Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, three times president of Brazil, was born in 1945. He grew up poor in Sao Paulo and left school early to help support his family. Having trained as a lathe operator, he reached a milestone when he became the first member of his family to earn more than the minimum wage. Initially reluctant to get involved in politics, he was president of the steelworkers’ union by the time he was 30, leading a strike that achieved better wages that he saw were soon soaked up by a rise in rents. “It was time for workers to think about ruling their own country,” he says in voice-over in Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson’s documentary, simply called Lula.
