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

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

) is a Brazilian

nurse Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

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. w ...

, and

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

, 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 Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima (born Maria Osmarina da Silva; 8 February 1958), known as Marina Silva, is a Brazilian politician and environmentalist, currently serving as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, a position ...

and

Dilma Rousseff Dilma Vana Rousseff (; born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the only woman to have held the ...

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 Workers' Party is a name used by several political parties throughout the world. The name has been used by both organisations on the left and right of the political spectrum. It is currently used by followers of Marxism, Marxism–Leninism, Maoism ...

, 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 Mononym, mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist and former metalworker who has served as the 39th president of Brazil since 2023. A mem ...

, 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 (, ; PSOL ) is a left-wing political party in Brazil. The party describes itself as socialist and democratic. The party leader is Paula Coradi and the federal deputies Ivan Valente, Talíria Petrone, Sâmi ...

. 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. 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. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights. Modern stu ...

s against the

military dictatorship A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which Power (social and political), power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a Polit ...

. She became a member of the left-wing

(PT) and a leader of Socialist Democracy, a

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

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

Maceió Maceió (), formerly 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 (hydrology), spring. Most maceiós flow to the sea, but some get trapped ...

as part of the PT- PSB

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

. In 1994, she was elected as a councilwoman in

and in 1998 was elected to the Federal Senate. 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 b ...

in 2002, Heloísa became one of the strongest critics of the new government's alignment with

centrist politics Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policie ...

. After voting against the party recommendation in the Senate, she was expelled from PT in December 2003 for allegedly breaking

party discipline The term party discipline is used in politics in two closely related, yet distinct, meanings. In a broad sense (also known as party cohesion), the discipline is adherence of the party members at large to an agreed system of political norms and ru ...

. 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 Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

politician. Following her expulsion, Helena and other dissident members of PT founded a new party, the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) in late 2004. She was the president of PSOL from 2004 to 2010, in addition to leading the Freedom and Revolution 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

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 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Brazil) ...

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

Feminist Anti-War Resistance Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR or FAWR, ) is a group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to protest against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In its first month, FAR became "one of Russia’s fastest-growing anti-war campaigns", a ...

Career

Notes

References

External links