Formed in 1980, the Workers’ Party eschewed strict Marxist dogma and embraced a democratic process for electing its leaders.  Mr. da Silva ran for Congress with the slogan “Land, labor and freedom.”  By the late 1980s, the party’s candidates were winning elections. In 1986, Mr. da Silva was elected to Congress and, two years later, a Workers’ Party candidate won the mayoralty of São Paulo, the country’s largest city. Mr. da Silva then set his sights on the presidency.  Universally referred to by the nickname Lula, he was an unlikely political figure whose unpolished syntax and leftist rhetoric rattled the Brazilian elite. But in 1998, after three unsuccessful bids for president, Mr. da Silva changed his strategy. He traded his T-shirts for tailored suits and jettisoned talk of revolutionary change, saying he would honor the $250 million in foreign debt that was then hobbling the Brazilian economy.  His new slogan: “Lula, Peace and Love.”  In 2002, he harnessed popular anger over runaway inflation and rampant graft to win the presidency by a landslide. The austerity measures he introduced and a growing demand for Brazilian commodities helped right the economy, but he quickly found it necessary to make deals with Brazil’s fractious Congress to pass his ambitious legislative agenda.  For former party stalwarts like Idelber Avelar, the breaking point came when Mr. da Silva began to dole out patronage posts and form alliances with opposition party bosses who did not share the Workers’ Party’s ideals.  “It represented everything that the party had been fighting against,” said Mr. Avelar, an academic who left the party more than a decade ago and now lives in the United States. “There were a number of options, but the early choice was made for the politics of making deals behind closed doors.”  The accommodation with rent-seeking allies nearly brought down Mr. da Silva’s government in 2005, when a vote-buying scheme that paid opposition lawmakers for their loyalty was exposed by the Brazilian news media. Mr. da Silva weathered the scandal and was re-elected in 2006, but he was substantially weakened by the crisis and was forced to enter into even more alliances to maintain his support in Congress.  Apparently unchastened by their brush with scandal, Workers’ Party officials were secretly engaged in a huge kickback scheme with executives at Petrobras, the state-owned energy giant. The arrangement, known as the Lava Jato, or Car Wash, involved skimming off billions of dollars from an oil boom and diverting the money to the Workers’ Party and its coalition partners in Congress.  The scandal, which continues to unfold, has shaken the country’s political establishment, with dozens of business executives and party leaders imprisoned or under investigation.  Some of Mr. da Silva’s closest aides are among the fallen, but he has insisted he was unaware of the arrangement. His once-enviable approval ratings have taken a substantial hit.  Unless he is charged with a crime, many political analysts still expect Mr. da Silva to run for president in two years.  “In Brazilian politics, you can never throw someone under the bus and think they won’t recover,” said Alfred P. Montero, the author of the book “Brazil: Reversal of Fortune” and a professor at Carleton College. “I’ve been watching these guys since the ’80s, and they always seem to come back.”  Experts say that despite its current tribulations, the Workers’ Party, with its 500,000 active members, will remain a potent force in Brazilian politics for years to come. The impeachment crisis, some say, may spur a period of introspection that could help reinvigorate the party.  “The Workers’ Party is heading back to the opposition, which perhaps is just what the doctor ordered,” Mr. Montero said.  For now, the Workers’ Party faithful is engaged in soul-searching. Did the party abandon its ideals in the heady rush of power? Or were its leaders adapting to a deeply flawed, entrenched system?  Lincoln Secco, a professor of contemporary history at the University of São Paulo and an early party member, said Mr. da Silva made a fateful error during his first months in power by not seeking to push through difficult political changes, including an overhaul of a campaign finance system that is heavily reliant on corporate donors.  “If the party doesn’t confront the political system, there is no other way to govern in Brazil than to enter into rotten alliances,” he said. “They chose the easier way.”  Despite the widespread disillusionment, millions of Brazilians still hold great affection for the party, especially those who have benefited from the many social welfare programs put into place during the tenures of Mr. da Silva and Ms. Rousseff. They include a monthly stipend to the nation’s poorest residents and education programs that allowed millions of people to attend college for the first time.  Milton Nunes Sobrinho, 53, a doorman in São Paulo, credits the party with helping him obtain steady work; buy a used car; and move his family out of a rat-infested shack, thanks to a federally subsidized loan program that produced 2.6 million new homeowners over the past decade.  “Everything they promised, they did,” Mr. Sobrinho said. “All the progress we’ve experienced in our lives is because of them.”  Asked about party’s troubles, he shook his head. “It’s all a political game,” he said. “And next time, I’ll definitely be voting for the candidate from the Workers’ Party.”
A vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff has dealt a crippling blow to a party that came to power vowing to represent the masses but became ensnared in corruption scandals.