Displacement, interruption, and precariousness define our current moment, marked by a global health crisis in ways that resonate deeply with queer, trans, and travesti communities who have faced ongoing crises of health, housing, work, and survival.
Many Brazilian LGBTQIA+ people in Lisbon and other areas of Portugal who come in search of respite from crises confront racist, homo- and transphobic Portuguese society and cultural contexts. While Brazilians represent the largest immigrant group in Portugal, this does not belie Luso-Brazilian cultural norms informed by Portuguese colonial history, and an appropriation of African and Brazilian cultures as multicultural tourist trappings and contemporary Lusotropicalist narratives.
We follow this transit, tracing routes of queer, Black, trans, travesti and diaspora desires and identities in Lisbon with Puta da Silva - artist, performer, and founder of Casa T - Lisbon's first home for travesti and trans immigrants, in conversation with Miguel Vale de Almeida - Full Professor of Anthropology at ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, researcher at the Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), and LGBT rights’ activist who, as a member of the Portuguese Parliament, was instrumental in the the passing of the equal marriage and gender identity laws.
We will consider what it means to create Afrotravesti and travestigenere music, performances, and social spaces in Lisbon, and what forms LGBTQIA+ activism in Portugal must take to confront and support Afrotravesti diasporas and contend with Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian society and history.
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