Black, disabled, gay and trans citizens celebrate as Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva is sworn is as Brazil’s president.
The Brazilian drag queen Salete Campari came to toast her country’s new era dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
“I feel fabulously happy,” said the activist and performer as she posed for selfies outside Brazil’s presidential palace while waiting for the country’s incoming president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to arrive.
“Now Brazil’s LGBTQIA+ community can feel free because we have a president who respects diversity. It’s so important. Everyone is welcome now,” said Campari.
“No one was welcome under that man,” she added of Lula’s proudly prejudiced predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose political demise has provided a long-awaited moment of redemption for the country’s marginalised minorities, as well as its black majority.
During Bolsonaro’s four-year reign, the presidential palace was occupied by a predominantly white, male assembly of politicians and military officials, many of whom were unabashed about their disregard for Indigenous and traditional black communities, favela residents and members of Brazil’s civil rights movement.
“The minority must bow to the majority,” Bolsonaro once declared.
But as Lula, 77, arrived to take office on Sunday, the stunning marble ramp into the palace was encircled by a melange of citizens representing one of the world’s most socially and racially diverse nations.
