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Brasilia, Jul 2 (Prensa Latina) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will announce today a decree making July 2 official as the second commemoration of Brazilian Independence, celebrated in the state of Bahia (northeast), highlighting its historical and popular character.

For the fourth consecutive year, Lula will travel to Salvador, Bahia's capital, to participate in the celebrations for the date commemorating the final expulsion of the Portuguese troops in 1823, which will now be officially recognized as the second date of Independence.

The decree, which will be signed and formally announced during the popular celebration, will consolidate this day in the national calendar as an official commemoration, although without the character of a national holiday.

The proposal had been considered by Lula in 2023, when he expressed his desire to transform July 2 into a date of historical relevance.

At that time, the president pointed out that the true independence was sealed with the victory of the Bahian people and not with the symbolic and so-called Grito do Ipiranga (Cry of Ipiranga) of Pedro I in 1822.

"There is an independence that was the emperor's cry, which we don't even know if he really gave it. But the real independence of Brazil was the result of the expulsion of the last Portuguese, on July 2 in Salvador. There was a struggle there and there were heroic women," Lula declared last year.

The history celebrated on each date in Bahia dates back to a 17-month war that began in 1822, when the local population demanded a definitive break with the Portuguese crown, which still maintained troops in several regions of the country.

The process culminated on July 2, 1823, when the Lusitanians withdrew definitively from Brazilian territory after intense battles, many of them fought by local militias and women fighters, such as Maria Quitéria and Joana Angélica, considered emblematic figures of the emancipation process.

Although independence was proclaimed in September 1822, the Portuguese resistance in Bahia prolonged the conflict. For this reason, many historians consider July 2 as the true closing of the cycle of national independence.

The decree to be announced by Lula gives a new symbolic and political status to the Bahian episode, integrating it into the national narrative on the country's autonomy.

With this initiative, the government seeks to recognize Bahia's protagonism and decentralize the official narrative of history, traditionally focused on the southeast. It also strengthens the president's link with the northeast region, a key bastion of his electoral base.

The first official date of Brazil's Independence is commemorated every September 7, in allusion to the Ipiranga Cry, pronounced in 1822 by the then Prince Regent Dom Pedro, on the banks of the Ipiranga River in Sao Paulo, with the phrase “Independence or death”.