Combating the underrepresentation of black people in Brazilian legislatures and forming a parliamentary bench committed to an agenda for the defense of racial justice in the country is the central objective of the Quilombo in Parliaments initiative, launched on Monday (6), in São Paulo.
In a supra-party alliance that involves PT, PSOL, PC do B, PSB, PDT and Rede Sustentabilidade in 19 units of the Federation (Alagoas, Amazonas, Bahia, Ceará, Distrito Federal, Goiás, Minas Gerais, Maranhão, Pará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí , Rio Grande do Norte, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Sergipe and Tocantins), Quilombo in Parliaments is an initiative promoted by the Black Coalition for Rights.
At the launch event, the presence of black pre-candidates was about five times greater than that of black pre-candidates, and, in the qualified and vibrant speeches, the indignation at the lethal violence that plagues the black population was mixed with the certainty that we are living a moment that is a watershed in the history of the country.
The great focus of the approaches in the field of human rights, protection of life, education, work, health and the fight against violence makes this a dangerous agenda in a country that is a champion of violence against human rights defenders.
As Professor Luiz Campos reminds us, we do not have a shortage of black candidacies, since, in the 2018 elections, 46.8% of the candidates for federal deputy declared themselves as black or brown people. The problem, he says, is that these candidacies often don’t get the support they need to run a successful campaign.
“A first barrier is to be able to penetrate the strongest parties. The older, the bigger the party in Brazil, the more closed it is to black candidates,” Campos told the newspaper Nexo, adding that another obstacle is the distribution of resources within the parties. : “It’s not enough to just run for office, you have to show up for the voter. You need a little saint, election time, money to circulate, you need a lot of things”.
One of the challenges of the initiative — as journalist Nicolau Soares points out in a report by the newspaper Brasil de Fato — is to get effective support from party leadership — which can be translated mainly into funding.
The text informs that the study “Racial Inequality in Brazilian Elections”, carried out by Insper, in 2018, revealed that, in the race for the Chamber, the average funding for whites is more than double compared to the average for blacks. When it comes to black women, the revenue is 1/3 of that of whites.
In this sense, the speech made at the event by federal deputy Vicentinho (PT-SP) deserves to be highlighted in the Brasil de Fato report after recalling that it is always more difficult for black candidates to occupy these spaces, even in left-wing parties.
“The progressive parties that are represented here should look at it with much more attention and much more respect. First, we show that it is possible for us to mobilize and be elected. Second, the parties have to give priority because, for themselves, it will be great, an elected black deputy or deputy means a party budget twice as much”, he said, referring to the constitutional amendment nº 111/2021, enacted in September in Congress and which establishes that the votes given to women candidates and to black people will be counted in double for the purpose of distributing the resources of the Party Fund and the Electoral Fund in the elections from 2022 to 2030.
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