Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva held a vigil yesterday for his late wife Marisa Leticia, at the headquarters of the Metalworkers’ Union where they met four decades ago.
Leftist party staff and hundreds of citizens, many wearing the red shirt of the Workers’ Party and carrying posters that read “President Lula,” went to Sao Bernardo do Campo in metropolitan Sao Paulo to offer their condolences to Latin America’s most popular leftist leader.
Marisa Leticia, a veteran labour activist like her husband who was first lady from 2003 to 2011, was pronounced brain dead at 66 at the Sirio-Libanes hospital
in Sao Paulo on Thursday.
She had been treated in intensive care since January 24 with a brain hemorrhage due to a
ruptured brain aneurism.
“I really admired Marisa Leticia, a woman who always fought alongside Lula,” Jeisa Mota, a 27-year-old hairdresser, said. “I really wanted to come to this last homage and accompany Lula.”
Lula ended his rule with sky-high ratings and taking credit for Brazil’s economic boom, but his legacy has been tarnished by a subsequent recession and a string of corruption charges last year in which his wife was also indicted.
Lula’s leftist party colleagues were quick to defend the political couple as they paid their respects, with several suggesting that the year of scandal had weakened the former first lady’s health.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that they killled Dona Marisa,” leftist senator Lindbergh Farias told journalists.
“She was the victim of enormous persecution and couldn’t take it.”
On Thursday evening conservative President Michel Temer – who replaced Lula’s ally and successor in the presidency, Dilma Rousseff – offered his condolences at the medical centre.
The former first lady’s remains were to be cremated in a private family ceremony following the wake.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cries next to the priest and supporters in the wake of Marisa Leticia, the wife of him, in Sao Bernardo Do Campo, near Sao Paulo, yesterday.
