The Renildo case: violence, politics, memory and activism in Brazil

• Grant number: 24/07384-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: February 29, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Regina Facchini
• Grantee: Jinx Vilhas Mauricio da Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to understand, through ethnography, the production of memory and victimhood in the historical relations between sexuality and other differences, based on the repercussions and narratives surrounding the murder of Renildo José dos Santos in 1993. A councillor from Coqueiro Seco-AL, his mandate was revoked that year when he exposed his bisexual sexuality during an interview on a local radio station. He was then kidnapped, tortured and murdered by an extermination group. The murder was denounced by the Gay Group of Bahia (GGB), as well as by local groups throughout the 1990s, as one of the most violent crimes ever committed against a gay man in Brazil. The case gained repercussions through the work of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and the international bisexual movement. Recently, the Brazilian bisexual movement has called for the case to be categorised as the murder of a bisexual. I intend to analyse the disputes surrounding the memory of the case, involving actors such as social movements, agents and sectors of the state, researchers and the press, both nationally and internationally. The proposed methodology includes conducting and analysing interviews, obtaining and analysing documents and news articles. Understanding this process of framing memory can reveal aspects of how narratives intersected by notions such as class, race, sexuality, gender and region are shaped and strategically mobilised by these actors around a public figure like Renildo, shedding light on the constitution of the notion of homophobia in Brazil and on the reconfiguration of the notion of violence in the country's process of re-democratisation.