A Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro will present the story of a trans woman nearly burned on the stake within the sixteenth century, highlighting the continued violence against transgender people in Brazil, which has the world’s highest reported trans homicide rate.
Born as Francisco Manicongo in what was then often called the Kingdom of Kongo, Xica Manicongo was captured and enslaved in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state. Authorities from the Portuguese Inquisition threatened her with execution for cross-dressing and having same-sex relations, each practices the Catholic Church deemed heretical.
To avoid death, she agreed to wear men’s clothing and use her male birth name — and so denied her identity.
She was rechristened Xica in 2010 in an effort to right the wrongs of the past.
The parade, scheduled for Tuesday night, 4 days after Carnival officially kicks off, is the creation of Paraiso do Tuiuti, one in all Rio’s 12 top-flight samba schools competing in the enduring Sambadrome. Tuiuti hopes the story of Manicongo will dazzle tens of millions of spectators watching from the bleachers and their homes, and function a wake-up call.
Jack Vasconcelos, Tuiuti’s Carnival director who created its theme, said he wanted to offer younger generations of trans women a way of belonging to history.
“They deserve to seem on television, to seem to the entire world, not only within the murder statistics. They are women who produce. They’re lawmakers, they’re teachers, they’re artists,” said Vasconcelos. “They’re not people on the margins of what has happened on this planet and what is occurring now.”
A historical reparation
Since Tuiuti embraced Vasconcelos’ proposal, the varsity’s lots of of members have been preparing for his or her performance. Like other parades, the show will feature sequined costumes and elaborate floats. One of its innovations is a bit exclusively comprised of trans women.
“It’s a historical reparation,” said Alessandra Salazary, who has been attending weekly rehearsals for the past few months. “Paraiso do Tuiuti is giving us a possibility to be stars in front of the cameras. This could be very special for us and can really go down in history.”
The parade will feature other notable figures, including Brazil’s first trans lawmakers, Duda Salabert and Erika Hilton; Rio state lawmaker Dani Balbi and Bruna Benevides, who heads Brazil’s trans rights group Antra. Benevides identifies as “travesti,” a term referring to a particular Latin American identity that activists say is claimed by people assigned the male gender at birth, but who experience the feminine gender and must be treated as such. She and Tuiuti say Manicongo was likewise a travesti.
The specter of violence Manicongo faced five centuries ago hasn’t vanished.
Brazil stays the world’s deadliest country for transgender people, with 106 murders last 12 months, in response to Transgender Europe, a network of worldwide nonprofit organizations that tracks the info. It marked the seventeenth consecutive 12 months Brazil claimed this grim distinction.
Such statistics are at the very least partially driven by poor reporting elsewhere and Brazil’s lively network of advocates, but experts agree transphobia is ubiquitous. During last 12 months’s local elections, trans candidates were assailed with death threats and trans people proceed to struggle to land jobs or secure places to live.
Sending a political message
Benevides has been working with Tuiuti to offer trans women and travestis with opportunities. For months, she has organized two classes: one teaching samba, so that they can get work as skilled dancers, and one other for costume design. The parade has been a possibility to strengthen bonds between the samba and trans communities while conveying a political message, Benevides said.
“We are seeing a powerful anti-trans agenda on this planet attempting to reverse our rights, direct attacks, politically motivated attacks against our existence,” she said.
Samba schools’ parades often make political statements. Tuiuti last 12 months told the story of João Cândido, who led a revolt in 1910 against the usage of whips within the Brazilian navy. He was tortured and kicked out of the navy. Vasconcelos said on the time that he selected the theme because violence paying homage to slavery continues to this present day.
Onemonth after last 12 months’s Carnival, Brazil’s federal public prosecutor’s office reinforced its demands for financial reparations to Cândido’s family.
Rio’s Carnival — watched by tens of millions on local and national television broadcasts — can spark dialogue and deliver impact, said Fátima Costa de Lima, a Carnival researcher and scenic arts professor at Santa Catarina State University.
Carnival “is a fantastic megaphone that encourages Brazilian society to debate something often kept off the table,” Costa de Lima said.
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