Brazil: Rural LGBT+ Struggle Echoes the Voices of Those Who Have Been Silenced by Violence
The path toward profound social change includes the right to sexual and gender diversity. More and more, rural LGBT+ people are demanding a disruption of the current system that criminalizes and kills them, and they include this topic in the agenda of social movements’ unremitting struggle. Within grassroots rural movements, the struggle for LGBT+ rights is combined with the struggle for food sovereignty in the pursuit of a just world, with freedom and diversity, and equal relationships between people and nature.
In Brazil, solidarity has been at the center of the struggle against LGBTphobia in rural areas. On May 1st, 2021, Lindolfo Kosmaski, a member of the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra—MST), was brutally murdered at age 25. Ever since, La Via Campesina and ally grassroots movements have been echoing Lindolfo’s voice and his struggle, in pursuit of justice. Lindolfo was a teacher and an activist with the MST LGBT+ Collective. In May, Capire spoke with Luana Oliveira, a member of the MST and La Via Campesina LGBT+ Collective, about Lindolfo’s case and the diversity of the LGBT+ struggle within the movement.