Lélia Gonzalez, black and Latin American feminist

Lélia Gonzalez, in 1979.Personal archive

To understand and deconstruct the place of blacks in Brazilian society, Lélia Gonzalez (Belo Horizonte, 1935-1994) was everywhere.

The daughter of poor parents, a black worker and a domestic employee of indigenous descent, she had the opportunity to study and graduated in History and Philosophy.

When she had already been “perfectly whitewashed, she was already within the system”, she found contradictions and social barriers in the academic world that led her to become a member of the feminist and black movement.

He used psychoanalysis and candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, to explain the culture of the country.

He was an intellectual, activist and politician.

He traveled the world representing Brazil in debates on the exploitation and oppression of blacks and women at events held in the United States, Latin America and Africa.

He combined these experiences and created a conceptual reference to understand the Brazilian identity and that of his brothers on the continent: the amefricanidad.

"Why do you need to look for a reference in the United States?

I learn more from Lélia Gonzalez than you do from me ”, summed up Angela Davis, an icon of black American feminism, when she visited Brazil in 2019. It was an indication that Brazilians need to recognize more of their own thinker, a pioneer in the debates on the relationship between gender, class and race in the world.

In all the places - social and geographical - where she was in her 59 years of life, Lélia Gonzalez left an intense and original intellectual production that marked a whole generation of black militants.

The breadth and topicality of his thought can be seen in the anthology

Por un feminismo afrolatinoamericano

, published by the Brazilian publishing house Zahar.

The work brings together texts from 1975 to 1994, a period that includes the re-democratization of Brazil and the strengthening of social movements, processes in which Gonzalez actively participated.

Some of these texts were found in libraries outside of Brazil and have been translated into Portuguese for the first time.

The philosopher was always a widely read author among black intellectuals, and some of the production now presented has circulated in other academic and independent publications.

In life, Gonzalez published the books

Lugar de negro

(1982, together with the Argentine Carlos Hasenbalg) and

Festas popular no Brasil

(1987).

But only now is a major Brazilian commercial publisher disseminating his work.

"It is very difficult to accept that such a relevant and expressive author has been hidden for so long," says sociologist Flavia Rios, one of the organizers of the new book and co-author of a biography of Gonzalez.

"Lélia Gonzalez is an interpreter from Brazil, a place that black intellectuals have not yet managed to occupy in Brazilian society," says Márcia Lima, also organizer of the new anthology and professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of São Paulo, who highlights the silencing of black production also in the university.

For Lima, the predominance of white authors in the bibliography of the courses is only breaking thanks to the pressure exerted by young black people, who today are the majority of those who enter the country's public universities and demand that others read —and others - intellectuals.

"It is a change that comes more from the strength and demand of black, female and feminist youth, than from a change in the paradigm of universities," he analyzes.

Despite the late publication, Gonzalez's work is current.

By proposing a new vision of feminism, which considers the multiracial and multicultural character of Latin America, as opposed to the Eurocentric vision, he discussed, in the 70s and 80s, what today is close to the concepts of intersectional feminism (which incorporates racial and class inequalities) and decolonial (which questions the economic and thought order of the dominant groups).

For an Afro-Latin American feminism

, the text that gives its name to the anthology, was presented in Bolivia in 1988. In the article, Gonzalez affirms that the women's movement in Latin America repeats practices of racist exclusion and domination and that “blacks and Indians are the living testimony of that exclusion ”.

“It is undeniable that feminism, as theory and practice, has played a fundamental role in our struggles and conquests, insofar as, by presenting new questions, it not only stimulated the formation of groups and networks, but also developed the search of a new way of being a woman ”, writes the author.

"[But] To deal, for example, with the sexual division of labor without articulating it with its corresponding at the racial level, is to relapse into a kind of abstract universal rationalism, typical of a masculinizing and white discourse," he writes.

Both Lima and Rios point out that Gonzalez's text is avant-garde, because it addresses gender and race inequality, including the question of territory, first national and then continental.

"Lélia's vision is strange, because she thinks beyond the national," says Rios.

“American feminism, which we read and translate a lot, thinks of a situation from its own reality.

We recognize ourselves in it, but Lélia takes another step forward when thinking about the continent, and she did that in the 1980s. Not even Angela Davis, who later became internationalized by addressing the Palestinian issue, had not done it, "she says.

"It is a very powerful idea in historical terms, especially since Brazil tends to distance itself from Latin America due to issues such as language," says Lima.

At the beginning, Lélia de Almeida

Lélia de Almeida, who would have turned 85 in 2020, was the penultimate of 18 children.

Born in Belo Horizonte, at the age of seven she moved to Rio de Janeiro, after an unusual event in the life of a family without opportunities.

One of his brothers, 15 years older, was hired by the Flamengo football club.

Jaime de Almeida (1920-1973) would become the idol of the team in the 1940s.

Lélia came to work as a nanny for the children of the directors of Flamengo, but she continued studying.

"I went through that process that I call brainwashing that the Brazilian pedagogical discourse does, because as I deepened my knowledge, I increasingly rejected my condition as black," she explained.

The young woman graduated in History, Geography and Philosophy.

In 1964, she married Spaniard Luiz Carlos Gonzalez, a friend from college.

The white boy's family did not accept the relationship.

"Then, everything that I had repressed, the whole process of internalizing a 'racial democratic' discourse, emerged, and it was a direct contact with a very harsh reality," he said.

The life of the then teacher changed with the death of her husband, who committed suicide a year later.

It was when she, already 30 years old, immersed herself in two areas in search of a cure and self-knowledge that ended up becoming a reference in her work: psychoanalysis and candomblé.

The incursions into so many different areas made it a reference.

In 1975, he helped found the Research Institute of Black Cultures and the Freudian College of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1976, he taught the first institutional course on black culture in Brazil.

Flavia Rios points out that Gonzalez's relationship with these issues was intimate, but also practical, one of knowledge production.

“For Lélia it was all knowledge,” says Rios.

In his texts, in addition to combining different knowledge, Gonzalez adopts a peculiar style, uses an informal and irreverent language to approach these concepts.

In

Racism and Sexism in Brazilian Culture

, an article presented in 1980, questions the origin of the social places of the black population.

After highlighting that blacks would be “in the garbage can of Brazilian society, because the logic of domination determines this,” he provokes: “In this work we assume our own discourse.

In other words, the garbage will speak, and without problems ”.

Thought and action

Almost 40, Lélia Gonzalez, turned into a respected intellectual, began to military in the black movement.

In 1978, he participated in a mobilization that emerged in São Paulo and that later became national: the Unified Black Movement (MNU), which marked the return of street protests that clamored for racial justice in the midst of the dictatorship.

Gonzalez continued to be a thinker in the movement: she defended, for example, the importance of knowing the African roots to raise awareness among the militants.

According to Rios, the candomblé was preponderant in his political vision.

“Although he was very Marxist in his analysis, he understood that candomblé had an important social, cultural and spiritual place and that this was not exclusive.

I welcomed the experience of religiosity in the world of politics, "he says.

In 1981, Gonzalez began lecturing for the newly created Workers Party.

“They invited her to join the party, which was holding its first meeting to address racial issues in Brazil.

It was spectacular, ”says current federal deputy Benedita da Silva, 78, black, who met her at that time and became her friend.

In 1982, Lélia Gonzalez ran for federal deputy.

“I was the second most voted.

I didn't get the seat by eight hundred votes, but it was an interesting experience, "he said in a 1986 interview for

O Pasquim

magazine

.

The investigator's passage through the party was not entirely peaceful.

In 1983, in an article entitled

Racism by omission

, published in the

Folha de S.Paulo newspaper

, he criticized the absence of racial issues in a PT advertisement that was broadcast on television.

“The failed act in relation to blacks that marked the presentation of the PT seemed extremely serious to me, not only because some of the speakers who were there have a clear black ancestry, but because they spoke of a dream;

a dream that claims to be egalitarian, democratic, etc., but which is exclusive and exclusive.

A Europeanizing European dream ”, he wrote.

Three years after the article was published, Gonzalez left the PT and joined the Democratic Labor Party (PDT).

She ran for state deputy for Rio de Janeiro, but was not elected either.

The intellectual had other relevant performances in the world of politics.

For example, in the National Constituent Assembly, writing speeches and drafting proposals of the black movement for the Constitution of 1988.

Accustomed to an intense schedule, Lélia Gonzalez reduced her public appearances when she was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus in 1992. The disease caused her high blood pressure, heart problems and a great loss of weight (she reached 45 kilos).

On July 10, 1994, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 59.

For Flavia Rios, all the places that Gonzalez passed through converged to the defense of democracy.

“He was in the formation of the main organizations that fought against the dictatorship.

In the black movement, in the feminist movement, in the two main opposition parties that emerged at the end of the dictatorship, in the Constituent Assembly.

Not only did he think about democracy, but he was at the base of these institutions ”.

On November 20, 1983, Black Awareness Day, Lélia Gonzalez made a speech in the streets of Rio de Janeiro: “Let's fight, comrades, so that exploitation and oppression end in this country.

To be a racial democracy, this country needs to be effectively a democracy ”.