Transsexual and black: the double battle of Brazil’s most voted adviser

“Brazil is a racist, homophobic and transphobic country and I bring it all together in my body and in my political platform.” The statement is made by Erika Hilton, the woman who obtained the most votes in the recent municipal elections and who will be a councilor for the city of São Paulo, the economic capital of Brazil.

Years ago, Hilton was forced into prostitution in order to “survive”. But he says he has turned his pain into “fuel”. Now 27, she became the first black and trans to win a seat on San Pablo City Council.

Erika was the woman who received the most votes nationwide and entered the “top 10” councilors with the most votes in the first round of the municipal elections on 15 November. The first nine were men.

With 50,508 supporters in the city of San Pablo, the most populous in Latin America, Hilton was the woman who received the most votes in the whole country and entered the “top 10” of the most voted councilors in the country. first round of municipal elections of 15 November. The first nine were men.

According to him, his victory is a consequence of the “fear” of a “setback” after the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro, leader of the Brazilian far right.

“We perceive the need to organize ourselves politically to stop the setback and the violence represented by the far-right political project and the fascism which has reached the presidency of the Republic”, declared the elected adviser in an interview with the EFE agency.

The seat was obtained on the list of the Progressive Party of Socialism and Freedom (PSOL), whose candidate, Guilherme Boulos, surprised São Paulo by collecting 20% ​​of the votes in the first round, allowing it play the second round this sunday in front of the center of the right and current mayor, Bruno Covas.

The double fight

Born and raised in a poor suburb of São Paulo, Hilton was kicked out of her home at the age of 14 by her mother, who at the time was blinded by the Evangelical Church’s “fundamentalist hate narrative” ‘she was dating.

“I lived all my adolescence by prostituting myself to survive. This is the reality of trans women, ”she laments.

But it was in the streets that Hilton felt the “urgency” to become the “spokesperson” for many other women who, like her, have been victims of “dehumanization”, racism and “transphobia” in a country leading the ranking of murders of transgender people and where a young black man dies every 23 minutes.

“All of this fueled the fight. My pain helped me understand what structural violence is and turn pain into a force to resist and fight. Not for me, but for everyone,” he said. he declares.

After living on the streets for several years, her mother reopened the doors to her house. It was then, with “food and shelter”, that he decided to resume his studies and enter the University. There he began his activism “for the rescue of human rights” and established himself as a “reference in the struggle” in Brazil.

In 2018, she was elected regional deputy to the Parliament of São Paulo thanks to a collective candidacy composed of nine women and, at the end of her new mandate as councilor, hopes to be able to reach the Brazilian Congress to change “the legislation and the Constitution itself”.

“My election is a response to all this hatred and denial of our rights. We are articulate, seeking social justice, fairness and we are not going to back down until our lives matter, so much that they will not stop killing us for our gender identity, “he denounced.

Because, he lamented, “they kill us in the most violent and brutal way, with cruelty, for the fact of being who we are.”

“Racist country”

His election, he assures, is also another step in the battle against structural and institutional racism in a country with a majority black, but “deeply racist” and where 75% of homicide victims are black.

“Brazil is a deeply racist country that denies its racism to keep the black population in a situation of dehumanization. That is why it is important that we occupy spaces and be the spokespersons of our struggles and of our own. complaints, “he said.

The “main evidence” of this “structural racism”, he said, was the death last Thursday of a black customer at the gates of a Carrefour supermarket after the brutal beating of two white guards.

But the death of Joao Alberto Freitas, he assures, “is not an isolated case”, “but one of the millions of cases which occur daily in our country”.

“Blacks are executed daily for being black”, he denounces.

The death of Joao Alberto, assassinated on the eve of Black Awareness Day, generated a strong indignation in Brazil and a few demonstrations in various cities, even if the streets fell silent a few days later.

Hilton attributes the lack of major mobilizations to the precarious situation of the black population in Brazil, the last Western country to abolish slavery.

“Black Brazilians are all unemployed, with poor housing conditions, poor food conditions. How is this population going to stop working for two or three days to go to a demonstration? Who will guarantee them food? families? He asked.

“Due to economic inequalities and historical precariousness, our population has been denied the right to demonstrate, the right to be indignant, not to mention the lack of access to its own history,” he added. .

Hilton claims to keep in mind the dictation of American philosopher Angela Davis (“When the black woman moves, the whole structure of society moves with her”) and is sure that when she moves as “an advisor, in as a female, trans, “Latin America’s largest city will too.

By Alba Santandreu, EFE agency

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