natural resources.

        Everything is about chipping away Russian aligned governments, ever toward the real goal.

        • Jiral@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          “Liberals”, “the West” or"much worse examples" are all failing the point I was making before. I was mentioning that in Europe two authoritarians with fascist tendencies conceded to lost elections, after having failed to secure a majority even with underhanded attempts of influencing the outcome. Are you saying that this was not the case or that was not what they were?

          But then, the real problem for you appears to be none of that but rather that those autocrats were aligned with Russia, right? Even though that is in the case of Vucic a bit of an overstatement, he played both sides really.