Forrest Hylton

In Brazil, where Christopher Columbus is not well known, 12 October is a federal holiday in honour of children, as well as an important day in the Brazilian Catholic religious calendar, with a pilgrimage in São Paulo to the sanctuary of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida. The statue was supposedly discovered in a river in São Paulo’s interior by three fishermen in 1717, who were blessed by abundant catches thereafter. Though she started out white, the river turned her black; or perhaps it was the smoke from the fishermen’s votive candles. In any event, she is a powerful symbol of liberty for the Afro-descended majority, in a country where slavery formally ended only in 1888.

In Porto da Barra, Lula flags waved at the entrances to the beach on Sunday, while part of the crew that works there handed out stickers to passers-by and plastered them on each other. Bolsonaro supporters dressed in yellow and green were few and far between, and, with new reggae songs dedicated to Lula coming out of the soundsystem, Bahia was prepped and ready for a festa. If Bahia were Brasil, that would have happened, since people here voted close to 70 per cent for Lula in the first round of the presidential election, giving him over 3.8 million more votes than Bolsonaro. But Bahia is not Brazil.

In spite of a recent drug-related shooting – and mounting violence against PT supporters nationwide – the excitement and ebullience on the beach at Porto da Barra in Salvador are palpable, and barely contained. An older man dressed in yellow who sells cashews took a break for a beer late on Sunday morning, and said he could hardly wait; like many precarious baianos, he is at the end of his rope. The other day, a man who lives on the streets was dressed in a felt hat, rope sandals and an orange jumpsuit with red Lula stickers plastered all over it. In the final days before the general election, Lula is hitting his stride: there is a real chance he will win in the first round.

On 2 July, Bahian Independence Day, both Bolsonaro and Lula held campaign rallies in Salvador. The far-right incumbent addressed supporters at the Farol da Barra, where the Portuguese and the Tupinambá built the city’s first fort at the turn of the fifteenth century, and went from there by motorcycle cavalcade along the shoreline to Boca do Rio. The left-wing challenger appeared at Dois de Julho, a popular market in the city centre, where the Independence Day parade set off for Campo Grande. The floats commemorated Bahia’s tenacious armed resistance to the Portuguese nearly two hundred years ago: enslaved and free people of colour, indigenous people, caboclos and mestiços, as well as planters and slaveowners, and Maria Quitéria, who disguised herself as a man in order to enlist.

Despite the rain, a massive street party to celebrate democracy started in Colombia on Sunday evening and lasted through the night. Though the hangover is likely to be severe, cities erupted with joy and relief. Most final polls, taken a week before yesterday’s election, showed Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández more or less even, but Petro won by 50.44 to 47.3, with 11.28 million votes, nearly three million more than he got in the first round on 29 May. Hernández, who got 10.57 million votes, over five million more than in the first round, conceded immediately and quietly, from his home in Bucaramanga, Santander. President Iván Duque announced he would begin to work with Petro’s team to handover power on 7 August. Petro invited the Colombian people to celebrate their victory.