This is not a good time for queer people to be in Brazil, as the country is facing an epidemic of anti-LGBTQ attacks, egged on by newly-elected “proud homophobe” president Jair Bolsonaro, who on his first day in office stripped away many legal rights.
Bolsonaro’s actions, combined with his bigoted remarks to the media, are part of a measurable upturn in violence, where the collective mood in this South American country has drastically lurched rightward.
Here’s what happening, and why you should show caution when visiting even relatively friendly enclaves such as Sao Paulo. Boycotting the country is also a way to send a message to the government that prejudice comes with a cost.
Here are a few of the lowlights of what’s happening in the country:
1. Brazilian Congressman (Jean Wyllys Pictured, above) – the first openly gay person to serve in the National Congress of Brazil – has fled the country after receiving numerous death threats. By asserting he won’t return to Brazil, he resigned from his position with Congress. Wyllys also had considerable trouble with the media while in office, including false stories in 2018 accusing him of pedophilia.
2. Although poverty and crime are an ever-present danger in Brazil’s cities like Rio de Janeiro, statistics show that murder and suicide have risen 30% in 2017, to 445 people. Of those deaths, 170 were murders of trans people. To put that number in comparison, 25 trans people were reported murdered in the U.S. that same year.
3. In March 2018, a city councilwoman in Rio named Marielle Franco, who was a close friend and political ally to Wyllys, was shot and killed. No one has been charged in her murder,. Franco, who was married to a woman, was a leftist politician who was often compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in America: she was a popular grassroots activist who defended the poor and outcasts.
4. In January 2019, a trans woman named Quelly da Silva was murdered after meeting with a man and having sex; after he killed her, the man carved da Silva’s heart out of her chest. When he was arrested, he said he mutilated her body because she was a “demon.”
Related: Brazil’s new president attacks LGBTQ rights on his first day in office
Despite the physical dangers, the liberal establishment in Brazil is fighting against the tide of violence and oppression. In a dig to Bolsonaro, Wyllys’ political party has already named his replacement: David Miranda, a self-proclaimed favelado (from the neighborhoods of Rio’s favelas) who is married to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Miranda posted photos of himself with his husband and their two children in this Tweet (image translated to English), with what is being interpreted as a gentle challenge to Bolsonaro himself:
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