In the late 1970s, Lula, Bom and other leaders helped organize major union activities including huge strikes. These strikes were not seen under favorable light by the military government and they were jailed for a month in May 1980. In 1982 a group of academics, union leaders such as Lula and Bom, and intellectuals, founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) or
Workers' Party, a
left-wing party with progressive ideas created in the midst of the military dictatorship. Around this period, Idalina then a shy housewife, emerged as an outspoken and supportive wife helping her husband through good and bad times and also during the campaigns. In the elections of 1982, Bom was elected with 165,000 votes for a seat in Congress in
Brasília and in 1988, he became the Vice-Mayor of São Bernardo do Campo. Though she helped her husband attending social functions and foreign trips (Cuba and Nicaragua in 1984) the couple's relations began deteriorating and they separated in 1989. One of her last appearances before leaving the political arena was during the ceremony in which Bom was to take over the office of Mayor of City for a brief time. He would be elected again in 1994 for the Legislative Assembly in São Paulo and retire after this tenure. After the separation, Idalina decided to pursue her own interests: she furthered her education and received a University degree in 1993 in pedagogy; she taught during sometime and worked with underprivileged children before retiring. Admired and respected by the local people in the city for her work, courage and dignity, mainly during the years of oppression, she no longer took part in political events. She died of cancer. == External links ==