Of the many war
stories that Dilma Vana Rousseff tells of her rise from revolutionary to career
bureaucrat to president of Brazil, one in particular stands out. It was early
in the race to succeed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and most Brazilians were
waking up to the idea of life without their hyperpopular leader, the “father of
the poor.” One day in a crowded airport a woman and her young daughter
tentatively approached Rousseff to get a closer look at the upstart female
frontrunner. “Can a woman be president?” the girl—whose name, fittingly, was
Vitória—wanted to know. “She can,” Rousseff answered. With that Vitória thanked
Rousseff, raised her chin, and walked off a few inches taller.
Rousseff smiled as
she recalled the episode in an interview with Newsweek at
Brasília’s presidential palace. It was close to 6 p.m. and the fierce sun over
the Brazilian central plateau was already dimming, but Rousseff’s day was far
from done. Flash floods in the south had left thousands homeless. Construction
work for the soccer World Cup, which Brazil will host in 2014, was lagging. The
press was still feasting on the carcass of corruption scandals and a cabinet
flap that had cost her five ministers in less than nine months. And yet
Rousseff, in a fuchsia jacket, black slacks, and oversize pearl drop earrings,
looked unflustered as she spoke about Brazil, the world economy, poverty, and
corruption. Her hair was thick and lustrous, her cheeks flush, with no trace of
the grinding sessions of chemotherapy she underwent to treat a lymphoma she
discovered in 2009. For nearly an hour she held forth, firing off data points
and toggling easily from job creation (“We’ve generated 1,593,527 in the first
six months”) to T. S. Eliot (“Ash Wednesday” is a favorite) to how women can
rewrite the rules of political engagement. “When I was little I wanted to be a
ballerina or a firefighter, full stop,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s a new
world, but the world is changing. For a girl even to ask about being president
is a sign of progress.”
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