Groups help Brazilian LGBTQIA+ community in Portugal

by

Nanny Aguiar sought in Lisbon the security that Bolsonaro’s “reign” took away from her. It is when he plays the violin or performs at Palácio do Grilo, in Xabregas, that he brings back everything he felt that night in October 2018. The night he turned off the lights at home, lit candles and made the decision to leave Brazil and leave for behind Recife, the city where he was born 30 years ago, and live in Lisbon.

That night, Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential elections. The life of Nanny and the Brazilian LGBTQIA+ community was never the same.

Despite living in the extreme west of the capital of Pernambuco, Nanny Aguiar never took her electoral college away from her mother’s house, in the extreme south of Recife. “It was an excuse to spend another Sunday with her,” he says, laughing. “That day, I voted, had lunch with my mother and only came home at night.”

It was on the return journey, by car, that disappointment took hold. Sitting in the Palácio de Alvorada, the president’s official residence in Brasilia, was a man who made statements such as “having a gay child is a lack of beating” or “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual child. I prefer that my child dies in an accident.” .

Nanny realized that things were going to change. They were already changing. The area where she lived is one of the biggest neighborhoods of the trans community in Recife. Nearby, a square served as a community meeting point, where even transvestite contests were held. That night, the usual revelry, color, and togetherness gave way to morbid silence.

All over the city, fireworks were launched and shots could be heard. In a sinister atmosphere, shouts of “Bolsonaro will kill deer” were heard. “I was afraid,” says Nanny. At home, “I turned off the lights, remained silent, lit some candles to reflect and it was on that night that I decided to leave Brazil”.

After finishing her music course, Nanny had been outlining a profile of LGBQTIA+ students and teachers at the school for months and was serving as her final thesis, but she was encouraged by the university itself to change the subject. “The collegiate told me that, given the escalation of homophobic violence, stimulated by Bolsonaro’s victory, they would not guarantee protection to anyone I interviewed.”

“They opened an exception regime and I wrote a new work on teaching the violin. I felt censored”, she recalls.

The worst was yet to come. Nanny’s partner, who identifies as a non-binary person, was the victim of an attempted gang rape near her home.

“That affected me a lot. The place where we lived was no longer hospitable. Everyone knew me, knew I was a dyke and that I lived on that street. I was afraid.”

It is not an unfounded fear: 316 is the number of LGBQTIA+ people who died violently in the last year in Brazil, according to data from the LGBTQIA+ Death and Violence Observatory. Antra, the main trans association in the country, denounces Brazil as the country in the world that kills the most transsexuals.

“It’s not that more people have become homophobic. Those who have always been felt justified in exercising violence against us, because that’s what they hear from the most powerful office in the country,” explains Nanny.

Escape from Brazil to survive

With her partner, Nanny decided to leave Brazil and seek some safety in Lisbon, where she arrived in February 2019. Portugal is the most chosen destination for bureaucratic reasons: “Brazilians don’t need a visa to enter as a tourist”, she says.

And they weren’t the only ones. Immigration reports show a significant increase in Brazilians in Portugal after the election of Jair Bolsonaro. In 2018, there were 105,000, rising to 151,000 in 2019 and almost 184,000 in 2020. It is impossible to quantify how many left for fear of homophobia, but Queer Tropical, a collective that was born on election night in 2018 to help LGBTQIA+ Brazilians go to Portugal, speaks in thousands.

In Porto since 2009, already married to a Portuguese woman and with two children, Débora has always combined work with activism. She remembers that night well, although the outcome was not a surprise: “Part of my family, white and right-wing, votes for Bolsonaro.”

“He awakened a feeling of identification in people. They all had negative ideas about Haitian immigrants or the poor. They thought: ‘Bolsonaro will put them in line,’ and that is stronger than him being racist and homophobic.”

From several friends, Débora Ribeiro, 37, a Brazilian from Minas Gerais, began to receive desperate requests. They wanted to enter Portugal and showed photographs of aggressions they had suffered on the street. “They went to the police, but they didn’t do anything, because there were no laws that penalized homophobia,” she says.

Ironically, the law that punishes discrimination and prejudice related to sexual identity or orientation was approved by the Senate in 2019, during the term of Jair Bolsonaro. But the reality is different.

Emmelin de Oliveira, a researcher in International and European Law at the Nova School of Law, admits that she followed requests for refugee status from LGBTQIA+ Brazilians, such is the brutality of their stories. Requests are denied for various reasons. First, there is legislation against homophobia in the country. Second, when talking about Brazil, “the numbers are expected to be large, so numbers that should be frightening are minimized”, she says.

Then there is the political question: “When a State grants refugee status, it says that the country of origin is unable or unwilling to protect that group. It is a political statement”, concludes the researcher. Many wanted to leave.

On the same night that Bolsonaro won, Débora decided to act and created a Facebook group to give advice on legal migration to all who felt threatened. In a few hours, the post reached 6,000 comments and 2,000 requests to join the group were pouring in.

With 18 Brazilians, from Porto and Lisbon, he began to provide counseling, voluntarily: “Many wanted to know about documentation issues, others about how HIV treatment works in Portugal”.

The story of Nanny and her partner did not initially go through Queer Tropical. With friends in Marinha Grande, it was there that the two rebuilt their lives in Portugal, to later settle in Lumiar, in Lisbon. Today, Nanny continues as a violinist and performs with a group of Brazilian immigrants at Palácio do Grilo, in a show of music, dance and movement.

In Portugal, he approached Queer Tropical, which was established a year ago as an association, a point of union and community activism.

The association’s mission is to connect the community with Portuguese associations that provide assistance in various areas, such as housing, health or justice. “There are Brazilians who do not feel they have the right to resort to Portuguese associations, either because they are without documents, or because they do not have a user number. [identificação que dá acesso ao sistema público de saúde]. We say, ‘Go, nothing’s going to happen’.”

Delso Batista, 37, a psychologist and a leading member of Queer Tropical in Lisbon, felt all the challenges of being a gay, black Brazilian man in the city. He arrived in 2010, coming from Minas Gerais. He was guided by the traditional narrative of an emigrant: “There is a dream that everything will be better on the other side.” Although homophobia escalated with Bolsonaro, Delso left Brazil due to the impossibility of being completely free.

“Being gay and black in Brazil is a certificate that puts your life at risk. On the street I got punched for free for being gay. I lost friends when I came out of the closet”, he says. “I avoided talking about it, even in relationships it was all hidden and this conditioned my self-esteem. There is a constant fear of marginalization and being the target of violence.”

In Lisbon, Delso completed a master’s degree in psychology and managed to become Portuguese. Today, he says it’s his house — one that needs sorting. Although there is a social pact to accept homosexuality, there is prejudice. “Even in relationships with white, gay and European men, who put me down for being black.”

He realized that racism was going to mitigate part of his dreams. Without a job as a psychologist, he looked for jobs in supermarkets and car washes, where he heard answers like “we don’t give jobs to foreigners”. “When I opened my mouth, I didn’t have the right accent.”

“If in Brazil I was afraid of being gay, in Portugal I’m afraid of being black”, he says. “In Brazil, being black, looking everywhere, you see people like you. At school, there was more aggression and bullying because of being the effeminate boy, not because he was black.”

Later, he got a job as a psychologist. “First I had to be in the company for three months without earning anything, as experience. Then I started to earn the minimum wage, at the time in the order of €400, while I paid a quarter of €300”, says Delso. “It took me a long time to earn the same as my Portuguese colleagues.”

Brazilian LGBTQIA+ immigrants face the dual fragility of belonging to a sexual and often ethnic minority. “There are people who send me messages saying: ‘They don’t give me a job because I’m Brazilian, I have nothing to eat, I have to prostitute myself.’

“There are people who want to kill themselves. If there are trans people who don’t have access to hormone treatment to continue their transition, where will their heads be?”

And much has to be done to continue helping the community. That awaits for this Sunday (30) a conscious choice, with fear and hope. Nanny admits: “If Lula wins, I’m thinking about going back to Brazil, but first I want to see how the first 100 days of government go.” Because no one wants to be away from hers. When you part, it’s for something bigger.

You May Also Like

Recommended for you