Lasers and Red Flags Light Up São Paulo as Brazil’s President Lula Wins Re-Election

Huge crowds packed Avenida Paulista in São Paulo late on Sunday, October 25, waving red flags and dancing under lasers to celebrate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s narrow re-election.

X user HugoFaz filmed the party from inside the crowd between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. His footage shows a sea of Workers’ Party flags and yellow umbrellas, red flares glowing through the smoke and beaming friends cheering for the camera, while a reveller in a red scarf holds up a cartoon placard mocking the defeated right. Later, the crowd raises their phones as lasers sweep across a building facade above the avenue.

“Brazil is the greatest bulwark against fascism in the world today. Exclusively thanks to its people,” he wrote. “I’m dazzled. I don’t know how we did it, but we did.”

Lula won the runoff with 51.79 percent of the valid votes, against 48.21 percent for right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, according to the electoral court, after trailing him in the first round on October 4. He later addressed the crowd on Paulista in front of the São Paulo Museum of Art, calling the victory a “historic fact that I owe to the Brazilian people.”