Brazil’s Lula Walks a Tightrope After Maduro’s Sudden Capture Abroad

After U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro in early January 2026, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the violence yet dodged naming Donald Trump. With Brazil heading toward the October 2026 elections, every syllable now doubles as policy and campaign strategy, too.

A Condemnation With Carefully Missing Nouns

In Brasília, the statement landed like a note passed under the door: clear enough to show unease, cautious enough to avoid fingerprints. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the operation that led to Nicolás Maduro’s capture, but he conspicuously avoided naming Donald Trump or even the United States, a notable omission given Trump’s central role in the action described in the text. In the language of diplomacy, what you refuse to say can be as loud as what you declare.

That restraint is not happening in a vacuum. The Venezuelan operation has drawn praise from some U.S. allies and sharp criticism from governments including Brazil, Mexico, China, and Russia, all framing the move as a violation of sovereignty and international law. Yet across the region, the criticism is arriving wrapped in caution, as if leaders are looking over their shoulders at markets, migration, and the possibility of being next in line for a crisis they didn’t schedule.

For Lula, the caution is also domestic. He enters 2026 with an advantage in the polls for a possible reelection in October, facing a fragmented right without former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is in prison after being convicted for plotting a coup and sentenced to 27 years. Lula, the progressive leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), is seeking what would be his fourth term after a third that has been described as relatively calm, though it began with chaos, when thousands of radical Bolsonaro supporters violently stormed the seats of Brazil’s three branches of government in Brasília.

The attempted putsch is no longer just a traumatic memory; it is a running court docket. The text notes that at least 810 people have been convicted. That number hangs over Brazilian politics like a warning label: democracy survived, but the forces that tested it did not evaporate. They reorganized.

Governing With Numbers While the World Heats Up

After the insurrection was contained, Lula faced a Congress dominated by conservative forces and an international environment under high tension since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Even so, he has applied a familiar recipe from his earlier presidencies (2003–2010): patient negotiation, broad income-distribution programs, and a relentless push to open external markets for Brazilian products.

The results, as laid out in the text, are politically valuable because they are legible. Brazil grew above expectations, returned to being off the U.N. hunger map, and posted a historically low unemployment rate of 5.2%, with inflation under control at 4.46%. The São Paulo stock exchange broke its record score more than thirty times this year, the kind of headline that makes investors breathe easier even when the street-level mood is more complicated.

His government also approved a deep tax reform, framed as a historic demand from the business sector, and created an income tax exemption for lower-income families. But those victories have carried a fiscal cost that opponents are already sharpening into talking points. Lula returned to power in 2023 with a public deficit equivalent to 4.7% of GDP; now the negative balance is 8.1% of GDP. Over the same period, public debt rose from 73.5% to 79% of GDP. In election years, such figures are not just economic indicators; they become moral arguments about responsibility, discipline, and who pays for compassion.

This is part of why his response to Maduro’s capture reads like a balancing act. To fully denounce Trump by name risks provoking the United States at a moment when Brazil is trying to protect its markets and avoid spiraling confrontation. To remain silent risks alienating Latin American audiences who still carry historical memories of intervention as lived experience, not academic debate. So Lula condemns violence and defends multilateral norms while leaving the door open for the practical reality that Brazil cannot afford an unnecessary clash.

An Octogenarian Favorite in A Country Still Arguing with Itself

Age, too, is part of the tightrope. Lula is 80, and if he wins, he would finish the term at 85. The text describes a communications strategy designed to blunt that vulnerability: images of him climbing the ramps of the Planalto Palace, working out in the gym, even leading charity races. He insists he feels the energy of a 30-year-old, a claim meant to reassure supporters and deny rivals an easy narrative.

Political scientist Lara Mesquita, a professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), argues that his situation is not comparable to that of former U.S. president Joe Biden, who faced pressure to abandon reelection due to age. That distinction matters in Brazil, where the electorate can be harsh about corruption history yet surprisingly tolerant of older leaders if the economy is delivering and the alternative feels risky.

Still, the text shows a country split down the middle. Datafolha finds 49% approve of Lula’s work as president, while 48% disapprove. Under those numbers sits a deeper unease: some voters still associate him with the corruption scandals of his first two terms, while others blame him for the expansion of organized crime across the country.

Pedro Brites, an international relations professor at FGV, warns that the opposition will try to make security the defining theme of the election, at a time when “the right is strengthening in South America.” In that framing, Lula’s careful language on Venezuela is not only about foreign policy. It is about controlling the story at home, proving he can defend sovereignty without burning bridges, and defending democracy without handing his enemies a fresh crisis to weaponize.

On the right, the fragmentation is real and crowded. With Bolsonaro imprisoned and disqualified, he has named his eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, as his successor, but the text notes that he faces high rejection and has not unified the field. Other potential contenders include governors Romeu Zema of Minas Gerais, Ronaldo Caiado of Goiás, and Carlos Roberto Massa, known as Ratinho Jr., of Paraná. The figure closest to Lula in polls, and reportedly favored by financial markets, is Tarcísio de Freitas, governor of São Paulo and a former Bolsonaro minister, though he says he plans to seek reelection in Brazil’s richest state.

Against that background, Lula’s decision to condemn Maduro’s capture while avoiding the names behind it is not mere timidity. It is the posture of a leader trying to survive two storms at once: a volatile hemisphere and a polarized republic. In Brazil in 2026, even a missing noun can be a campaign slogan.

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