In an interview, Kelvin Nicolas, from the MST’s LGBTI+ National Collective, talks about the symbolism of the date in the fight for Agrarian Reform. International Day against Homophobia,Transphobia and Biphobia is celebrated all over the world. The date is important in remembering the central role of the fight against discrimination and violence against LGBTQIAPN+ people and encouraging public debate on this issue. Kelvin Nicolas, from the National LGBTI+ Collective and the state leadership of MST SP, talks about the meaning of this date for Landless Workers and the need to move forward.
What is the significance of May 17th for the LGBT community of the MST?
The date was chosen due to the historic decision of the World Health Organization (WHO) to remove homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), in 1990. This was an important step in the fight for the depathologization of sexual orientation and gender identity, built by many hands through the organization of communities, LGBT populations from all over the world, who have joined together for time and decades in this fight against various forms of violence.
Can you comment on the main difficulties and violence still faced by the LGBTQIA+ population in the last period?
Historically, the LGBTQIA+ population has suffered and faced various forms of violence against their bodies, their territories, their ways of being in the world and being able to love those they love. And we are facing a situation that is still mired in uncertainty, even if significant progress has been made in terms of the resumption of the National LGBTQIA+ Secretariat and the resumption of public policies for the LGBTQIA+ population.
It is also important in the construction of the Popular Agrarian Reform. It helps us to think about who are the subjects that build this agrarian reform that we want? Where does it start from? From what human, social and financial political relations, but also with a diverse and humane political participation.
But there is also the fear of hunger, the shadow of poverty, and the violence that still hangs over our territories, over this marginalized population that is increasingly incriminated and violated. Because the places where these policies are accessible, but also the places where people socialize, live together, and build their lives, allow for increasingly harsher violence. And when it does not kill them directly, it takes away our ways of being in the world; because it takes away our rights, our health, our education, our homes, our land. And what we are left with is the rubble.
What are the main advances made by the MST LGBTI+ Collective across the country?
We have made great historical progress within the organization. This organization, especially the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), because it is also an organization of its time, of its history, of it advances according to history – provokes and builds other ways of thinking, other ways of seeing things. It builds human values and emancipate human relations.
Therefore, this is a collective that is still new to the organization, having existed for only seven years. It has been involved in this journey of praxis and construction for over 15 years – since the first seminar in 2015 on the MST and sexual and gender diversity, which took place at the Florestan Fernandes National School. Although it is a collective within this organization, it is still small, but it has contributed greatly and reflected on the group. It is already helping us take steps on a daily basis to confront violence in the countryside, the various forms of violence, and to combat agribusiness and its way of producing food that poisons our people.
It is also important in the construction of the Popular Agrarian Reform. It helps us to think about who are the subjects that build this agrarian reform that we want? Where does it start from? From what human, social and financial political relations, but also with a diverse and humane political participation.
How has the MST LGBTI+ Collective been working in the territories?
A short time ago, we launched a campaign to combat LGBT phobia in the countryside . This is an ongoing campaign and its purpose is to combat and confront violence on a daily basis, not only in our camps and settlements, but in our various territories where we are organized, whether in rural schools, cooperatives, or associations, seeking to combat violence in its entirety.
But combating violence also involves guaranteeing rights. So, while we guarantee rights for the population, for rural people, we also emancipate these people so that they can have access to a better way of life, with dignity.
How has the campaign worked beyond that?
It aims to strengthen our social base in the fight against violence, but also to create bridges of education that are capable of emancipating individuals, and that these individuals are increasingly the builders of their own history. And for us, this has a very big meaning, because the countryside is a place where machismo, heterosexism, private property, and a sexual division of labor are rooted, which must be constantly combated.
Therefore, taking on this task of combating violence, not only against LGBTQIA+ individuals, but in all spheres, whether it is violence against any human being, any living being, is a task for our organization as a whole.
And what is the projection of the collective’s struggles for the next period?
In the Movement, we continue to join the ranks of the struggle, the trenches of the organization, so that we can advance on the issue, but also advance in the fight against violence. We can then, together with other organizations, peasant organizations and other LGBTQIA+ movements in the popular field, continue to strengthen ourselves and build joint actions that produce real results for the LGBTQIA+ population in Brazil.
Combating violence also involves guaranteeing rights. So, while we guarantee rights for the population, for rural people, we also emancipate our people so that they can have access to a better way of life, with dignity.
Notes:
LGBTIQAPN+: An acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, Asexual, Pansexual, and Non-binary. This term is used to encompass the diversity of identities and orientations within the broader LGBTQ+ community.
Depathologization means removing a condition, identity, or behavior from being considered a “pathology” (a disease or disorder). In the context of gender and sexual diversity, depathologization is the movement to eliminate the classification of identities like homosexuality, trans identities, or gender diversity as mental illnesses or medical disorders. It promotes the idea that these identities are normal variations of human experience and should not be stigmatized or treated as if they were illnesses.
By Solange Engelmann, From the MST website