I consider myself a center-right liberal, as I mentioned in the section called “Energy” of my third book, “Rua Paraíba”. In today’s political political controversy, I can consider myself an “isentão”, an unbiased person, the guy who is hated by both sides of the fight. But the text here is not about politics, rest assured. President Lula’s dog Resistência (resistance in English) was probably born in 2018. According to a post by President Lula on Facebook,

“a small black mongrel crossed the crowded Via Rápida in the Santa Cândida neighborhood, one of the highest and coldest in Curitiba. Swerving between cars and frightened by the noise of the horns, the little puppy trembled and cowered when two men who were passing by finally took her in. It was April 2018 and the two were not from there. Marquinho and Cabelo, metalworkers from São Bernardo do Campo, didn't think twice and, thus, the little dog named Resistência became the first mascot of the then Lula Livre Camp (the camp in front of the Federal Police in Curitiba, where now President Lula was imprisoned).”

According to a report in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo on January 1, 2023, the current First Lady Janja Lula da Silva adopted her in June 2018, after Resistência fell ill at the Lula Livre Camp. The little dog then ended up climbing the ramp of the Planalto Palace (literally Plateau Palace, the seat of national executive power) during the president's inauguration. John John, our dog, is so fun that he ended up serving as inspiration for a comic book, “John John's Paradise”, written by André Duarte Curtarelli and Juliana Frank, for which I wrote the afterword, which can be read here on the website. He was adopted on February 2, 2020, the day before my birthday. According to the afterword,

“I didn’t want to have another dog so soon after our poodle Ninon had died. To convince me to keep him, Teresa, my daughter, suggested naming him after my favorite surfer, the American John John Florence.”

When he arrived here at home, he had already spent a little over a year in a pet adoption NGO: our dog had been picked up wandering on a street that I don’t know which one it is, and he always took care of a little dog that ended up being adopted before him. He was probably about two years old when I adopted him, so he must have been born in 2018, just like Resistência. Likewise, the president’s dog, according to the Folha de São Paulo report, has “black fur and white spots on the chest and on the tips of her paws — over the years, the tone has become more grayish,” which is a perfect description of John John’s fur. And they look exactly like each other, as we can see in the photo that accompanies the text. John John may not be a brother of the Resistência, but from everything I wrote above, he seems to be, don't you think?