The Apprentice

This chapter advances an original interpretation of Paulo Vidal, the union’s dominant leader before Lula, as he navigated internal union politics, with its mix of the idealistic and pragmatic, principled, and opportunistic. By contrasting Vidal’s personality, behavior, and aspirations with those of Lula, the chapter suggests a sociocultural interpretation of what drove this generation of young male union leaders. Discarding artificial boundaries between public and private, this chapter sheds further light on Lula the “good boy” as he was trained by Vidal while exploring how the twenty-six-year-old expectant father became a grieving and childless widow. It also interprets his subsequent frantic womanizing as illuminating the masculine sphere of working-class sociability. It ends with Lula’s whirlwind pursuit of the widowed single mother Marisa Letícia Casa dos, his life partner for the next forty-three years, who he married on May 23, 1974,