Marielle Franco speaking at Debate Partida. September 22, 2016. Photo Credit: Marcelo Freixo. Wikimedia Commons.

By Jaimee A. Swift

Black Women Radicals executive director and co-chair of the 2nd Defend Black Women March, Jaimee Swift, examines the life, leadership, and legacy of Marielle Franco and the importance of Black feminist solidarity as a political mandate.

I remember exactly where I was when I learned about the assassination of Marielle Franco. I was at a conference in Chicago, Illinois, speaking on a panel about my research, which focuses on Black Brazilian feminists in Salvador, the capital city of the state of Bahia, and how they resist and organize against multiform violence. On March 14, 2018, shortly after speaking at the event, “Young Black Women Moving Power Structures” at Casas das Pretas (Black Women’s House) in Rio de Janeiro, Franco was shot and murdered while sitting in the backseat of a car. Her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, was shot and murdered as well. Four years after her death, there are still no answers as to why there was an order to assassinate Franco.

I was devastated to hear about Franco’s passing–sentiments which were shared with countless people around the world. A bisexual activist, politician, and human rights defender, Franco was an outspoken critic of anti-Black state violence; unabashed about uplifting and mobilizing the creativity of Black faveladas (women from the favelas); and a staunch supporter of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. As a Black woman from the favelas, she was dedicated–as she once stated– “...to doing politics in a different way.”

A symbol of resistance, Franco was an inspiration to Black women and gender expansive communities in Brazil and beyond. Her untimely death inspired over 1,000 Black women to run for political office in 2018. Moreover, her life, leadership, and legacy are an important example of the power, necessity, and urgency of global Black feminist solidarity.

Marielle Franco and the Mandate of Global Black Feminist Solidarity

“Franco’s usage of “Ubuntu” reflects a historical and contemporary Black political mandate–particularly a Black feminist political mandate–of solidarity and the quest for liberation across borders, binaries, and boundaries.”

Franco was born on July 27, 1979 and raised in the Complexo da Maré, one of the largest shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro. At the age of 19, Franco became a single mother to her daughter, Luyara. When she became a mother, her worldview changed and she started to think about what she could actively do to make her community a better place. After losing a friend to a stray bullet from a shootout between police officers and drug traffickers in Maré, Franco became vocal about police violence, which disproportionately impacts Black communities in Brazil. She wrote her master’s thesis in public administration at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) about the punitive atrocities committed by the police in a publication titled, “UPP, the Reduction of the Favela to Three Letters: An Analysis of Public Security Policy in the State of Rio de Janeiro”

In 2016, she was elected city councilor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro as a member of PSOL (Partido Socialismo e Liberdade-Socialism and Liberty Party) with 46,502 votes. She received the fifth highest vote count out of the 51 vacant seats and was the second woman with the highest number of votes. She was the only Black woman city councilor from Rio. Her campaign slogan was “Eu sou porque nós somos” (I am because we are), which is reflective of an African philosophy of collectivism known as “Ubuntu”, which translates to “I am, because we are” or “humanity towards others.” According to Brazilian scholar Flavia Meireles, Ubuntu was utilized by South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela as a way to catalyze unity and to “...incite South African liberation.”

Here, Franco’s usage of Ubuntu reflects a historical and contemporary Black political mandate–particularly a Black feminist political mandate–of solidarity and the quest for liberation across borders, binaries, and boundaries.

For example, while speaking at Casas das Pretas on the night she was murdered, Franco ended her speech by citing Caribbean-American lesbian feminist, poet, and activist, Audre Lorde, from from her 1981 keynote speech, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” Later, Franco said to the audience, in somewhat of a rallying cry, “Let's go, let's take everything together (sic).”

When I think of Franco’s citation of Lorde, I reflect on how Lorde created Black feminist solidarity, community, and friendship with Afro-German queer women such as May Ayim and Ika Hügel-Marshall while teaching at the Free University of Berlin during the mid-1980s to early 1990s. A vocal critic of South African Apartheid, Lorde and her partner, Crucian-American activist and scholar, Dr. Gloria I. Joseph, co-founded Sisterhood in Support of Sisters (SISA) in the 1980s to offer direct support to Black South African women impacted by apartheid.

I also think about Black American queer activist and scholar, Dr. Angela Y. Davis, and how she has constantly uplifted Black Brazilian feminists such as Franco and Lélia Gonzalez, who was an anthropologist and politician critical to the advancement of de-colonial Black feminist theory in the country. When speaking of Gonzalez–who Davis met at a conference in Baltimore, Maryland in 1989–Davis said at an event in São Paulo in 2019: “It’s so strange to me that you all seek me as ‘the name’ of Black feminism. Why do you all want this? You all have Lélia Gonzalez, who wrote about intersectionality long before the term was even born.”

Demonstration in Union Square in New York City after the murder of human rights defender and feminist Marielle Franco. March 16, 2018. Photo Credit: Iro Bosero. Wikimedia Commons.

Gonzalez coined the theory of Amefricanidade, which interrogates Black and Indigenous women’s livelihoods and resistance in Brazil and across the Diaspora. Gonzalez wrote about and centered 18th century Jamaican leader and Obeah woman, Nanny of the Maroons–who led rebellions against British colonizers–as a pillar of her theory.

I also think about Afro-Colombian feminist and environmental and land rights activist, Francia Márquez Mina, who became Colombia’s and South America’s first Black woman vice-president this past June. During her campaign for presidency, Márquez Mina’s slogan–like Franco–was “Soy Porque Nos Somos” or “I Am Because We Are”, signifying the need for the interconnectedness of community, unity, and resistance among Colombia’s most marginalized.

While these are only a few examples of Black feminist solidarity across time, space, and place in the Diaspora, it is important that those who are dedicated to the liberation and safety of Black girls, women, femmes, and gender expansive people continue to build on the legacies of radical movement building so that we can truly be free.

Defend Black Women: Centering Black Feminisms in Latin America and the Caribbean

Image of Marielle Franco. Image Credit: Jay Curry.

This is why the 2nd Defend Black Women March, which took place on Saturday, July 30th in Washington, D.C., was in honor of Franco and is in solidarity with and in defense of Black feminisms in Latin America and the Caribbean. My co-chair, Trinice McNally and I decided to center the lives, leadership, and legacies of Black women and gender expansive people in Latin America and the Caribbean because oftentimes, their contributions are overlooked; as Black feminist thought and behavior in the United States is predominantly centralized.

Moreover, we must be intentional in making political connections and linkages to how imperialism, state violence, transphobia, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, misogynoir, and more impact the material conditions of Black women and marginalized genders across the Diaspora.

For example, Brazil–which houses the largest Black population outside of Nigeria–has a long lineage of Black feminists who have and continue to shape politics in the country such as Sueli Carneiro, Luiza Bairros, Djamila Ribeiro, and Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos. However, Black Brazilians are disproportionately impacted by anti-Black state violence. Countless activists have cited what is going on in the country as genocide. Statistics also show that at least six in the Black women in the country are murdered by the police. Brazil also has the highest rate of LGBTQ+ murders in the world. Specifically, Brazil is the country that murders the most transgender people in the world, with 82 percent of victims being Black travestis and trans women.

While the United States Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v. Wade–a landmark decision which established a constitutional right to abortion in 1973– and protests have ensued all over the country, it is critical that our fight for abortion rights and access and reproductive justice is transnational in scope as well. For example, under Brazil’s Penal Code, “abortion is only legal in cases of rape, incest, to save a woman’s life, and, since 2012, in the case of anencephaly—a fatal condition in which infants are born without parts of the brain or skull.”

Anthropologist Kia Lily Caldwell, author of Health Equity in Brazil: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Policy (2017), notes that “for those [in Brazil] who resort to termination of their pregnancies outside of those statutes, they may face up to one to three years in prison”. Caldwell’s research also shows that Black women in Brazil are three times more likely to die from abortions than white women and in Salvador da Bahia “abortions have been the leading cause of maternal death for decades”.

State Deputy of Rio de Janeiro, Renata Souza, sends her solidarity and support to the organizers of the 2nd Defend Black Women March, which is in honor of Marielle Franco and Black Feminisms in Latin America and the Caribbean. Video caption and translations by the Kilomba Collective.

According to The Center for Reproductive Rights, Black and Indigenous women in Brazil are overwhelmingly impacted by maternal mortality. Here, the case of Alyne da Silva Pimentel Teixeira should be at the forefront when examining the fight for global reproductive justice. On November 11, 2002, Teixeira, an Afro-Brazilian poor and pregnant woman, went to a private health clinic in the city of Belford Roxo in Rio de Janeiro, after experiencing symptoms of high-risk pregnancy. However, after several attempts at trying to receive maternal care, Teixeira died due to medical negligence–she died after more than 21 hours without medical care. After domestic and international lawsuits were filed on behalf of Teixeira, Alyne v. Brazil is the “first case on maternal mortality to be decided by an international human rights body” and according to Rebecca Cook, the case marks “….the first decision of an international treaty body holding a government accountable for a preventable maternal death.”

Moreover, one of Franco’s political initiatives was “Livre Parir” (Free Birthing), which focused on reproductive freedom and access to combat the pervasive obstetric violence that women -particularly Black women – endure in Brazil.

Anielle Franco (middle), sister of Marielle Franco and executive director of the Marielle Franco Institute, with 2nd Defend Black Women March Co-Chairs, Trinice McNally (left) and Jaimee Swift (right). Photo by Getty Images.

Solidarity: Then, Now, and Beyond

“...it is important that those who are dedicated to the liberation and safety of Black girls, women, femmes, and gender expansive people continue to build on the legacies of radical movement building so that we can truly be free.”

July is a month of resistance and solidarity for Black women and gender expansive people in Latin America and the Caribbean. This year marks the 30th anniversary of International Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, and Diaspora Women’s Day, which is celebrated annually on July 25th and was created in honor of the first summit of Afro-Latina and Afro-Caribbean Women in the Dominican Republic in 1992. July is also recognized as Julho Das Pretas (Black Women’s July), which was created by Odara-Instituto da Mulher Negra (Odara-Black Women’s Institute) in honor of Black women’s movement building in Brazil. July is also the birth month of Afro-Brazilian theorist and activist, Beatriz Nascimento, and Black American revolutionary, Assata Shakur.

July is the month that we lost Black American activist, Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in a jail cell in Walker County, Texas on July 13, 2015-three days after she was unjustly arrested. In the United States, July is Disability Pride Month. Annually, July 31st is International African Women’s Day.

And July 27th of this year would have been Marielle Franco’s 43rd birthday.

As we commemorate, honor, and celebrate Franco and countless other Black women in Latin America, in the Caribbean, on the African continent, and across the Diaspora such as Cécile Fatiman, Maria de los Reyes, Argelia Laya, Emilsen Manyoma, and Gumercinda Páez, we must remember that our solidarity and our defense of Black women and gender expansive people should not just be practiced during a month or on a particular day–it should be a part of our everyday praxis.

Like Franco, we must continue to look to the past and build on what our predecessors have done to catalyze true solidarity and community, so that we can truly actualize the concept of Ubuntu now and in the future.

“I Am Because We Are”: Marielle Franco and The Political Mandate of Black Feminist Solidarity