Erika Hilton, Sao Paulo's first Black trans city councillor highlights 'adverse' racism in Brazil

A Brazilian city councillor in Sao Paulo Erika Hilton has termed the South American country as a racist and LGBT-phobic country. The 27-year-old Black trans woman claimed she has been profiled for her skin in her political career.

"Brazil is a racist, LGBT-phobic country, and I have all this in my body, in my political platform. So I would never have imagined that in the largest city in Latin America this black, poor, transvestite body from the fringes could be the most-voted in the country in the municipal elections of 2020. There were 388 years of slavery, it has been almost 140 years of a false abolition, and we are still in construction, we are still fighting for our humanity, for our belonging, so that we are not a novelty in politics for example," Erika said.

Erika was in the 'top 10' most-voted councillors across the whole country in the 15 November municipal elections, and was the most-voted woman. She said more needs to be done to curb racism.

"There is no way to break the structural and institutional racism without talking about education, without talking about culture, without talking about housing and without reviewing this failed model of public security that we have in Brazil," she said.

Brazil is known for a strong culture of machismo and homophobia. Last year 124 trans people were murdered in the country, one of the highest figures in the world.