Zélia Amador
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Zélia Amador de Deus (born 1951) is a Brazilian university professor emerita, activist for the rights of the black population, an advocate for affirmative action in higher education, an actress and theatre director. She was one of the founders of the "Centre for Studies and Defence of Black People" in the Brazilian state of
Pará Pará () is a Federative units of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins (state), Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas (Brazilian st ...
.


Early life and education

Amador was born on 24 October 1951 in Soure in the
quilombo A ''quilombo'' (); from the Kimbundu word , ) is a Brazilian hinterland town, settlement founded by people of Afro-Brazilians, African origin, and others sometimes called Carabali. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos, called quilombolas, were ...
territory of Mangueiras on the
Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
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of
Marajó Marajó () is a large coastal island in the state of Pará, Brazil. It is the main and largest of the islands in the Marajó Archipelago. Marajó Island is separated from the mainland by Marajó Bay, Pará River, smaller rivers (especially M ...
in Pará. Daughter of a teenage mother, Doralice Amador, who worked as a maid and, seasonally, in a chestnut factory, she moved to
Belém Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará), often called Belém of Pará, is the capital and largest city of the state of Pará in the north of B ...
, capital of Pará, when she was 15 and lived in the Sacramenta neighbourhood of the city. She studied at ''Externato Santo Expedito'' and later continued at the ''Instituto Catarina Labouré'', a
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
school, where she was so advanced in mathematics that the teacher asked her to help with assisting the other students. With little money, she worked as a cook for a neighbour to get the money for bus fares to school. Before entering university, she studied at the (IEP). Although she had experienced episodes of racism in her childhood, it was while at high school that she became more militant in the black movement, playing a role in the establishment of the ''Frente de Ação Secundarista Paraense'' (Paraense High School Action Front - FASPA), created in 1968, a year marked by an increase in repression by the
military dictatorship in Brazil The military dictatorship in Brazil (), occasionally referred to as the Fifth Brazilian Republic, was established on 1 April 1964, after a 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, coup d'état by the Brazilian Armed Forces, with support from the United Stat ...
and student unrest in many other countries. In 1974, Amador obtained an undergraduate degree in the Portuguese language from the
Federal University of Pará The Federal University of Pará (, UFPA) is one of the Public university, public universities maintained by the Brazilian Federal government of Brazil, federal government in the States of Brazil, state of Pará. The university, with + 50,000 stude ...
(UFPA). In the same year she took an actor training course. After graduating she became active in the theatre. In 1978, she began a course in literary theory, also at UFPA. In 2001 she received a master's degree in literary studies from the
Federal University of Minas Gerais The Federal University of Minas Gerais (, UFMG) is a federalIn the Brazilian Higher Education context, ''Federal'' does not mean ''collegiate'' (even though most Federal Universities in Brazil enjoy a similarly collegiate system), but it means ...
(UFMG) at
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, with a dissertation on the Amazonian writer , and in 2008, a doctorate in social sciences from UFPA.


Academic career

Amador was a teacher at the Federal University of Pará from 1978, where she taught history of art; history and theory of the theatre; and
aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
. She served as director of the Centre for Letters and Arts at UFPA from 1989 to 1993 and vice-rector of UFPA from 1993 to 1997, the first black woman vice-rector in Brazil. She was co-founder of the Centre for Studies and Defence of Black People in Pará (CEDENPA) in 1980, which has been responsible for important changes in legislation, such as the recognition of quilombola lands in the state and the establishment of compensatory measures for people discriminated against in the job market. She was coordinator of the UFPA Arts Centre from 1997 to 2001, co-founder of the Centre for Afro-Brazilian Studies (NEAB) at UFPA in 2001, co-founder of the Afro-Amazonian Study Group at UFPA in 2003 and president of the Brazilian Association of Black Researchers (ABPN). She was made a professor emerita at UFPA in 2019.


Political Activity

Before starting her undergraduate course, Amador was already active in social movements. She joined the ''Ação Popular'' (Popular Action - AP), an extra-parliamentary left-wing political organization, created in June 1962, with origins in the ''Juventude Universitária Católica'' (Catholic University Youth - JUC) but left it when the AP merged with merged with the
Communist Party of Brazil The Communist Party of Brazil (, PCdoB) is a List of political parties in Brazil, political party in Brazil. The PCdoB officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist theory. It has national reach and deep penetration in the trade union and Student ...
. She then joined the Vanguarda Armada Revolucionária Palmares a far-left organization. In 1980 she was one of the founders of the ''Centro de Estudos e Defesa do Negro do Pará'' (Centre for Studies and Defence of Black People in Pará – CEDENPA) and it was through this organization that she worked to defend the recognition and titling of lands belonging to quilombola communities in Pará.


Awards and tributes

A short film was made about Amador in 2021, and shown at several film festivals in Brazil. Among many honours, Amador was given the BrazilFoundation's Human Rights Award in October 2021. The Foundation is a philanthropic body that invests in Brazil. In 2022 she was honoured by the ''Os Colibris'' Samba School of Belém, which based their
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parade on her as a representative of black identity and resistance.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Amador, Zélia Federal University of Pará alumni Federal University of Minas Gerais alumni Brazilian women academics Academic staff of the Federal University of Pará 1951 births Living people Afro-Brazilian women Brazilian women activists