Érica Malunginho
Source: Alesp via Creative Commons BY (photographer unidentified) <https://www.al.sp.gov.br/deputado/?matricula=300625>
Érica Malunguinho was elected to the São Paulo state assembly in 2018 and in early 2019 took office as the first trans woman to serve in that capacity. Prior to that election, she was an artist and educator who was the subject of this 2017 headline:
A mulher que pariu um quilombo urbano.
The woman who birthed an urban quilombo.
A quilombo is a refugee slave community, established in rural areas throughout Brazil as early as the 1600s. Malunguinho’s involvement with issues of race, gender, identity, art, and much more are an incredible foundation and training for a state legislator. The article below the headline above was written by Juliana Gonçalves for Trip magazine and, to give an idea of the breadth of both the article and its subject, in its online version it has the following tags: TPM (short for Trip para mulheres - “Trip for women”), Negritude, Arte (“Art”), São Paulo, Ativismo (“Activism”), LGBT, Feminismo (“Feminism”), and Racismo (“Racism”).
The article starts like this:
It was the yearning for freedom that made Erica Malunguinho leave her home and family in Pernambuco and move to São Paulo at 19 years of age. Today, at 35, she recognizes that it was an escape process: “I came to achieve my identity emancipation,” she says. At that time, she had already acknowledged her sexual orientation - there were other conflicts that unsettled her. “Above all else, I needed to resolve the black issue.”
When she finished high school, a period during which facing homophobia and racism intensified, Erica felt that she “needed to live another life.” And she had the support of her mother, who raised her alone, always dreamed of having a daughter, and chose her new name. While the last name “Malunguinho” makes reference to the Jurema Sagrada sect, a branch of catimbó from the forests of Pernambuco in the Catucá region which, according to her, her ancestors had passed through. “Malungo” is also a term used by African peoples in the Bantu family that means “comrade,” “companion.” It was how enslaved people referred to someone who, like them, had crossed the sea and was able to be reborn on the other side.
The possibility of reinventing herself is what Erica was seeking in São Paulo. It was in that capital city that she understood the maturation of her positions, including redeveloping her gender identity, which had been silenced for years. “I believed that understanding my sexual orientation would be enough to place me in the world. Little by little I started realizing that there were other unexplored aspects of my subjectivity and, in this set of terms that we use to define ourselves, I understood myself as a “T” person, that is, a trans woman,” she says.
To be continued…