Just look around the plenary of the National Congress to see that it is too masculine and too white to be representative of the population of Brazil, a country where 52% of the people are women and more than 56% declare themselves to be black or brown.
Of the 513 parliamentarians that make up the current Chamber of Deputies, 436 are men and 77 are women.
From a racial point of view, the disproportion is also blatant: while white federal deputies are 75%, blacks are 24%. In the Senate, underrepresentation is repeated: of 81 representatives, 13% are women and 4% are black.
An unprecedented movement, called Quilombo in Parliaments, aims to increase black representation in the National Congress and in state Legislative Assemblies.
There are more than one hundred pre-candidates linked to the black movement from various parts of the country, representing the Black Coalition for Rights, a network with more than 250 organizations.
Quilombo in Parliaments brings together, so far, 67 pre-candidates for state deputy, 31 for federal deputy, 2 for district and 1 for the Senate, in a supra-party alliance that involves PT, PSOL, PC do B, PSB, PDT and Rede Sustentabilidade.
The initiative will be launched this Monday (6th) at an event at the July 9th Occupation, in São Paulo.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon