Pride Day: The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

Pride Day: The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

Washington, June 28th, 2019.  On June 28th, millions of people around the world commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Stonewall is considered a historic event for the LGBTI movement in the world, and is named after an event that took place in a gay bar located in New York called Stonewall Inn.

At that time, many North-American states treated homosexual relationships as crimes, and in New York people were forced to wear clothes according to their biological sex. Bars could not even sell drinks to homosexuals or anyone who would challenge cisheterossexuality. Many police raids used to happen in which owners, employees and customers would be arrested.

On June 28th, 1969, police entered the Stonewall Inn bar and began arresting employees and customers. However, instead of simply submitting, on that day the people decided to resist. Customers started throwing coins at the policemen, resisting the very common police raids. Then the revolt intensified and even Molotov cocktails were thrown at the door.

This unexpected reaction of people who were tired of all the repression of that time began a series of protests in the following days. A year later, these people organized the first Pride March. However, by telling this story you can risk making some figures who led those episodes and who were extremely important for the history of the LGBTI movement invisible. This is the case of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.

Silenced Voices: Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson

Sylvia Rivera was one of the emblematic figures in the revolts started at the Stonewall Inn, and is recognized as one of the activists who were in the front line of the riots, being essential to the agitation and mobilization of the protesters.

Sylvia was born in 1951 in New York. She was poor, Latina and a sex worker. Her parents were two immigrants from Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and she suffered abuses by the police all her life. She was abandoned by her father in the first years of her life and her mother committed suicide when Sylvia was only 3 years old. She started living on the streets when she was 11 years old.

Sylvia was a close friend of Marsha P. Johnson: black, transgender, poor and a sex worker. Born in New Jersey in 1945, she arrived in New York at the end of the 60s. Although very little is known about her childhood, it is known that Marsha was a great political activist: she would shout in the streets, mobilize marches, give interviews and just like Sylvia, she would be constantly criminalized.

Both Rivera and Johnson were at the front line of the Stonewall resistance processes, but they were more than that. A year after the Rebellion, Johnson and Rivera founded the organization Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), which provided shelter, food and clothing for some 50 trans people living on the street in conditions of poverty. Marsha and Sylvia supported this project with the money from their own sex work. However, in an interview in 1989, Rivera says that when she and Marsha asked for help from other organizations in the community made up of teachers and lawyers (white and upper middle class) that could help with some resources, those people turned their backs. There was nobody to help them.

In fact, as the LBGTI movement would grow, mostly gay men, usually white, would assume leadership and ostracize trans people like Johnson and Rivera, because they believed that figures like them, with all their unusual clothes, on the one hand, could bring them more disrespect to the community and, on the other hand, would make difficult the argument that there was no difference between gays, lesbians and heterosexuals.

The apex of the tension was in the March of 1973, when Rivera was booed while she reminded that, were it not for the drag queens, there would be no gay liberation movement and that they were the front line of the resistance.

For an intersectional pride

The story of the involvement of people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in the Stonewall Riots highlights how the LGBTI community cannot be seen in a homogeneous way, as if all experiences were the same and, above all, as if rights reach the LGBTI population in the same way once achieved.  They don’t. More than that, this story explores the limits of alliances inside the LGBTI community, which cannot use trans people only as a bridge to conquer rights or status.

Besides that, Marsha and Sylvia embody intersectionality in their lives, evidencing the importance of considering several social markers to think about the processes of constructing identities, such as race, class, nationality, ethnicity, identity and expression gender, sexual orientation, among other axes of oppression.

Johnson and Rivera give us the opportunity to reflect that, rather than just including, for example, references to gender in race debates and vice versa, intersectionality should be a tool to make a commitment to experiences, knowledge, struggles and agendas policies that emerge from the resistance to the various axes of domination and oppression. This is even for evident for those who are in the lower spheres of recognition of humanity – as was the case of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and continues to be the case of so many black and Latin trans persons, who continue to figure as the victims of many human rights violations.

In these 50 years of the Stonewall Riots, Race and Equality wants to renew our commitment to the resistance of people whose lives are marked by oppression based on their race, identity or gender expression, sexual orientation, class or nationality, and we take this opportunity to invite the entire LGBTI community to engage in a struggle for equality that does not close its eyes to those who do not enjoy white, gender, male and class privileges or any conditions that allow them to experiment a humanity that is not experienced by all. The struggle for equality cannot leave behind those who need it the most.

Eighteen LGBTI people were murdered in Brazil in May

Violence against LGBTI people in Brazil continues to take lives, confirming the serious lgbt-phobic context in Brazilian society. In May, the media in Brazil reported at least eighteen murders of LGBTI people: fourteen transsexual women and travestis[1],  three lesbian women, and one gay man.

In general, the murders maintain the cruel characteristics of manifestations of hate for LGBTI lives described in the Briefing on Murders and Violence against Transsexuals and Travestis in Brazil in 2018, prepared by the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA): a high number of stabbings, shots, burned bodies, etc.

In Salvador, Bahia, a lesbian couple were stabbed to death by a neighbor who had previoulsy expressed aggresion against them. According to the Dossier on lesbian behavior in Brazil, lesbocide exists as an integral part of patriarchy, since lesbians are considered women who do not submit to the heterosexual norms that allow male domination over heterosexual women.

In Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, on May 12th, a travesti who was not identified was stabbed to death at least 15 times on the back, head, shoulder, and neck.

In the city of Bacabal, in Maranhão, the travesti Melissa, 33, was also stabbed to death and had her hand cut off. When she was found, her hand was over her mouth, in order to symbolize that she was talking too much.

On the 30th, the body of oldest travesti from the town of Seabra, in Bahia, was found burned inside her house. Although her age was uncertain, she was known to be between 70 and 80 years old.

Despite this grim state of affairs, May was also the month in which the death of a transsexual woman was registered as a feminicide for the first time, by the police of the state of São Paulo. The case occurred in February, when the trans woman, Raiane Marques, 36, was murdered on the coast of the state after a discussion with a man she met the night before.

For Bruna Benevides, Secretary of the Political Coordinating Body of the National Association of Transsexuals of Brazil (ANTRA, for its initials in Portuguese), the designation of the murder as feminicide symbolizes the struggle for the recognition of their feminine identity that the Brazilian trasvesti and transsexual population is fighting for on a daily basis.

Ms. Benevides recalls that when the law of feminicide was negotiated in the National Congress, there was a debate in order to remove the expression “gender identity” so that the law would not protect trans people. The trans activist is disappointed that the recognition of the gender identities of trans women is late and occurs after such a barbaric act of violence:

“We see that the advances and set-backs of our discussions are having an effect and transforming society’s view of our population. It’s a pity that this happened late, and in response to deadly violence.”

Race and Equality will continue its struggle for equality and calls on the Brazilian State to investigate the killings of LGBTI people and to guarantee a decent life for this population.

[1] Travesti is a gender identity that exists in some Latin American countries such as Brazil that describes people assigned male at birth who take on a feminine gender role and gender expression, sometimes through the use of feminizing body modifications such as hormone replacement therapy, breast implants, and silicone injections.

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About the autor:

Isaac Porto – LGBTI Consultant for Race and Equality in Brazil

Seven Cases of Violence against LGBTI Persons Were Reported in Brazil at the End of April

The alarming numbers of cases of homicides, persecutions, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTI people in Brazil expose the obvious social and political crisis that makes it impossible to guarantee and protect the fundamental rights of historically disadvantaged and unrecognized social groups. From April 18-25, at least five (5) homicides of LGBTI persons occurred in Brazil, in addition to two assassination attempts, all of which were carried out with visible brutality.

Among these cases, at least four of them were of trans women, or travestis. Travesti is a gender identity that exists is some Latin American countries, like Brazil, and that describes people assigned male at birth who take on a feminine gender role and gender expression, sometimes through the use of feminizing body modifications such as hormone replacement therapy, breast implants, and silicone injections.

On April 18, the body of a travesti was found with marks of violence in Fortaleza, capital of Ceará. The police could not identify the victim.

On April 19, a travesti was shot in Foz do Iguaçu, in the state of Paraná. Through a video, it is evident that she had to walk in the street to get help at the Mobile Emergency Response Service (SAMU). She was shot by two men who were on a motorcycle. The men ran away soon after.

On April 21, a person named Bruneide was also shot in the city of Porto Velho, in Rondônia, by two men on a motorcycle. After the shots, both of them ran away. From the news reports, it is not clear how Bruneide self-identified.

Also on April 21, the travesti Rayssa was murdered in Caucaia, Ceará. The shots were discharged by two men and one of them hit her in the head. Rayssa died as a result of her wounds.

On the same day, the body of Antonio Marcos Joventino da Silva, a gay man, was found in the city of Camutanga, in Pernambuco. There were signs of stabbing and torture. Witnesses told police he had been involved in a bar fight the night before.

On April 24, Ari Ribeiro da Silva, an LGBTI activist, was stabbed to death in the city of Parauapebas, Pará. According to witnesses, Ari was seen in a bar accompanied by a man. They left the bar going toward the victim’s beauty salon, where the body was found. The suspect was arrested.

On April 25, the hairdresser John Steven Serna was found dead inside his house in Manaus, Amazonas. The victim was possibly struck by a knife in the chest and in the neck. The police reported that the objects of the residence were overturned and the body was in a room covered with sheets, with hands tied.

In the same week that all these attacks occurred to LGBTI individuals, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro made a sexist and lgbtphobic speech in which he state that “Brazil cannot be a country of the gay world, gay tourism. We have families.” And, “whoever wants to come here to have sex with a woman, feel free.” The statement can be added to the president’s usual statements that encourage and approve violations of the rights of women, young people, Afro-descendants, and LGBTI persons.

The International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights calls upon the Brazilian State to commit itself to creating a healthy environment for LGBTI people, as well as carrying out investigations so that this community can live without the constant threat of violence. Brazil is internationally obligated to guarantee the fundamental rights to life and personal integrity of LGBTI individuals.

Sete casos de violência a LGBTI foram reportados no Brasil la última semana de Abril

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About the autor:

Isaac Porto – LGBTI Consultant for Race and Equality in Brazil

What does Jair Bolsonaro’s defense of the Brazilian military dictatorship mean to the Afro LGBTI+ community?

Brazil – April 29, 2019.  The month of April was marked by several protests and political activities in Brazil against the country’s former military dictatorship. These protests occurred because the 55th anniversary of the coup that established a dictatorship in the country, from 1964 to 1985, was in April 2019.

These protests were motivated because Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil, had determined that the Ministry of Defense would honor the 55th anniversary of the coup. In 2011, the former President Dilma Rousseff had forbidden the Army to make commemorations on that date.

In fact,this is the first time since the re-democratization of Brazil that a president has publicly and openly defended the military dictatorship. On the day of the impeachment vote against Dilma, Bolsonaro declared that his vote was in honor of Carlos Brilhante Ustra, known in Brazil as the greatest torturer under the military dictatorship.

Many efforts were made to erase the political censorship and torture to which people who organized to oppose the military regime were subjected from Brazilian memory. However, little is discussed about what kind of relationship the Brazilian dictatorship had with the LGBTI + population – especially with Black LGBTI+ persons. Thus, it is essential to ask what the effects of the authoritarianism of the military dictatorship on the LGBTI + black community were, and to what extent the regime created and deepened the violent way in which the Brazilian State treats these lives today.

Violence against LGBTI+ persons in the Brazilian dictatorship

In 2012, a National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade) was installed in Brazil, with the objective of bringing the human rights violations carried out by agents of the State in repressing all those who were considered opponents of the regime out of hiding, as well as to push the State to assume responsibility for these violations. In 2014, this Commission published a report which sought to publicize the violations that have occurred against LGBTI+ persons.

The attempt to tell an untold story of a dictatorship that tried to erase its tracks makes it extremely difficult to assess the extent of this violence, especially when it comes to the LGBTI+ Afro community. However, efforts must be made to overcome the scarcity of official records.

It is important to note that, in the military regime’s view, there was no distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity. All LGBTI+ persons were considered “homosexuals” and were seen as a homogeneous mass. This is another difficulty, because the official records themselves treated those who identified themselves as trans persons or “travestis” as homosexuals, for example. Travesti is a gender identity that exists in some Latin American countries like Brazil that describes people assigned male at birth who take on a feminine gender role and gender expression, sometimes through the use of feminizing body modifications such as hormone replacement therapy, breast implants, and silicone injections.

As the National Truth Commission report points out, there has not been a formalized state policy to exterminate the LGBTI+ population nor to criminalize these persons. However, the ideology that justified the coup and the disenfranchisement of democratic rights and other kinds of violence was permeated by conservative values and an lgbt-phobic perspective, which considered sexual diversity and diverse gender identity to be subversive. This association of LGBTI+ with subversion was used to justify the repression that were perpetrated against them. Therefore, it was possible to see the growth of a vision of the State that saw LGBTI+ as harmful, dangerous as well as contrary to family, morality and good manners. This legitimized violence against this population.

The National Association of Travestis and Trans Persons (ANTRA, for its initials in Portuguese) confirms that trans women, homosexuals, and other people seen as “perverted” were subjected to persecution, arbitrary detention, layoffs, censorship, murder, and other forms of violence because they were seen as undesirable people.

In São Paulo, for example, the Joint Ordinance nº 390/76 authorized the arrest of those who identified themselves as “travestis” that were found in the central region of the city for interrogations, determining that the police records of the travestis should contain “pictures of the perverts, so that the judges can assess their degree of dangerousness.”

In 1987, in the transition between the military regime and democracy, São Paulo was also the scene of a police operation that became known as “Operation Tarantula.” This operation sought to arrest the travestis in the main prostitution points of the city. It was presented as an effort by the police to reduce the number of cases of AIDS. More than 300 travestis were detained.

São Paulo is an example of how the military government adopted persecution techniques, with special attention to travestis, in order to sanitize the public space through their extermination, considering them as dangerous in the most diverse senses.

Given the violence against them, travestis had to find strategies to survive. The black travesti Weluma Brum said that she was once stopped by the police while she was a prostitute in Rio de Janeiro. Four policemen beat her, gave her electric shocks, and then forced her to have oral sex with them. Later, she discovered a common strategy among travestis to avoid arbitrary arrests: “We cut ourselves with razor, so the cops would not arrest us, look, I still have scars.

The travesti Thina Rodrigues, from the city of Fortaleza, capital of Ceará, says she was arrested for being a travesti and would always hide herself, not expressing her gender identity in order to prevent to be arrested again: “At the time, the Secretary of Public Security said that Fortaleza should clean its dirt. In the eyes of society, homosexuals, travestis, lesbians, prostitutes, and homeless people were all delinquents who damaged the image of Fortaleza and had to be taken from Duque de Caxias, Fortaleza downtown.”

Black travestis suffered more physical aggressions according to referred by Marcelly Malta “it was common for them to simply disappear after being approached by police officers”.

According to the sexologist Armando Januário, many of them were tortured, taken to beaches where they were thrown in the sea, or had their belongings taken by the police and were only released if they used man’s clothing. This meant that many of them were detained only because their existence defied the norm of gender: a norm that is cis, heterosexual, masculine, and white.

In addition to the Black population, the indigenous population was also severely affected. During the dictatorship, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI, for its initials in Portuguese) maintained two detention centers for indigenous persons considered to be “offenders” in Minas Gerais.  More than 100 persons of different ethnic groups were taken to these centers. The detention centers were known as the Krenak Reformatory and the Guarani Farm. There are a large number of allegations of human rights violations in both places, such as the widespread practice of torture. Some documents mention the use of “inappropriate sexual relations” and “pederasty” as the reasons for the arrests, as well as drugs, prostitution, and vagrancy, among others.

Moreover, the Black intellectual Lélia Gonzalez said that systematic police repression imposed a psychological submission through fear, intending to prevent any form of unity and organization of the group that suffered repression.  Any and all means that could perpetuate internal division within the LGBTI community were used. This generalized repression contributed to the fact that an organized political movement among the LGBTI+ population only began  to exist in the late 1970s, because there was a repression aimed at preventing LGBTI+ persons from organizing.

What remains today

Although it is extremely important give visibility to the violence and the strategies of survival during the period of the military dictatorship, thinking about their effects  on the Afro LGBTI+ population is not enough. It is not enough to ask what happened to this population during that period and to identify what kind of specific violence was perpetrated against them. It is essential to investigate the legacy of the military dictatorship and its effects on how Brazilian State currently deals with the lives of black LGBTI + persons. In other words, it is necessary to determine what remains of this authoritarianism.

Currently, Brazilian police are extremely violent towards LGBTI+ people. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to hear reports, especially from Black LGBTI+ people, who have been physically attacked by police officers or have been mocked by them. To this day, the police control who has the right to be on the street, especially trans women and travestis.

Sexual repression and repression committed by the police that was common during the military dictatorship still exists today. The fact that there has been no break with this way of dealing with LGBTI + persons in Brazil helps to explain how the growth of a powerful conservative movement in the country in recent years has been possible. Additionally, it helps to explain why Brazil is such a dangerous place for these people.

When Jair Bolsonaro, supported by several Brazilians, calls for the military coup to be celebrated and denies that there was a dictatorship in Brazil, he denies the possibility of breaking with a past that has perpetuated hierarchies that determine that gay, lesbian, bisexual, travestis, trans persons and other sexual dissidents  are in positions of political and social disadvantage to this day. This is especially true for Black LGBTI+ persons. More than that, it is celebrated and demanded that the State has the right to exterminate lives considered as undesirable.

We must be on alert for the increasing attempts to attack LGBTI+ lives. We can not tolerate the State celebrating torture and political persecution. Knowing the past and breaking with what remains is fundamental to create possibilities of a dignified existence for the Afro LGBTI+ population in Brazil.

 

O que significa para a população afro LGBTI+ a defesa que Jair Bolsonaro faz da ditadura militar brasileira?

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About the autor:

Isaac Porto – LGBTI Consultant for Race and Equality in Brazil

Seven murders of LGBTI + persons in Brazil in the last two weeks

In the last two weeks, from April 6th until April 19th, there were at least seven LGBTI + deaths in Brazil. Among the seven deaths, six of them were trans people. The first of these occurred on April 7th: a trans person´s body was found charred  in Franca, a city in the state of São Paulo. There was no news in the media about this murder, which was only discovered by the National Association of Transsexuals of Brazil (ANTRA) because local informants passed on information about the case.

On April 9th, the trans woman Marqueza, 51, was shot dead in her home in the city of Campina Grande, Paraiba, while she was asleep. Media reports on the case identified the trans person as a homosexual man and referred to her with the name she was registered with at birth and not the name she identified with.

On April 12th, a 38-year-old cross-dresser was stabbed to death by a man she was talking to outside a bar in the town of Sapezal, Mato Grosso. According to witnesses, she had been beaten before she was murdered. The news treated her as a male and referred to her only by the name she was registered with at birth.

On the same day, in the city of Boa Vista, in Roraima, the trans woman Sandrielly Vasconcelos, 24, was found dead with her hands and feet tied, a deep cut on her neck, and part of her back burned, which shows that Sandrielly was tortured before she was murdered.

On April 13th, the trans woman Sabrina was shot dead in João Pessoa, Paraíba. Residents of the area called the police when they heard the shots, but Sabrina had already died.

On the same day, Alessandro Fraga, a 33-year-old gay man, was found dead 100 meters from his car in the city of Lauro de Freitas. His body was found with gunshot wounds, strangulation marks, and bruises on the head. Alex, as he was known, was former the president and founder of the Gay Group of Lauro de Feitas and also worked coordinating the Center for Testing and Counseling, advocating for patients to receive counseling and diagnosis of infections such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, and syphilis.

On March 17, the trans woman Eliana Pascolar was murdered in Rio de Janeiro downtown. Her body was found tied to a tree, with marks of physical aggressions.

These deaths are a picture of the grave situation facing LGBTI + people in Brazil: extremely violent deaths accompanied by torture, with reporting in the media that does not respect the gender identity of the victims. According to the Dossier of Assassinations and Violence against Cross-Dressers and Transexuals in Brazil in 2018, almost 40% of the reports of murders of trans people did not respect the gender identity of the victim, which reveals that trans people have their stories deleted, their names ignored, and their gender identities contested even after their deaths.

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Race and Equality is committed to its struggle for equality and calls on the Brazilian State to ensure that all people can express their sexual orientation and gender identity freely in Brazil without the context of violence and threats to which they are currently subjected, as well to seriously investigate the deaths of all LGBTI + persons that occur in an intense way in the country.

Sete assassinatos de LGBTI+ no Brasil nas duas últimas semanas

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Sobre el Autor:
Isaac Porto – Consultar LGBTI para Raza e Igualdad en Brasil

Race and Equality Recognizing the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Message from Carlos Quesada – Executive Director Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights

Today, March 21st, we again commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In observing what is happening in the world and in our continent, I can only think about how discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and intolerance are gaining ground. They are highly present in the media, in politics, in our societies and in our daily lives. Fighting for the elimination of all forms of discrimination, xenophobia, homophobia, and intolerance is one of the fundamental pillars to promote social cohesion, the right to live, and diversity.

I want to call attention to the fact that in our continent, only three countries have ratified the Inter-American Convention Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Related Intolerance: Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Antigua and Barbuda. It is imperative that the rest of the States in the region truly assume the commitment to combat, punish, and eliminate this scourge that eats away at our societies. We urge States to sign and ratify this important Inter-American instrument, especially as a part of the Action Plans they should develop during the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015 – 2024).

We cannot allow Afro-descendants in the Americas to continue being the most marginalized populations and the most affected by the structural racism that is reflected in few state investments, high rates of illiteracy, under-representation in decision-making bodies, and under-representation within the system of administration of justice. Young Afro-descendants continue to be victims of racial profiling and police brutality. Afro-descendant women continue to have little access to health and education, which perpetuates high levels of poverty.

States are preparing to begin a new census round (2020) where we hope not only to have quanitifiable data on how many Afro-descendants there are, but also on the socioeconomic conditions of these populations. States must use this data to make a better use of their resources and invest in the most impoverished areas, which coincide with the areas in which Afro-descendants live.

In this second decade of the 21st century, it has become clear that Afro-descendants, thanks to their resilience, expect more than good intentions: they expect real structural changes. More Afro-descendant academics, politicians, professionals, and businesspeople have demonstrated not only the contributions they have made to their countries, but also that they are part of, have built, and will continue to build the identities of the countries where they live, from Canada to Argentina. This is true whether they are called black, African-Americans, Afro-latinos, palenqueros, raizales, o pretos!

From Race and Equality, we will continue to make visible, combat, and denounce the scourge of racial discrimination and other related forms of intolerance together with our partners in the hemisphere, who with their experience and struggle have made progress at both the national and international level.

Two LGBTI+ people were murdered in Brazil this week

Por:  Isaac Porto – Consultor LGBTI de Race & Equality para Brasil

Brazil registered the deaths of at least two LGBTI+ people in the same week as the 1-year anniversary of the politically-inclined murder of Marielle Franco, an Afrodescendant bisexual woman and human rights activist who was raised in the Favela da Maré and worked as a councilwoman in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The killed individuals were Fabio Silva, a 34-year old gay student whose body was burned and found alongside his motorcycle last Sunday in the city of São Félix do Xingu, and a 21-year old Trans woman named Pâmela, who was shot 3 times in the head in Santa Luzia do Pará. Both cases took place in inner cities, making it very difficult to obtain specific information on the circumstances of the crimes. According to data from Grupo Gay da Bahia (Gay Group of Bahia), Pará was the State with the 7th highest number of reported LGBTI+ deaths in 2018.

The two deaths, besides being of individuals identified as LGBTI also share in common a high degree of violence employed. The report, “Killings and Violence Against Transgender and Transsexual People in Brazil in 2018”, prepared by the Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais do Brasil (ANTRA) and the Instituto Brasileiro Trans de Educação (IBTE) details how the deaths of LGBTI people are marked by high numbers of shootings, burnings, and torture practices, thus confirming the hate towards LGBTI+ people still existing in Brazil.

According to Janaina Oliveira, Coordinator of the Rede Afro LGBT (Afro LGBT Network), attacks against LGBTI+ people have been even more violent in Brazil in the past years. She believes that, in addition to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, hate speech has increasingly encouraged criminal acts to occur with more brutality. To make matters worse, a lingering sense of impunity encourages violent acts, so much that crimes such as threats, assaults, rape, dismemberment and burning people are read as naturalized processes. Janaina also notes how much President Bolsonaro’s rhetoric legitimizes violence to LGBTI:

“A President who begins his administration by saying that politically correctness will no longer exist in Brazil is stimulating and contributing to the violence. We live a time in which the country is led by conservative sectors, which in the name of “morality and good manners” forget the fundamentals; Guaranteeing every Brazilian citizen’s right to life. And when it comes to protecting lives, the LGBT population also needs to be protected”.

In a country that records the highest number of killings of Trans people in the world, the priority should not be so much as to just identify the motives of the killers, but rather to which extent are the lives of LGBTI+ people in Brazil marked by a context of extreme violence, and whether or not the Brazilian State guarantees the lives of these people, and under which conditions. The biggest challenge for LGBTI+ people is to simply stay alive.

The International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality) will continue to fight for equality and calls on the Brazilian State to investigate the deaths of LGBTI+ people in the country and, above all, to ensure that all people can freely express their sexual orientation and gender identity in Brazil.

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March 14th: One year anniversary of Marielle Franco’s assassination

Brazil, March 14 2019.  Exactly one year ago today, on March 14, 2018, Marielle Franco, a city councilwoman from Rio de Janeiro, was murdered. Woman, black, bisexual, and raised in Favela da Maré, her presence challenged and frightened a political system that has always been white, masculine, and heteronormative. For this reason, she was the expression of everything that the extremely conservative wave that has grown in Brazil during the past years wants to destroy.

Ms. Franco who was 38 years old and was killed with four shots in her head, ran for the election for the first time in the 2016, when she was the fifth-most voted for candidate for the City Council in Rio de Janeiro, with 46.502 votes. Her murder took place in her car, just a few minutes after she had participated in a talk group called “Black Young Women: Moving Structures” at Casa das Pretas (Black Women’s House), a collective space for black women in Rio de Janeiro downtown. Anderson Gomes, Marielle’s driver that was with her, was also killed that night.

Before being a councilwoman, Marielle was the coordinator of the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights and Citizenship of the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro. In this role, she provided legal and psychological support to family members of homicide victims and police officers who were killed or injured on duty.

In the year of her death, Rio de Janeiro was under federal military intervention, which was justified as necessary to contain urban violence. Marielle warned that the intervention would mean spreading violence on the bodies of the people who lived in the favelas. She  made City Council a stage for denouncing the deaths of black youth in the favelas. A day before her death, as she denounced a homicide committed by the Rio de Janeiro Military Police against a young black man, she asked: “How many more people must die for this war to end?”

The Brazilian Committee of Human Rights Defenders has considered Marielle’s murder as the most evident expression of the violence that seeks to silence and intimidate those who defend human rights in Brazil. In fact, her death reveals not only the intimidating environment for human rights defenders, but it also expresses the political disengagement of the Brazilian State towards the black, women, and LGBTI + lives, as confirmed by the brutality with which Marielle Franco, who had little more than one year as a councilwoman, was assassinated.

This week, one year after her death, two people were arrested: a retired sergeant and a former police officer. The authorities say that there it took them three months to plan her murder and that Marielle was executed for her political convictions, that is, for daring to occupy a political space that has never been committed to the lives of black, poor, LGBTI+ people and to report the violence perpetrated against these lives. Although the arrests constitute an important step, the main question remains unanswered: Who ordered Marielle Franco’s murder? Why?

If the assassination of Marielle was an attempt to silence the voice of those who, like her, fight for freedom and equality for all the people who suffer due to the multiple consequences of racism, machismo and lgbtphobia, this attempt has failed. As the Mexican proverb says: “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”

The Interantional Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality) believes that today, one year after  her death, Marielle Franco’s struggle for freedom and equality continues to flourish. We join all those who want to build a world in which LGBTI+, black people, and women can live in dignity and prosper.

Race and Equality calls on the Brazilian State to continue advancing in the criminal investigation of Marielle’s murder, in order to prosecute not only the material perpetrators of the crime, but also the intellectual authors of the crime. Authorities must also establish the motives and interests served behind the homicide. We also request the Brazilian State to adopt measures that will make it possible to compensate the effect that this homicide had on the voices of the most excluded and violated communities of the country.

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International Women’s Day: WE ARE WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE AND ALL OF US ARE DIVERSE!

On March 8, 2019, in commemoration of International Women’s Day, the International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights (Race & Equality) remembers and stands with the struggle of all women throughout the world for recognition and guarantees of their rights.

Despite the many efforts and clear progress made in the area of rights to improve the state of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially as regards the closure of gender gaps, and guarantee women’s real and effective access to health, education, employment, and political and economic participation, the huge challenge remains of overcoming the inequities that persist in virtually all spheres, particularly  when dealing with women who are racialized, ethnic, rural, or have diverse gender identities.

According to the data provided by Michelle Bachelet, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in an article entitled The State of Women in Latin America: 25 Years of Light and Shadows, 9,300 women die every year from causes related to pregnancy and their deficient gynecological-obstetric practices.  For every 100 men who live in poverty, 118 women live in a similar state, a figure that accounts for a systematic increase in poverty among women in the region since 1997 and up to the present day.

Despite the fact that women’s participation in the labor market has made notable strides, women continue to be a minority presence, marked by a series of “micro-aggressions” related to gender parity, the reason for which, according to CEPAL, women’s participation in the labor market has stalled at around 53%, and the 78.1% of women who work are in sectors defined by CEPAL as having low productivity, entailing worse remuneration, low social security coverage, and less contact with technology and innovation.

As regards women’s political participation, the challenge remains to increasing the presence of women in spaces of power to thereby transform the patriarchal structures that make it impossible for women to have a presence in governments, the management of public and private businesses, and in the development of laws.  “As long as we are not allowed to be decision-makers [or] participate in spaces of power, the possibility of leveling the playing field and building our societies under equal conditions will be a utopia,” notes the chief.  

In the area of gender-based violence, Latin America and the Caribbean continue to present the highest rate of assaults against women, ranked 14 among the 25 countries with the highest indices of femicide in the world.  Approximately 2,100 women are assassinated every year (six per day and 175 every month) for the simple fact of being women, according to what Bachelet indicated.

The foregoing provides a quick glance at the state of women’s rights in the region; nonetheless, a series of factors that run contrary to them have cross-cut the recognition of women’s diversity and the particularity of their conditions vis-à-vis the enforceability of rights; that is, rural women, Afro-descendant women, and those with diverse sexual and gender identities additionally confront other types of violence that we should make visible on this day.

According to the CEPAL report Afro-Descendant Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: Debts of Equality, the ‘visibilization’ of the historic presence of Afro-descendant women demands recognition of their concrete experience as women who live within a historical, social, and cultural context of slave-owning and racist societies.  Contexts, therefore, that deepen the inequities faced by Afro-descendant women as compared with other social groups, due to their ‘invisibilization’ as subjects of differentiated policies with particular impacts and thus, worrisome indices of poverty, little possibility to access healthcare, education, employment, and participation in decision-making spaces much lower that that of the rest of the population, further undermined by racist and discriminatory logic that is a product of the historical legacy manifested in the ways in which Afro-descendant peoples develop in society.

Something similar occurs with lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex women who throughout history have confronted physical and symbolic violence incorporated into the social group that makes it impossible for their sexual and gender identities to be recognized and thus, have their fundamental rights guaranteed.

According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA), persons who self-identify as having an identity that differs from cisgender (socially concordant with the sex assigned at birth) or are socially recognized [as such], suffer from innumerable human rights violations.  In particular, in Latin America women are the recipients of a series of violent acts on the part of male chauvinists who stigmatize and/or pigeonhole them in roles in which they are not allowed to freely express themselves and recognize their identity.  It is thus that on average, the life expectancy of trans women is no greater than 30 years; their participation in the labor market lags behind, a high percentage of them work in the informal sector or as sexual workers, and they confront violent and complex processes for accessing health [and] education services and participating in spaces of decision-making and power.

We at Race & Equality call on all of the States of Latin America and the Caribbean to continue working to ensure guarantees and recognition of women’s rights.  Unquestionably, empowered women break the cycles of violence and poverty, decisive factors in making progress in consolidating societies that are more equitable and democratic.  To ensure that result, it is essential to continue working to break historically rooted patriarchal schemas, especially as they relate to women’s participation in decision-making spaces.

We urge the States to not lose sight of plurality and diversity in the construction of what it means to be a woman, in which it is essential to undertake affirmative actions that recognize Afro-descendant [and] rural women and women with diverse sexual and gender identities, in this way breaking the barriers that historically have systematically prevented the inclusion and participation of this group of women in social life and ensured that their future generations were subject to the same vicious cycle of inequality, racism, and discrimination.

COMMUNIQUÉ: We reject discriminatory and arbitrary acts on the part of the Santa Domingo airport authorities committed against Afro-LGBT leader

The International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights (Race & Equality) rejects the discriminatory treatment of an Afro-Peruvian trans leader by airport authorities in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Yesterday, February 10, human rights activist and Afro transgender leader Belén Zapata of the organization Ashanti Perú was the victim of irregular and discriminatory treatment on the part of airport authorities who arbitrarily withheld the activist’s passport due to her ethnic-racial identity and gender identity.

Belén, who was to participate in the Second Afro-LGBTI Encounter organized by Race & Equality, cleared the regular immigration controls of the Las Américas Airport in Santo Domingo and then proceeded, along with all the other passengers, to customs control in order to leave the airport.  However, when she presented the required documentation and began to exit, she was intercepted by an employee of the airport who did not identify himself by name or the entity to which he belonged.  From the testimony provided by Belén, it was possible at a glance to determine that he was a police official.

During the supposed “regular” protocol, according to what the police indicated to Belén, he withheld her passport for more than 40 minutes while she was forced to wait against a wall near the airport exit.  Although the Afro-Peruvian leader repeatedly requested information regarding the process that was being carried out, she never received an answer.  Belén’s passport records her legal masculine name; nonetheless, her gender identity is feminine, the reason for which on trips abroad she has suffered through these types of arbitrary airport controls with no legal justification.

“The police spoke to me using the masculine linguistic forms, but I corrected him and told him I was a woman, as he could see,” declared Belén in her denunciation.

During her time waiting at the airport exit, Belén was exposed to between 40 and 60 minutes of treatment that violated her rights to freedom of movement and to be informed regarding the processes being carrying out.  This type of violence, although it appears to be minor, is oftentimes the daily reality of trans women in general and even more so that of Afro-trans women in Peru, the Dominican Republic, and in general throughout Latin America.  Trans women are victims of the arbitrary exercise [of power] by public authorities who make them out to be criminal subjects and restrict their rights, in this case the right to freedom of movement, with no legal justification.

According to Belén’s account, after the wait, she was taken by the airport employee, along with another group of people, most of whom were Afro-descendants, to a drug-identification scanner.  Afterward, she was authorized to leave the airport without being notified at any point of the reasons or reasoning behind said protocol.

The International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights, Ashanti Perú-Red Peruana de Jóvenes Afrodescendientes [Peruvian Network of Afro-descendant Youth], and Trans Siempre Amigas [Trans Always Friends] (TRANSSA) call on Aeropuertos Dominicanos Siglo XXI [Century XXI Dominican Airports] (Aerodom), the Cuerpo Especializado en Seguridad Aeroportuaria y de la Aviación Civil [Specialized Airport Security and Civil Aviation Corps] (CESAC), and the Dirección Nacional de Control de Drogas [National Directorate for Drug Control] (DNCD) with operations in the Las Américas Aiport in Santo Domingo to investigate these incidents, issue a statement about them, publicly ask for forgiveness from the young woman who was affected, and initiate training processes for its employees on respecting Afro-trans persons.

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