https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1047-4333
![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
LGBTI+ people living in favelas in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) have been submitted to several challenges. Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brutally has hit favelas with disproportional number of deaths. This health emergency adds to the long-term ongoing epidemic of violence, particularly police violence, in favelas. We acknowledge that this problem is at least partially a product of unconscious racism with historical roots in colonialism. The LGBTI+ community members from favelas are particularly affected by because they are both special targets of violence and ignored or even excluded from public services and policies. Civil society organizations, such as Grupo Conexão G, responded to COVID-19 with food banks and other welfare actions for LGBTI+ people in favelas—which were nevertheless impacted by police violence. Conexão G then created the Observatório de Violência LGBTI+ em Favelas (Monitoring Centre of LGBTI+ Violence in Favelas), in which both authors of this article worked in different capacities. We analyze a report produced by Observatório that shows the reality of violence against LGBTI+ people in favelas. Although we notice unconscious motifs of racism and hatred against the LGBTI+ community, we also identify resistance to violence as an expression of unconscious desires—now for life, rather than destruction. We highlight the ambivalent position of recognition, which frames the possibility for identification while also justifying protection against destruction. As we see it, though, shelter against precarity (such as exposure to harm from COVID-19 and police violence) is necessary to keep one alive, thus producing life lines or desire for life. We conclude that recognition and desire are keys to respond to the harmful effects of racism, colonialism, and hatred against LGBTI+ people; nevertheless, we also advocate for keeping alert to both established and new forms of destruction that threat the LGBTI+ community.
RESUMO
Pessoas LGBTI+ em favelas no Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) têm sofrido com diversos desafios. Desde 202, a pandemia de Covid-19 afetou brutalmente favelas, com um número desproporcional de mortes nesses lugares. Essa emergência sanitária se combina com uma continua e duradoura epidemia de violência, e especialmente violência policial em favelas. Consideramos que esse problema é um produto ao menos parcial de racismo inconsciente, com bases na história de colonialismo. A população LGBTI+ de favelas é especialmente afetada por ambos pandemia e violência policial por ser preferencialmente escolhida como alvo, e ainda ser ignorada ou até excluída de serviços e políticas públicas. Organizações da Sociedade Civil, como o Grupo Conexão G, responderam a pandemia através de distribuição de cestas básicas e outras formas de assistência social para a pessoas LGBTI+ em favelas—ações que entretanto foram também impactadas pela violência policial. Conexão G então criou o Observatório de Violência LGBTI+ em Favelas, do qual estas pessoas autoras participaram (em diferentes funções). Nós analisamos um relatório produzido pelo Observatório que mostra a realidade de violência contra a população LGBTI+ em favelas. Ainda que fiquem explícitas os processos inconscientes no racismo e ódio contra a comunidade LGBTI+, também notamos resistências contra violência como expressões de desejos inconscientes—não mais pela destruição, mas pela vida. Destacamos a posição ambivalente do reconhecimento nesse processo, uma vez que este enquadra as possibilidades para identificação ao mesmo tempo em que promove formas de proteção contra destruição. Entendemos que proteção contra precariedade (como a pandemia de Covid-19 e a violência policial) é necessária para manter uma pessoa viva, e portanto produzir linhas desejantes ou desejo de vida. Concluímos que reconhecimento e desejo são ideias fundamentais para responder aos danosos efeitos de racismo, colonialism, e ódio contra a população LGBTI+. Ainda assim, consideramos a necessidade de atenção as formas estabelecidas e porvir de destruição que ameaçam a população LGBTI+.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).
Notes
1 We choose to use LGBTI+, standing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Travesti, Transgender, and Intersex, aligned with the largest Brazilian association, ABGLT. However, we add “plus” as a marker of other nonconforming identities, expressions, and orientations. See https://www.abglt.org/about-us. We use LGBTI+ as an adjective for specifying a heterogeneous group, so it may lead to some simplifications. It might be used for practices (such violence or health care) targeting this same group.
2 Extreme-right, ultraliberal, and ultraconservative Brazilian president between 2019 and 2022.
3 We use the word favela in Portuguese in this article to address the importance of this word for groups, communities, and civil society organizations (CSOs) living and working in the territories. Also, a favela is a space with a historical lack of infrastructure and particular forms of violence. Hence, we use this term to not erase their particularities.
4 As discussed by Haworth, Cassal, and Muniz (Citation2023).
5 Between June and September 2020, after the Supremo Tribunal Federal (Brazilian Supreme and Constitutional Court) decision, there was in fact a significant reduction in cases of police operations in favelas. However, the numbers began to grow sharply again from October of that year, surpassing the period before the pandemic. In 2021, the numbers of violence grew even more, according to the platform for monitoring police violence Fogo Cruzado, which, in its annual report, accounted for the occurrence of 13 shootings per day throughout 2021, an increase of 1% compared to 2020, when 4,585 shootings were recorded. Of the 2,098 people shot in the Rio Metropolitan Region, 1,084 died. The number represents a 21% increase in the number of people killed in 2020.
6 We work on an extended idea of psychoanalysis, considering different approaches understanding and operating with unconscious desires as central in psyche. Therefore, we draw on eclectic authors such as Judith Butler (who reads psychoanalysis from cultural studies) and Suely Rolnik (an influential Brazilian psychoanalyst who is deeply influenced by Deleuze and Guattari’s [Citation1988] schizoanalysis). For the purposes of this article, we use those references by what they have in common, rather than highlighting differences and contradictions.
7 Originally Rio Sem Homofobia (Rio Without Homophobia), the program had its name updated in 2019.
8 Such as the aforementioned former president Jair Bolsonaro.
9 Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/23/americas/brazil-coronavirus-hospitals-intl/index.html
10 Source data: JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data. These proportions were reached during the second wave in Brazil. When the government insisted on flexibilization of the measures and encouraged radical sectors of the society to neglect contention actions, most of all this put to doubt the accuracy of the vaccines. During the first year, due to social distancing measures, the highest daily rate was 1.313 deaths, reached on July 23. At that time, the weekly average was 1.053 deaths. During the second wave, the weekly average reached 3.039 deaths. Those numbers are likely to be higher because of the lack of public testing and reporting in some regions.
11 Throughout this article, we use the term “pardo” or racialized to refer to nonwhite people who are subject to race, class, and gender asymmetries in Brazil. The brown category is used by the Brazilian government to indicate a group of people sometimes descended from a mixture of blacks, indigenous peoples, and whites, sometimes from parts of these different ethnic groups. This racial phenomenon in Brazil is described under the concept of “colorism.” Such people are also disproportionately inserted in perverse dynamics of racism and are pushed to the margins of society, composing a large group of people who are generally poor, living in slums and suburbs, and with little access to education, health, culture, and leisure. These are, therefore, racialized groups in racist and oppressive dynamics that disproportionately affect blacks and whites in Brazil.
12 Available at https://www.epsjv.fiocruz.br/podcast/negros-sao-os-que-mais-morrem-por-covid-19-e-os-que-menos-recebem-vacinas-no-brasil
13 As a result of the low quality of public policies, the black population was less served in the distribution of immunisation against COVID-19. By the first half of 2021, members of this group—the majority of population in Brazil—were accessing less vaccines. Available at https://oglobo.globo.com/saude/vacina/covid-19-maioria-da-populacao-negros-foram-menos-vacinados-ate-agora-24891207
14 Negligent actions by the federal government, the absence of public information campaigns, and inadequate management added to the lack of a national strategy between the Union and the states, and constitute some of the aspects of the inefficiency of the vaccination reach to the black and racialized population in Brazil. In addition, the lack of coordination and the criteria stipulated by the federal government drastically impacted the population that had been most affected by the disease. For example, the initial criterion regarding vaccination points far from the poorest neighborhoods and regions, or from priority social groups that favor—in general—white and middle-class elderly people to the detriment of black and racialized people from the outskirts of the country associated with their precarious housing situation and, finally, disinformation and fake news campaigns—often propagated by the federal government—are also strong impediments to vaccinating the population most in need and most severely affected by the health crisis in Brazil. Available at https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/saude/falta-de-coordenacao-aumentou-desigualdade-vacinal-no-brasil-diz-pesquisa
15 Available at https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2017/05/numeros-da-violencia-no-rio-se-assemelham-aos-de-paises-em-guerra.html
16 According to the Federal Constitution (1988), there are eight police forces for public security in Brazil. One of those, organized at the state level, is the Military Police, which however is usually responsible for ostensive patrolling and raid operations. Some of those other polices often support those actions. The Brazilian Army might be engaged in short-term or continuous security operations (with lethal consequences). We refer generically to police representing those security forces, understanding that most often the Military Police is responsible for the raids.
19 We acknowledge that “phobia” has a particular meaning in psychoanalysis, and that Freudian work (about repressing homosexual desires) inspired its use as an unconscious fear related to LGBTI+ identities and homosexual desires. Although this term might sound as an individual reaction (choosing an object to project and deny a displaced desire), while we see it as a structural matter, we choose to keep it because of its common use in mainstream context to identify discourses and practices of hate against the LGBTI+ community.
20 According to data from the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA), 90% of trans women and travestis in Brazil survive on prostitution, having this form of work as their only source of income in the entire country (Benevides, Citation2022). Sex workers were particularly impacted by lockdowns and social distancing.
21 We choose to use the term “family” here to indicate groups or pairs of friends who share housing or even nuclear families who did not expel their LGBTI+ children from home but found themselves in vulnerable situation.
22 Nevertheless, it was a frustrating decision since resources were not enough to support all in need.
23 The massacre in Jacarezinho was the second largest in the history of Rio de Janeiro. See https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/05/06/operacao-no-jacarezinho-foi-2-maior-chacina-da-historia-do-rj-diz-ong-fogo-cruzado
24 The then coordinator of the Observatory of LGBT violence in Favelas, Mariah Rafaela Silva, participated virtually in the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2021 and in the UN General Assembly in 2022 to denounce the constant violations of the rights of the LGBTI population in favelas. See https://twitter.com/Women_Rio20/status/1413581572394127366 and https://iddh.org.br/defensora-de-dh-selecionada-em-edital-do-iddh-representa-entidades-brasileiras-na-onu
25 In Brazil, the Military Police have their origin in the 19th century, as an action of D. João VI, who came from Portugal fleeing from the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, the then Prince-Regent (acclaimed king in 1818) formed a military corps equivalent to the Royal Police Guard of Lisbon, which had remained in Portugal. In this way, the Military Division of the Royal Guard of the Police of Rio de Janeiro was created and adopted the same organization models as the Portuguese guard. Throughout the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as a result of the population increase in Brazil, other police bodies were created in other provinces, replicating the same structural model. However, it was only in 1946 that the term “Military Police” was established in the Constitution, after the Estado Novo. This policing model and its militarized rationality are expanded to the forms that later became known for their truculence during the military dictatorship (1964–1985).
26 The project was funded by Race and Equality and Fundo Brasil and had partnerships with University of Manchester (KE Fellowship), DataLabe, e Direito em Pretuguês for data analysis. We are especially grateful for the work done by Observatório’s team: Marina Afonso and Lucas Oliveira (executive coordinators), Emily Sales, Emanuel Nogueira, and Vinícius Lorran (research assistants), and Gilmara Cunha (president of Grupo Conexão G). The Observatório has been developed in 2023 by a new team that the authors are not part of.
27 All data presented in this section was originally published in a research report in Portuguese (Conexão G, Citation2022).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mariah Rafaela Silva
Mariah Rafaela Silva, Ph.D., is a visiting professor at the Graduate Program in Law, at the Human Rights Chair at the Federal University of Pará. She holds a Ph.D. in communication from the Fluminense Federal University; interdisciplinary master in human sciences from the University of the State of Amazonas with emphasis on history, theory, and criticism of culture; and bachelor in art history from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is an activist and researcher in gender, sexuality, race, arts, and processes of subjectivation with experience in processes of critical analysis of art, violence, and power relations based on race and gender, politics of subjectivation, and education and access to justice and promotion of citizenship by structurally vulnerable populations. She was an exchange student during her graduate work at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in Portugal, where she studied social sciences. Mariah also has worked in civil society organizations in the promotion and defense of the rights of black LGBTI people in Brazil, with several articles, books, and published contributions in the area of human rights and modes of subjectivation through the fight against violence.
Luan Carpes Barros Cassal is a Brazilian psychologist and queer activist living in the United Kingdom. He is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Bolton and a Ph.D. candidate in education at the University of Manchester. His research interests include queer studies, discourse analysis, childhood, gender, sexuality, recognition, education, violence, and social policies. He was a knowledge exchange fellow at Observatório de Violência LGBTI+ em Favelas do Rio de Janeiro in 2022 with funding from University of Manchester.