in Brazil, the astonishing journey of Ediane Maria do Nascimento – L’Express

To reach the office of MP Ediane Maria do Nascimento, you have to cross long corridors with parquet floors so well polished that they look like mirrors. A swarm of maintenance workers methodically work on polishing them. The elected representative of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo (Alesp) knows this work well. Yesterday still a domestic worker, she moved to the other side of society. Since March 2023, she has sat in the regional parliament of the richest and most populous state in Brazil, that of Sao Paulo (44 million inhabitants) whose GDP exceeds that of Belgium or Argentina.

To mark the start of her mandate, the former empregada (domestic employee) chose a strong gesture: “I gave a breakfast for the household employees, says the 40-year-old parliamentarian, mane Black power and your cheerful tone. It seems that since I have been here, the deputies have been saying hello to them… Before, we didn’t even notice them.” In Brazil, theempregada is the handywoman, indispensable to the white bourgeoisie of a country which was the last in the Western world to abolish slavery, in 1888, after having been the main slave-producing country on the American continent. “I grew up with the idea that it was impossible for a simple servant to come to power,” confides to L’Express the one everyone calls by her first name.

In a state that traditionally votes to the right, the sunny personality and charisma of “Ediane Maria” won over more than 175,000 voters in the state of Sao Paulo. If the province paulista is considered conservative, the regional capital – a megacity of 12 million inhabitants – is, for its part, rather progressive. This is where she got her fill of votes. “Here, Tarcísio de Freitas lost,” she recalls about the new governor of the state of São Paulo, who was the Minister of Infrastructure for Jair Bolsonaro, head of state from 2019 to 2022. “Sa power, São Paulo owes it to its migrants”, continues the woman who is, like so many others, an “internal immigrant” from the deprived Northeast.

Since the 1930s, the Paulista state has received millions, contributing to the development of a powerful economy. The Nordestine was only 18 years old when, in 2002, she left Pernambuco – which is also the native state of President Lula – to become empregada. It’s his own mother, a caseira (guardian of a property), who had found a place for her in the economic capital. “I dreamed of becoming a teacher,” she remembers. “I had not yet understood that we black people [NDLR : 56 % de la population du Brésil]we are relegated to subordinate functions, deprived of the most basic rights, such as access to education.”

In her tiny maid’s room, young Ediane Maria do Nascimento quickly returns from her fleeting illusions. “I worked fourteen, even sixteen hours a day,” she remembers. “I had to take the children to school, prepare meals, do the cleaning.” A grueling routine, which quickly proves incompatible with the continuation of his school curriculum. The one who was then a high school student was therefore forced to postpone her entry into final year… by thirteen years! She will in fact complete her course in Sao Paulo. Because in Brazil, where the poor masses enter the job market very young, it is possible to suspend schooling to resume it as an adult.

3 out of 4 domestic workers work informally

A number of Brazilians, forced to work at will, share the daily life of Ediane Maria. This is because, in terms of the number of domestic workers, Brazil is the world champion: more than 7 million in total (out of an active population of around 79 million workers). The overwhelming majority are black women, who, until 2013, did not benefit from the same social protections as other employees. That year, Congress, under pressure from the International Labor Organization (ILO), finally remedied this injustice by limiting the duration of working hours to 8 hours per day and 44 hours per week and by granting a thirteenth month’s salary. The bourgeoisie has never forgiven left-wing President Dilma Rousseff for this historic advance in labor law which, at the time, only one MP opposed. Her name ? Jair Bolsonaro…

However, ten years later, almost nothing has changed: 3 out of 4 domestic workers are still deprived of any social protection and employment contract, even though their job is the leading female profession in Brazil. Finally, many of them are unaware of their rights. Also Ediane Maria proposes the creation of orientation centers to allow them to obtain information. His bill was adopted urgently by the Regional Assembly of Sao Paulo, although it has a majority on the right. The ball is now in the court of the Bolsonarist governor who has still not promulgated the text. “Tarcísio de Freitas has not provided any explanation, growls the parliamentarian. I have asked him for an audience, without success for the moment.”

“My sisters are “domesticas”, my daughter will be an engineer”

The representative of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) also paints an unflattering portrait of the latter: “Tarcísio is Bolsonaro’s political heir. More polite than him, certainly, but just as harsh towards the movements of civil society.” Housing rights activist, her second hat, the parliamentarian knows what she is talking about: she is one of the members of the coordination of the powerful Movement of Homeless Workers (MTST).

An urban version of the Landless Movement (MST), the “sem teto” squat on abandoned land to demand the construction of housing on site. “It was among the ‘roofless’ that I forged my political conscience, learned solidarity, and drew the strength to raise my four children alone.” Ediane Maria joined the movement in 2017, pitching her tent on what would become the largest squat in Latin America, a huge unoccupied plot of 70,000 square meters in the suburbs of Sao Paulo where 12,000 families camped.

Thus it officially became a “sem teto”, a term which designates, beyond the homeless, the millions of poor workers unable to pay rent, even in a favela. A situation which worsened after the dismissal, in 2016, of Dilma Rousseff, which ended thirteen years of power of the Workers’ Party (Lula’s party). The right, then the far right, who took control of the country, “paralyzed social policies”, she accuses. Returning to power a year ago, “Lula devoted his early term in office to relaunching them,” she welcomes. And even if the president refused to appoint a black judge to the Supreme Court, the anti-racist activist does not intend to criticize the tutelary figure of the left. And this, especially since his party, the PSOL, supports Lula’s government.

On the contrary, she prefers to recall one of the major reforms put in place under the PT: the quotas which allowed blacks and Native Americans to enter university. In Brasília, Congress has just renewed them for a period of ten years. A relief for all descendants of slaves. “In my time, it was unthinkable for black youth to study,” says Ediane Maria, whose mother and sisters were also domestic workers. “My daughter will be an engineer,” she continues, “thanks to the quotas which have made it possible to break the cycle of reproduction of inequalities.” Oddly, some black people oppose this measure.

This is for example the case of regional deputy Guto Zacarias. Vice-president of the right-wing majority in the Parliament of Sao Paulo, “the big black capitalist”, as he presents himself, wants to be the champion of “meritocracy”, a speech which appeals to a certain number of Afro-Brazilians . “I don’t see how we could fight on equal terms in a country as unequal as Brazil,” laments Ediane Maria. She recognizes him. “This black right that emerged in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro is a real challenge for us,” she admits. And to wonder, thoughtfully: “At what point did the left get lost so that the ideas of the right permeated its first victims?”