Dirceu

From the student movement to Cuba. From the guerrilla movement to the underground. From the Workers' Party to power. From the palace to the mensalão scandal. Daniel, Hoffmann, Carlos Henrique, Pedro Caroço. Cuban, Argentinian, Brazilian. All were—are—José Dirceu, a figure whose trajectory is intertwined with the history of the Latin American left in the second half of the 20th century, and particularly with that of Brazil in the 21st century. Dirceu was a student leader in 1968, a protagonist of the historic UNE congress in Ibiúna. Captured, he would be one of the prisoners exchanged for the American ambassador. Expatriated and isolated in Cuba, he remained protected by Fidel Castro, who would choose him to command—now with a new face—a guerrilla group in Brazil. With the movement dismantled, and each of its members imprisoned or killed, he survived to plunge into a long period of clandestinity, only to be interrupted in 1979 by amnesty. Free, he would meet trade unionist Lula, found the Workers' Party, and become the most renowned political articulator of the Workers' Party. In 2003, through the democratic path he hadn't helped build, he reached the Palace, the most important minister of a president elected by hope. And then the mensalão scandal. Suddenly unemployed, he was the Republic's newest consultant, a committed capitalist, a lobbyist turned millionaire. And then the mensalão trial. The conviction. It's not that Dirceu hasn't, after all, gotten anywhere. He has; he will get to many more. This book, however, a fabulous piece of reporting by Otávio Cabral, is above all about the paths of a man of many paths, and his ability to reinvent himself. It's about choices, much more than ends. It's about ambition and desire, much more than power.