females in general— which made the intended party appear to be vying for mass appeal rather than a core trade unionist base. That was a break with the usual introspection of Brazilian party politics, although Brizola remained attached to the "quintessentially Brazilian" Vargoist tradition. In the late 1970s. the Brazilian military dictatorship was waning; in 1978, passports were quietly given to prominent political exiles but Brizola, alongside a core group of alleged radicals described as "public enemy number one", remained blacklisted and was refused the right of return. In 1979, after a general amnesty, his exile came to an end. Late Brizolismo (1979–1989) Brizola returned to Brazil with the intention of restoring the Brazilian Labour Party as a radical, nationalist, left-wing, mass movement and as a confederacy of historical Getulist leaders. He was hampered in this by the emergence of new grassroots movements, such as the new trade unionism centered around the São Paulo metalworkers and their leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Catholic grassroots organizations of the rural poor spawned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (CNBB). Brizola was denied the right to use the historical name of the Brazilian Labour Party, previously conceded to a rival group centered around a military dictatorship-friendly figure, Congresswoman Ivete Vargas—the grand-niece of Getúlio Vargas. Instead, Brizola founded an entirely new party, the Democratic Labour Party (Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT). The party joined the Socialist International in 1986, and since then the party symbol has been the fist and rose, the emblem of the SI and of a number of its member parties. Brizola quickly restored his political prominence in Rio Grande do Sul and gained political pre-eminence in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where he sought a new basis of political support. Instead of associating himself with the organized working class—either by means of corporatist trade unionism or by vying with Lula and the WP for the support of the new trade unionism—Brizola sought a basis of support among the unorganized urban poor by means of an ideological tie-in between traditional radical nationalism and a charismatic lumpen-friendly populism, in what one scholar called "the aesthetics of the ugly". For his opponents, Brizola and his Brizolismo stood for shady deals with the "dangerous", resentful, "overrebellious" underclasses; for his supporters, they stood for the paternalistic empowerment of the destitute—the lowest, least organized and poorest of the working classes. According to