The history of resistance and construction of the LGBTI+ movement in the Sertão Potiguar
Patriarchy; LGBTI+ Movement; hinterland potiguar; gender violence.
The imperatives of patriarchy, crossed by the logic of capitalism, are constituted by attributing a series of powers and privileges to cisgender men to the detriment of women and LGBTI+ people. This system gains new configurations according to the historical, social and economic context that is established. It is necessary to consider that, when dealing with LGBTI+ people, and specifically transvestites and transsexuals, who subvert the norms of cisgenderism, these relationships are even more intense, suffering the most inhuman expression of the “social issue”. Thus, in resistance to this context of exploitation and oppression, various forms of confrontation are articulated; among them, organized social movements, which manifest themselves as a refraction of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production in response to social inequalities. These collectives move to represent the interests of these populations, with emphasis on the LGBTI+ Movement, which was born in Brazil in the late 1970s, still in confrontation with the autocratic bourgeois regime. Currently, activism manifests itself in different ways, expanding to the country's corners, decentralizing from large urban centers and state capitals and marking its trajectory of struggles, building agendas with diverse demands related to citizenship, social rights, public policies and the combating homotransphobia, heterosexism and other forms of oppression and exploitation. Therefore, this work intends to analyze the emergence and performance of the LGBTI+ movement in the Sertão Potiguar from the perspective of the resistance and struggle of its/its founders. This research scenario is marked by a region with legacy of coronelismo/clientelismo, by the stigmas of drought, poverty and social vulnerabilities. Thus, the work aims to analyze, from an ethnographic perspective, the context of the emergence, performance, and relations produced by the collectives in this social fabric. The research outline was developed in the following steps, namely: the first step was the immersion in the everyday productions of the organized movement to understand the context of emergence, its operating dynamics, main guidelines, construction of agendas and actions; in the second stage, interviews were conducted using the thematic oral history tool with the founders of the movement to better detail how these life trajectories meet militancy in this geographic territory. It was noticed that the collectives emerged in the context of a conservative wave and the health crisis caused by the pandemic and were organized, at first, in an attempt to repair the historical violence to which transvestites and transsexuals were subjected, but were able to advance significantly in dialogue with the government and other social institutions in this territory of the Sertão Potiguar.