Portal:Brazil/Selected biography/13
Credit: Agência Brasil
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (pronounced [luˈiz iˈnasiu ˈlulɐ da ˈsiwvɐ]; born October 27, 1945), known simply as Lula, was the thirty-fifth President of Brazil and a founding member of the country's Workers' Party. He was elected on October 27, 2002, and took office on January 1, 2003. On October 29, 2006, he was re-elected, extending his term as President until January 1, 2011. Luiz Inácio da Silva was born on October 27, 1945 in Caetés (then a district of Garanhuns), Pernambuco.
He is the seventh of eight children of Aristides Inácio da Silva and Eurídice Ferreira de Melo. Two weeks after Lula's birth, his father moved to
Santos with Valdomira Ferreira de Góis, a cousin of Eurídice. On December 1952, when Lula was only seven years old, his mother decided to migrate to São Paulo with her children to reencounter with her husband. After a journey of thirteen days in a pau-de-arara (the open cargo area of a truck), they arrived in Guarujá
and discovered that Aristides had formed second family with Valdomira.