Only trans pre-candidate in Amapá wants to give visibility to outcasts

Marcela Leiros – From Cenarium

MANAUS (AM) – The city of Macapá, Amapá’s State capital, so far has only one trans pre-candidate preparing to run in this year’s municipal elections: human rights activist Fleur Duarte. In the midst of the articulations and agendas inherent in her pre-campaign as city councillor, she spoke to CENARIUM about her expectations for the election. Fleur’s goal is to help vulnerable minorities gain more space in politics and society.

Duarte, who is a member of the Rede Sustentabilidade party, was also the first trans woman to be awarded the title of outstanding protagonist in the fight for human rights by the Regional Court of the State of Amapá (TRE-AP). It is this banner that she carries in a tireless fight for the right to citizenship that guides her pre-candidacy.

“I want the voice of the people to be heard and represented by people like us, poor people, people from the periphery, people who are structurally excluded from society and forgotten by the politics of the elite who have been in power for a long time or families who have created a certain heritage in politics, passing it down from father to son and everyone in the family,” defended the activist, whose pre-candidacy was launched in April.

She said she was looking forward to being elected to the Macapá City Council (CMM), but is aware that even if the biggest goal is not achieved, the campaign will still be a “little brick” in building LGBTQIAPN+ visibility and representation in the state.

“My expectations are good, I believe I can be elected and, if I am, I will be the first [trans woman] elected in the history of the state of Amapá,” she shared. “Politics is a grinding machine. But I believe that one day one of us will be elected.”

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Her journey

Fleur Duarte’s journey into activism began in 2015, when she accompanied a family member to the Joel Magalhães Cancer Prevention Institute (Ijoma). There, she saw women in vulnerable situations, often neglected by the state or by their own families, who were fighting for treatment.

“I started with the movement of women in vulnerable health and cancer treatment, where I could see that these women need attention, where they are also very badly treated, neglected, forgotten and die because of this, the forgetfulness, the neglect, the lack of family support, and through this I accompanied them”, she explained.

Since then, she has started helping people who need to be assisted at the institute via social media, with information such as how to get to Ijoma, what you need to be assisted, what services are available there, among other things.

Fleur Duarte also began to study Public Relations and Politics for Citizenship, but without abandoning her activism and the certainty that she needed to build a path for politics so that more people like her could occupy spaces of power.

“I realized that I could do something different, that it was necessary for me to fight for politics, out of necessity, not just to speak for women in vulnerable health conditions, in cancer treatment, or to speak only for my LGBT community, but to speak for people, to speak for everyone, because it is necessary, it is more than necessary, it is necessary to have bodies like ours, of anyone structurally excluded in society, for us to fight for this space of power”, she said.

The activist is part of the public policy coordination of the National LGBT Rede Party, as well as the Women’s Rede Party and the Youth Rede Party.

Translated by Bruno Sena