Career
In 1978 Djalma joined the board of the Steel Worker’s Union with Luis Inácio Lula da Silva then on the road to become an important leader. Together they organized major activities including strikes. These strikes were not seen under favourable light by the military government and the Union main board was jailed for a month in May 1980.
In early 1982 a group of academics, union leaders such as Lula and Djalma, and intellectuals founded the Workers" Party, a left-wing party created during the military dictatorship and, in the upcoming elections in November, Djalma was elected to a seat in Congress in Brasilia.
In 1988, he became the Vice-Mayor of São Bernardo do Campo. He was re-elected in 1994 to the Legislative Assembly in São Paulo Paulo, and retired after this tenure.
Born in Alvares Machado, a small city in the country side of São Paulo, Idalina was the youngest daughter of Spanish farmer Jeronimo Rodrigues (1895–1953) and Santina Mantovani (1896–1974). At the sudden death of her father when she was 13, her mother moved downtown with the two youngest daughters and later to São Paulo.
