Lívia Gonçalves Buzolin (2025)
Social Politics
BLOG: Despite a global trend of autocratization, Brazil’s LGBTQI and feminist movements resisted attacks under Bolsonaro’s government, achieving unprecedented legal and political gains through collective action and strategic alliances
Blog post by Lívia Buzolin, Researcher, Getulio Vargas Foundation São Paulo Law School and LawTransform Global Fellow.
There is no doubt that autocratization is a global trend. However, despite the strengthening of the anti-gender movement and the resurgence of anti-democratic tendencies by far-right and conservative actors in Latin America, the region went against the global trend by increasing its democracy levels (Nord et al., 2024).
Brazil is a compelling example of how to resist the autocratization process and in my latest article “Autocratization and LGBTQI Rights in Brazil: Contextualizing Attacks and Resistances under Bolsonaro’s government” (Buzolin, 2025), I explored how LGBTQI resistance happened collectively in the country, achieving a non-retrogression result during this period of autocratization.
The article is a result of the data gathered during my PhD at Getulio Vargas Foundation, São Paulo, Brazil and of the literature mobilized during the master and PhD courses “Gendered Autocratization as a global challenge”, which I had the privilege to assist LawTransform’s directors Siri Gloppen and Lise Rakner, along with my friend Ana de Mello Côrtes.
Among the different ways resistance can be drawn in authoritarian and autocratization processes, the article presents how resistance was held by feminist and LGBTQI movements in Brazil, two of the most target groups by new autocrats, thus, challenging the role attributed to gender and sexuality in these processes. The Brazilian resistance was held by a powerful triad that was targeted during Bolsonaro’s government: (i) civil society organizations part of feminist and LGBTQI social movements; (ii) lawmakers, and (iii) Federal Supreme Court Justices.
The research showcases that the reach and intensity of the results of the triad’s actions were unprecedented. When the democratic period is considered as a whole, i.e., from 1987 to 2022, it was during the autocratization period (2019 to 2022) that a larger number of bills and Supreme Court decisions on LGBTQI rights were issued, and transgender people were elected to the House of Representative for the first time in Brazilian history.
It may be the case that since Bolsonaro was always so open about his position against LGBTQI rights, resistance was seeing the attacks coming and was better prepared to design strategies. Another aspect to consider is that autocrats usually work with division, fear, and attacks on different actors, which can create a favorable environment for alliances that have the common objective of resisting them.
Only future research with social movements and key actors can illuminate how strategies were thought and designed during a period of autocratization, and if this kind of resistance can be replicated in other contexts. I hope the article has started an important conversation on the different roles LGBTQI rights can play in the ongoing wave of autocratization.
References
Buzolin, L. G. 2025. Autocratization and LGBTQI Rights in Brazil: Contextualizing Attacks and Resistances under Bolsonaro’s government. Social Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaf034
Nord, M.; Lundstedt, M.; Altman, D.; Angiolillo, F.; Borella, C.; Fernandes, T.; Gastaldi, L.; God, A. G.; Natsika, N. and Lindberg, S. 2024. Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot. University of Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute.