RIO VERDE, Brazil—Toiling on the dusty plains of central Brazil, Edilamar Caetano and her husband had long been loyal supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , the leftist front-runner in next month’s presidential elections whose own family worked the land as farmhands.
In April, President Jair Bolsonaro , the former army captain who took office four years ago promising fiscal restraint and a smaller state, came to town.
He gave Ms. Caetano and her husband, Wagner Vieira, a title to 84 acres they had been farming as squatters, delivering the paperwork personally with an awkward hug in a local ceremony.