Originals (with photos) are:
http://www1.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u43384.shtml http://www1.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u43378.shtml
Thiago Oppermann
Profile of Marina Silva, Environment Minister in the Lula Cabinet
Folha Online,
Maria Osmarina Silva de Lima, “Marina do PT” later known as Marina Silva, 44, started her political career in the Communidades Eclesiais de Base (Grassroots Eclesiastic Communities; liberation theology groups), connected to the Catholic Church.
In 1988, she was elected to the council of Rio Branco (capital of Acre, a far western Amazonian state.) Two years later, she was elected representative in the state’s lower house and, in 1994, arrived at the Federal Senate as the youngest senator in the country, at 38 years of age.
An ex-seringueira (rubber harvester) allied with ecological movements in the Amazon region, Marina Silva was nominated today by president-elect Luis Inácio da Silva (PT), as minister for the environment. This year, Marina was reelected to the Senate.
Marina Silva joined the PT in 1985 and launched a campaign to the Federal lower house in order to help seringueiro leader Chico Mendes, who was killed in 1988, who was a candidate to the State lower house. Despite being in the top five candidates, neither her nor Chico Mendes was elected.
Marina received a degree in History in the Federal University of Acre in 1985. She learned to read in her teens after relocating to Rio Branco to get medical treatment for Hepatitis. There were no schools in her birthplace, the Seringal Bagaço [This translates as “The Fruitwaste Rubber Plantation”.]
A dream to become a nun was overthrown by her militant politics. At university, she netered the PRC (Revolutionary Communist Party), a semi-clandestine group which opposed the military government.
After graduation she teached history and joined the teacher’s union movement. Together with Chico Mendes, she founded the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores) in Acre.
Marina Silva has four chilfren, Shalon, Danilo, Moara and Mayara.
Profle of Palocci, Lula’s nomination for the Treasury
Folha online
Medical doctor Antonio Palocci Filho, 42, indirectly nominated by the president-elect, Luiz Inácio da Silva (PT), to take charge of the Treasure Department, began his political when he was still a medical student, in São Paulo.
Palocci was a militant in the Libelu (Liberdade e Luta – Freedom and Struggle), a Trotskyist movement, and after the establishment of the PT, in 1980, went on to participate in the “O Trabalho” [ abstract form of ‘work’, ie work in general], also Trotskyist in orientation. After 14 years in public life, Palocci took a sharp turn to the centre and exchanged his revolutionary platform for a less radical faction of the PT. Today, the ex-mayor of Ribeirão Preto is one of the PT’s interlocutors with businessmen and those sectors more opposed to a PT administration.
Palocci, who has never lost an election, finished only one mandate: his first as mayor of Ribeirão Preto (SP), a municipality 319 km from São Paulo, from 1993 to 1996. He was elected to his second mandate in the mayorshipin October 200, but Palocci renounced this some days ago so as to take part of the president-elect’s team.
Palocci launched his political career by being elected to the council of Riberão, in 1988. Two years later, in 1991, he was elected as a state representative, but he left his Legislative mandate in 1993 when he was elected mayor of Ribeirão. In the two years 97/98, he was the president of the São Paulo state branch of the PT.
In 1998 he was elected to the federal congress and in 2000 he was re-elected as mayor of Ribeirão. Palocci led uninterruptedly in the polls, even before his opponents had been confirmed.
As Mayor of Ribeirão, Palocci already displayed the “light” tone [“light” is the Brazilian spelling for the English word “lite”, which in this context refers to centrist politics; the word entered Portuguese from diet products.] He appointed Duda Mendonça, a high profile advertising man as the coordinator of his comapaign and <exchanged the blue [which] predominated in his [its?] material in place of the traditional blue> [this makes no sense in Portuguese either.]
The ex-mayor, who was already part of the team deliberating on Lula’s Government Program, takes up the coordination of works after the death of mayor Celso Daniel, from Santo André, in 20 January 2002. [I have no idea what this is supposed to mean]
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