Lost Decade: Ten Years of PT in Power

This book covers the first ten years of the Workers' Party (PT) in power, from January 2003 to December 2012. It analyzes President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's two terms and the first two years of Dilma Rousseff's administration. More than a defining portrait of a lost decade, Marco Antonio Villa's work lays bare patterns, reveals behavioral models, establishes styles of conduct, and even the modus operandi of the PT in power—the method, according to the author: to rig the state from within in such a way that it is progressively indistinguishable from the party. By opting for a chronological sequence, Villa gives this book more than a clear and streamlined structure; he gives it the temporality necessary to understand what he considers a coup in full swing. By critically reconstructing the main moments of each year, highlighting the facts directly related to the PT's way of using the Republic, the author, a notable historian, parades, through prose of rare quality, the body of the strategy that underpins, as Minister Celso de Mello of the Federal Supreme Court defined it, a "criminal project of power."