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The mixed-race daughter of a poor, illiterate family of Amazonian rubber tappers has been chosen as a Brazilian presidential candidate.
Marina Silva, a conservationist and former environment minister, met with members of the Brazilian Socialist party (PSB) in Brasilia who officially approved her as the new candidate. She replaces Eduardo Campos, who died in a plane crash last week. Polls suggest she has the popular support to challenge the president, Dilma Rousseff.
Rousseff, the Workers party candidate who in the 1970s was imprisoned and tortured for her role in a Marxist revolutionary group, remains the favourite. Polls show her in the lead with 38% support for the first-round vote on 5 October.
Until last week, her closest rival with just over 20% was Aécio Neves, the market-oriented head of the Social Democratic party, whose grandfather Tancredo Neves was elected president in 1985 but died before he could take office.
The PSB was in third place until the crash, but according to the latest polls, Silva is now vying for the runner-up spot with 21%. If there is a second round – which now looks almost certain – the two main polling companies put Silva narrowly ahead of the president, though the gap is so small as to be within the margin of error.
Last Wednesday, Silva was the vice-presidential running mate of Campos, a rising political star from the north-east who was in third place with just under 10% of the vote. The two of them planned to fly together from interviews in Rio de Janeiro to a campaign stop in São Paulo. However, Silva had a last-minute change of schedule and was not on the Cessna jet when it crashed into the residential neighbourhood of Santos, killing everyone on board.
The cause of the accident is still being investigated. According to the Brazilian air force, the black box on board the plane did not record the flight details. There has been no suggestion of sabotage. Pilot error and bad weather are thought most likely to blame.
The crash triggered a nationwide wave of mourning for Campos, who was a popular and effective governor of Pernambuco state. About 100,000 people crammed into the centre of the capital, Recife to see his coffin and watch a commemorative mass on Sunday. Among them were Rousseff, Neves and the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but the focus of political attention was on Silva.
Whether the PSB would choose such an uncompromising environmentalist, devoted evangelical Christian and mixed-race woman as the successor to Campos, a Catholic pro-business "third-way" candidate, was the subject of intense speculation.
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