Hailed by poor, Brazil's Lula riding high

[Judi Lynn]

Sept. 28, 2006, 12:30AM
Hailed by poor, Brazil's Lula riding high
Leader expected to be re-elected despite scandals

By JOHN OTIS
South America Bureau

RECIFE, BRAZIL — Rather than sending her three children into the streets to work, beg or steal, Ana Paula dos Santos sees them off to school to learn math, science and history. She gets paid for it.

Dos Santos, who lives in a cavelike cinder-block hut by the water's edge in this Atlantic port, receives $32 a month — about one fourth of her husband's income as a doorman — from a government program called Bolsa Familia. It encourages poor Brazilian parents to keep their children in class.

Not surprisingly, the fishermen, security guards and maids who live in dos Santos' Recife favela have plastered light poles and doorways of the slum with campaign posters for the man who launched the program, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

"Lula is marvelous," said dos Santos, 29, as she stood in her cramped, windowless kitchen and pointed to cereal, sardines and margarine purchased with government funds. "He is the first and only president who has helped us."
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4220278.html