CURITIBA, Brazil — Sixteen years ago, Brazil was in crisis; its future uncertain. Our dreams of developing into one of the world’s most prosperous and democratic countries seemed imperiled. The idea that one day our citizens might enjoy the comfortable living standards of our peers in Europe or other Western democracies seemed to be fading away. Less than two decades after dictatorship ended, some wounds from that period were still raw.

The Workers’ Party offered hope, an alternative that might turn these trends around. For this reason, above all, I believe, we triumphed at the ballot box in 2002. I became the first labor leader to be elected Brazil’s president. The markets were at first rattled by this development, but the ensuing economic growth put them at ease. In the years that followed, the Workers’ Party governments that I headed cut poverty by more than half in just eight years. In my two terms, the minimum wage increased 50 percent. Our Bolsa Familia program, which assisted impoverished families while simultaneously ensuring that children received quality education, won international renown. We proved that fighting poverty was a good economic policy.

Then this progress was interrupted. Not through the ballot box, although Brazil has free and fair elections. Instead, President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office for an action that even her opponents admitted was not an impeachable offense. Then, I, too, was sent to prison, after a dubious trial on corruption and money laundering charges.