São Paulo’s First Black Trans Councilwoman Defies Barriers

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – (AFP) As she steps into the staid chamber of São Paulo’s city council, the first black trans woman elected to the municipal legislature is well aware of the dangers before her.

“Brazil is a racist, homophobic and transphobic country, and I’m all that in one,” says Erika Hilton.

The 27-year-old activist-turned-politician is paying her first-ever visit to the chamber she was elected to in a landslide on November 15, a breakthrough vote for Latin America’s biggest city.

Hilton won the most votes of any woman in Brazil in the elections for city councillors.

Running for the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), she broke into the top 10 most-voted candidates nationwide, the only woman to make the list.

Her win would have been historic in any year, but it was especially symbolic coming in the first elections since President Jair Bolsonaro surged to victory in 2018 with a far-right ideology condemned as racist and homophobic by his critics.

Hilton says her election shows “we are making gains against ‘Bolsonarism.” But she is quick to add: “This is still a country full of paradoxes.”

As a case in point, she mentions the brutal killing of a black customer by two white security guards at a supermarket in the southern city of Porto Alegre, just four days after her own trailblazing election.

“That was the most despicable expression of structural racism, institutional racism, and of how much Brazil still bears the inheritance of slavery,” she told AFP, after leading a protest on São Paulo’s main avenue, her fist raised, to chants of “Black lives matter!”

Unlikely Rise

Slender and striking, with a large afro hairdo, Hilton speaks in rapid-fire sentences and has an uncanny ability to command a crowd. But she shows a less serious side on her first visit to the city council chambers, pausing to take selfies and test the speaker’s podium.

It was an unlikely trip to get here for a young woman who grew up in a slum and whose Christian fundamentalist family kicked her out of the house.

As a homeless adolescent, she turned to prostitution and survived on the streets for years, until her mother had a change of heart and renewed their ties. With her mother’s support, Hilton finished her education and got involved in the LGBTI-rights movement.

In 2018, she was elected to the Sao Paulo state legislature for a “collective seat” shared with other leftist women.

The same election brought Bolsonaro to the presidency, and left Hilton feeling like a target for an emboldened far-right, she says. She received numerous death threats — serious cause for concern in Brazil, where 124 trans people were murdered last year, one of the highest numbers in the world.

The LGBTI community is still scarred by the brutal 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco, a black lesbian activist to whom Hilton has been compared.

Hilton admits that makes her afraid. But she is not backing down. Nor are her fellow activists. Two years after Bolsonaro upended Brazilian politics, 294 transgender or transvestite candidates ran in the municipal elections, and 30 were elected, according to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals (ANTRA).

Hilton calls that a “slap in the face for the political system” — even if progress is slow.

“We had 388 years of slavery (in Brazil), which has been followed by nearly 140 years of fake abolition, and we are still a work in progress. We’re still fighting for our humanity,” she says.