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Outside the evangelical circles, Damares Alves was an almost complete stranger until he was announced on Thursday as the new government minister, Jair Bolsonaro. Damares will lead the Women, Family and Human Rights portfolio, a new structure to be created on January 1, which will also house the National Indian Foundation (Funai), the body responsible for public policies targeting the population. indigenous peoples of the country. Pastor of the Foursquare Gospel Church, the lawyer will have the delicate and at the same time strategic mission to formulate guidelines for the most vulnerable groups in society while responding to the grbadroots conservative who helped bring Bolsonaro to power, a politician who rejects the concept of "minority" and even relativises that of human rights.
"This file will deal with the protection of life, not death," he said in the form of a business card, Damares Thursday. It campaigns against abortion and rejects this issue as a public health problem, despite the thousands of deaths per year in Brazil due to illegal childbirth abortions. If, at this point, he is aligned with Bolsonaro and his base, he disagrees with an elected official: "If I rely on myself, I go to the door of the company where the employee , who develops the same role as the woman, earns more.This ended in Brazil, "he said. During the campaign, Bolsonaro repeatedly stated that the state should not interfere in the definition of wages and in the disparities between men and women in private enterprises.
Since 2015, the future minister has been Parliamentary Counsel to Senator Magno Malta (PR). one of the main figures of the evangelical group. Until then, with a net salary of 4,408 reais, she became a minister in the position that many thought belonged to her boss. The first supporter of Bolsonaro, Malta, does not hide his resentment towards the president-elect for his exclusion from the badembly of the Esplanade. As for the election of the Minister of Education, Ricardo Vélez, Bolsonaro defeated his allies at the National Congress, who complained behind the scenes of their ignorance by the president-elect. The grievances are now made public: "It was clear that an ingratitude towards Malta was obvious, it became an affront. I think it [Bolsonaro] was wrong. (19659005) Evangelical activity
Damares' connection with the elected president's allies, however, precedes the link with the senator by the Holy Spirit. worked for MP Arolde de Oliveira (PSD), senator elected by Rio de Janeiro, whose success in the October polls was largely in support of the Bolsonaro clan. "She was my advisor for about four years . She left in 2014 and we negotiated with Senator Magno in Malta so that she could continue to do the same work there, "said Oliveira." She is a very active lawyer, educator and pastor. . His values and principles are therefore these Judeo-Christian values. "
The member says that he invited Damares to help him after accompanying his work as a collaborator of the evangelical parliamentary front. working for Oliveira, she was chief of staff of another representative of the neo-Pentecostal seat of the House, the MP João Campos (PRB) .Parliamentary, pre-candidate for the presidency of the House and author of the project controversial gay cure claims that the militancy of Damares on topics dear to the evangelicals made her known in the religious milieu. "While she was dedicated to these themes, she s & # 39; 39, is made known and began to be invited to give lectures in the most diverse states of Brazil, "reports Campos.
On the Internet it is possible to find videos in which Damares" The ideology of gender is a serious abuse of the children of Brazil "and" they deconstruct the biological identity "of them. The minister is also frequently quoted on specialized websites for the evangelical public, denouncing, for example, what she sees as a "war on the family" promoted in Brazilian schools. This Thursday, however, the future minister promised to form "a government of peace between the conservative movement, the LGBT movement and other movements".
Question of Aboriginal Peoples
The most controversial point of the new ministry created by Bolsonaro is undoubtedly the transfer of Funai to the organ. The departure of the supervisory authority of the Ministry of Justice is strongly criticized by anthropologists and indigenous leaders, who fear the setbacks, particularly with regard to the delimitation of lands of indigenous peoples. Bolsonaro itself has already announced its intention to freeze existing demarcation processes. In addition, at his first press conference after the minister's announcement, Damares confirmed that the theme should not be a priority.
Damares, who had adopted an aboriginal girl a few years ago, would be willing to have on his own responsibility the main indigenous political body in a country marked by serious land conflicts. The references he presents, however, are far from convincing anthropologists and organized movements to defend the rights of Indians. The future minister said that she had started her work on the subject in 1999, while she was working for a parliamentary inquiry commission (CPI) to investigate Funai. "By advising the IPC of Funai, I find that some people in Brazil, because of a cultural problem, are still killing children because they do not know what to do when they are born with a physical or mental disability, "said Damarès Thursday. "When we discovered that this was happening, that the children of single mothers could not survive, I started a dialogue that was so prolonged that I took care of indigenous children in Brazil ever since. years, always with dialogue and respect. "
Damares tackled a subject that is being questioned by many anthropologists in the country. For the professor of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) Saulo Feitosa, member of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), the future minister "decontextualizes" sporadic cases of abandonment of indigenous children. "There is information that there are children in some countries, we have reports, we have read in the general press that there were situations in which children were abandoned, but these reports are very sporadic, "says Feitosa. "There is no possibility to accept that there is a drop or drop of children among the mbades among the indigenous peoples." It's a lie and does not happen. Will never approach the number of abandoned children in the urban world, "he concludes. According to the professor, Damares' work on this theme is part of an effort to "criminalize" certain traditional Indian practices, with the aim of describing them as barbaric communities and thereby facilitating the deterritorialization of the country's traditional peoples. .
In this sense, Damares is considered one of the founders of a bill in the Chamber of Deputies proposing to "fight against harmful traditional practices and protect the fundamental rights of indigenous children" . Precisely because of its history, the new minister represents an unprecedented turning point in Brazil's indigenous politics, to which civil society sectors must strongly oppose.
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