Heloísa Helena Lima de Moraes Carvalho (; born 6 June 1962 in

Pão de Açúcar Sugarloaf Mountain ( pt, Pão de Açúcar, ) is a peak situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising above the harbor, the peak is named for its resemblance t ...

Alagoas Alagoas (, ) is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is the city of Maceió. It ...

) is a Brazilian

nurse Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health c ...

schoolteacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. wh ...

, and

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

, member of the political party Rede Sustentabilidade. She is the Brazilian woman to have received the third highest voting in a presidential race, ranking behind

Marina Silva Maria Osmarina da Silva Vaz de Lima (born 8 February 1958) is a Brazilian politician and environmentalist. She is the founder and former spokeswoman for the Sustainability Network Party (REDE). During her political career, Silva served as a sen ...

and

Dilma Rousseff Dilma Vana Rousseff (; born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the first w ...

in 2010. In 1998, she was elected Senator for

, having attained the highest vote count in that election. Then a member of the Workers' Party, she disagreed with certain policies that she deemed excessively conservative. Thus, in 2003 she voted against the overhaul of public servants' pensions carried out in the first term of President

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (; born Luiz Inácio da Silva; 27 October 1945), known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist, and former metalworker who is the president-elect of Brazil. A member of the Workers' Party, ...

, and, as a result, was expelled from the party. The following year, she was one of the founding members of the

Socialism and Liberty Party The Socialism and Liberty Party ( pt-BR, Partido Socialismo e Liberdade , PSOL ) is a left-wing political party in Brazil. The party describes itself as socialist and democratic. The party leader is Juliano Medeiros and the federal deputies I ...

. In 2013, she helped found the Rede Sustentabilidade Party, and has been a member thereof since then.

Career

A trained

, Helena helped found the Center of Health at the

Federal University of Alagoas Located in the city of Maceió, the Federal University of Alagoas ( pt, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, UFAL or Ufal) is the major university in coastal state Alagoas and one of the main research centers in Brazilian north eastern region (one o ...

. She was also involved in the

student movement Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political e ...

s against the

military dictatorship A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer. The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...

. She became a member of the left-wing Workers' Party (PT) and a leader of

Socialist Democracy Socialist democracy is a political system that aligns with principles of both socialism and democracy. It includes ideologies such as council communism, democratic socialism, and Soviet democracy, as well as Marxist democracy like the dictatorsh ...

, a

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

caucus in PT. In 1992, Helena was chosen as deputy mayor of

Maceió Maceió (), formerly sometimes Anglicised as Maceio, is the capital and the largest city of the coastal state of Alagoas, Brazil. The name "Maceió" is an Indigenous term for a spring. Most maceiós flow to the sea, but some get trapped and form l ...

as part of the PT- PSB

coalition government A coalition government is a form of government in which political parties cooperate to form a government. The usual reason for such an arrangement is that no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an election, an atypical outcome in ...

. In 1994, she was elected as a councilwoman in

and in 1998 was elected to the

Federal Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. Senate or the Senate may also refer to: * Any one of the national senates in the world, including ** The Brazilian Senate ** The United States Sen ...

. After PT's

won the

presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified by a ...

in 2002, Heloísa became one of the strongest critics of the new government's alignment with centrist politics. After voting against the party recommendation in the Senate, she was expelled from PT in December 2003 for allegedly breaking

party discipline Party discipline is a system of political norms, rules and subsequent respective consequences for deviance that are designed to ensure the relative cohesion of members of the respective party group. In political parties specifically (often refe ...

. She kept her seat in the Senate as an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

politician. Following her expulsion, Helena and other dissident members of PT founded a new party, the

Socialism and Freedom Party The Socialism and Liberty Party ( pt-BR, Partido Socialismo e Liberdade , PSOL ) is a left-wing political party in Brazil. The party describes itself as socialist and democratic. The party leader is Juliano Medeiros and the federal deputies I ...

(PSOL) in late 2004. She was the president of PSOL from 2004 to 2010, in addition to leading the

Freedom and Revolution Freedom and Revolution (in Portuguese: ''Liberdade e Revolução'') is a Marxist political grouping in Brazil, consisting mainly of members of the Socialist Democracy, and some former members of the Articulation of the Left, who have left or been ...

faction of the party. Helena was PSOL's candidate for president in the 2006 general elections. She had 6% of the voting, obtaining almost 6.6 million votes. During the following election, she was elected a councilwoman for Maceió, becoming the top voted candidate in the Alagoas state after achieving almost 30,000 votes. On 20 October 2010, it was announced by the media that Heloísa had left the presidency of PSOL. The councilwoman and former senator said she decided to departure from the national presidency of the party because of its support to Workers' Party presidential candidate

during the second round of the 2010 election. (In reality, PSOL only declared "critical support" of Rousseff, stating that it only chose to do so in order to secure the defeat of "right-wing" candidate

José Serra José Serra Chirico (; born 19 March 1942) is a Brazilian politician who has served as a Congressman, Senator, Minister of Planning, Minister of Health, Mayor of São Paulo, Governor of São Paulo state, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Braz ...

in the general elections, and that it would continue to oppose the centrist PT government; many members of the party, including defeated presidential candidate

Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Plínio Soares de Arruda Sampaio (26 July 1930 – 8 July 2014) was a Brazilian intellectual and political activist, who was affiliated with the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL). He ran as a candidate for the presidency of the Federative ...

, chose to annul their vote, refusing to support Rousseff.) In the press release, Helena made it clear that she will continue on PSOL. At the same election, Helena unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Senate for Alagoas. Despite leading the polls for a considerable amount of time, she got 417,636 votes (16.6% of the total), finishing the race in third, behind

Benedito de Lira Benedito Lyra (born May 1, 1941) is a Brazilian politician from Alagoas, member of Progressistas (PP), former Senator for his state and incumbent Mayor of Barra de São Miguel. Biography Lira is Bachelor of Laws by the Federal University of Ala ...

and

Renan Calheiros José Renan Vasconcelos Calheiros (; born 16 September 1955) is a Brazilian politician and former President of the Senate of Brazil. He has represented the state of Alagoas in the senate as a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party si ...

. In March 2022 she was amongst 151 international feminists signing ''Feminist Resistance Against War: A Manifesto'', in solidarity with the

Feminist Anti-War Resistance Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR or FAWR, russian: Феминистское антивоенное сопротивление (ФАС), Feministskoye antivoyennoye soprotivleniye (FAS)) is a group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to ...

initiated by Russian feminists after the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

Career

References

External links