Dilma was also helped by the commodity super-cycle, which filled Brazil’s coffers and made it possible to run ambitious cash-transfer programs that helped pull countless families out of poverty. These policies were actually launched by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Neves’s Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), but are associated in the popular imagination with Dilma’s political mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also of the PT.