In the sprawling former industrial metropolis of Osasco, shuttered factories have given manner to a buying malls and supply app tech firms in what is now dubbed São Paulo’s “Silicon Valley.”
The municipality voted for Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 but switched to the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro in the first spherical of Brazil’s presidential election this month. Bolsonaro won that vote – and now the two males face a run-off on Sunday. Since 1989, every first-round winner has gone on to be elected president.
Like many of President Lula’s conventional supporters, Gilberto Almazan, who leads a metalworkers’ union here, is visibly anxious.
He cries when he tells Lula’s life story: a boy who grew up in starvation in the north-east, who grew to become a metalworker, then a union chief, then a three-time president. But he’s candid about how issues have modified here and how the union motion that was so integral to Lula’s support base is caught in the “Middle Ages”, and struggling to keep up.
“We had strong deindustrialisation here,” Almazan says. “The profile of the working class changed. They are no longer predominantly industrial workers, they are service workers.
“Metal, chemical, textile factories disappeared. And 5 malls were constructed.”
The phrase “change” comes up repeatedly among Bolsonaro supporters here. Many wrestle to identify particular Bolsonaro insurance policies they like but know they need to attempt something completely different: pissed off by the financial system, crime and corruption in politics – even though Flávio has been confronted accusations of corruption too, which he denies.
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