Defensoras de direitos humanos no Ceará: trajetórias de ameaças, resistências e proteção

Abstract

This thesis addresses the threats, resistance, and protection of women recognized as human rights activists in the state of Ceará. Three of these women are under protection due to attacks related to their advocacy for feminist causes, traditional peoples, and criminal justice. Using the cartographic method, case studies were conducted on the journeys of these three activists and the author herself, a psychologist working in the public policy field. The aim was to map these experiences of struggle, analyze threats in the human rights field, and the challenges of protection of these women. The study encompasses the understanding of the Brazilian social context, analysis of subjective experiences and threats to the human rights field, and the challenges of protection of these people. Concepts from Social Psychology contextualized contemporary transdisciplinary dialogues in this field with feminisms, racism, whiteness, intersectionality, and decolonial thinking. The results indicate the possibility of building rhizomes with militant processes, the need to address the structural problems and the constant presence of racism and sexism in necropolitical processes within the human rights field. It was confirmed that, even with a threatened, low-intensity democracy, it is within it that processes of subjectivation and knowledge-power structures are formed. For the future, it is crucial to record and historicize the processes of subjectivation in human rights struggles, stimulating new rhizomes from these struggles and other actions, perhaps achieving equality and the right to democracy.