Rising Violence in Bahia Tests Lula's Grip on Key Election Stronghold
Soaring violence in Bahia, where five of Brazil's ten deadliest cities lie, is challenging President Lula's re-election bid in a state he won with 72% of the vote in 2022.
The killing of a 33-year-old man in Salvador has become a focal point for mounting public security concerns in Bahia, a state that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva must hold to secure another term in October's national elections.
Evilásio Santos da Silveira Júnior told his sister he was going grocery shopping on the day he died. He never returned. State police officers at the scene said he was caught in a shootout between rival factions and suspected him of involvement. His family insists he had no ties to gangs and was randomly killed by state forces during an unprovoked raid.
His death encapsulates a major hurdle for Lula as he seeks to defeat Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro. Bahia has never been as violent, with five of the country's ten most deadly cities located there, according to the non-profit Brazilian Public Security Forum. Salvador ranks as the nation's deadliest state capital, recording nearly 53 violent deaths per 100,000 residents in the most recent data from 2024.
Lula won 72% of the vote in Bahia in the 2022 runoff against then-incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, drawing over 6 million votes to his rival's 2.3 million. That margin proved vital to his narrow 2.1-million-vote national victory. The 80-year-old president now needs to maintain a strong lead with the state's 11 million residents, known as baianos, but is polling below his results from four years ago, with public security cited as the key reason.
Some voters blame national crime gangs migrating to Bahia. Others point to Lula's Workers' Party, which has governed the state and its police since 2006, saying it has failed to make police less lethal, stop the flow of drugs and weapons, or invest enough in education.
The Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command dominates Bahia's poorest areas, facing off against its main rival, Bando de Malucos, a local gang tied to Brazil's largest syndicate, the First Command of the Capital. The Trump administration designated these groups as terrorist organizations earlier this year, a move Lula criticized as election interference meant to boost Sen. Bolsonaro.
Analysts note these gangs spent the last decade expanding into Bahia to tap into lucrative drug-exporting markets in Europe and Asia as Brazil developed more ports and airports. Maria Isabel Couto, director of data and transparency at the Fogo Cruzado Institute, said Bahia lies at a junction between two major trafficking routes.
"Every state that becomes a strategic trading post for traffic also becomes highly contested by the organized crime groups," Couto said. "It doesn't mean those are violent states or territories by nature; these are territories hit by those groups and also by the state's reaction in many cases."
Lula or his allies have won every election in the state since 2002. Since his national victory, he has expanded welfare in Bahia, growing benefits under his flagship Bolsa Família program from 58 billion reais ($11.3 billion) under Bolsonaro in 2022 to 87.2 billion reais ($17 billion) last year. This week, he increased benefits under the initiative by 15%, a move some critics said aims to boost his popularity before elections.
After a campaign rally with re-election candidate for governor Jerônimo Rodrigues, physical education teacher Tiali Doria, a staunch Lula supporter, said poorer voters now expect clear strategies on public safety, particularly to address police violence.
"Not only here in Bahia do we have this public security problem, but I think that Lula thinks about public security as effective policies that take care of the citizen, not always as repression by the State," Doria said. "We need humanized public policies."
Sen. Bolsonaro has barely campaigned in the city. Rather than winning over Lula's voters, turnout may prove decisive, with some baianos needing good reasons to leave home for the first round on Oct. 4 and a possible runoff on Oct. 25.
Still, many Lula supporters refuse to associate the increase in violence with the veteran leader. Magnólia Nascimento, Júnior's sister, receives Bolsa Família payments of about $116 per month, took a government-sponsored course to become a nurse, and is finally getting her driver's license through another government initiative.
"I've been using social programs and using them well," she said. "In the future, when I'm back to work and not in need of social programs anymore, I'll thank my government."