Participants of the LGBT Pride parade, this Sunday, June 19, in São Paulo, Brazil. CARLA CARNIEL (REUTERS)
A diverse crowd of hundreds of thousands of people took to São Paulo's main avenue this Sunday to celebrate LGBT Pride back on the streets after a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On a winter day, gray and cold for these latitudes (16 degrees at noon), a majority without a mask has enjoyed the classic combination of party, loud music, claims and commercial brands looking for new audiences on Paulista Avenue.
"It's one of the few days of the year where I can show myself as I am because we grew up hearing that being LGBT was wrong," explains Matheus Candido, 22, shortly before the real party starts, at noon.
He begins to dance as soon as the first chords sound from one of the dozens of buses that turn the avenue into a gigantic open-air nightclub throughout the day
This year's parade is being held with an eye toward elections scheduled for four months from now.
"Vote with pride" is the motto of this 26th edition.
"Our current president (Jair Bolsonaro) says that we have to kill us, or beat us up," emphasizes Joana Anselmo, a friend of Candido and also 22 years old.
They explain that, for this reason, they will vote for the candidate who wants them alive, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
It is not that the former president arouses overwhelming enthusiasm among those who participate in Pride, but they consider him the undisputed option before the epic duel that is shaping up for October.
Because, as Maite Schneider, 51, says, "there is little to choose from."
Crowds celebrate next to an allegorical float that shows the theme of the 26th Pride parade in São Paulo: "Vote with pride."NELSON ALMEIDA (AFP)
The organizers expect three million participants.
Among the crowd, gay couples who had never participated in a Pride, veterans with many editions behind them, transsexual mothers with children and adolescents, some brave people showing a lot of skin, young people who came from suburban neighborhoods or from other cities to exhibit with pride in their sexual identity, something that for many is impossible in their daily lives or was until not so long ago.
Candido recalls that growing up "it was like being a species that you didn't even know existed."
His family, like most of his group of friends, knows that he is in the Pride.
He grew up in a city like São Paulo, huge and much more open to LGTBI citizens than most of Brazil, which is conservative and holds the world record for murders of transgender people.
Swarming among the participants, drug addicts whom the police dispersed in May when they dismantled Cracolandia, the largest open-air crack market in Brazil, which was in a nearby neighborhood.
It is the first time that Renan Lacerda, 31, and Anderson Alves, 33, participate in the great annual party of the gay community.
"We always wanted to feel this energy, this freedom, here we can hug, kiss... without fear," says the first.
This couple is from the State of Amazonas, one from Manaus, the other from Belén.
Two conservative cities that President Bolsonaro has visited this weekend to ride a motorcycle with his followers.
Together they moved not so long ago to a city in the interior of the State of São Paulo.
Schneider is, instead, a veteran.
She says that she has participated in each and every one of the 26 editions.
This year she has put on huge wings made with the flags of Brazil and the LGBT community.
Her personal claim, on the shirt: "Be a citizen and be embraced by the Constitution."
She says that in October she will vote "for someone who understands that we all have the right to be and show ourselves as we are."
The young Anselmo details that she is in the 2022 Pride parade so that they stop killing gays, lesbians, transsexuals... For the end of discrimination in the premises, so that in the series, the movies and the telenovelas have more LGBT characters, so that heterosexuals stop speaking on their behalf, to dress, do their hair and make up as they please without being insulted on the street and, of course, also because it is a fantastic party where they feel safe .