Participation in student movements while studying law at the Federal University led young Natália Bastos Bonavides to enter party politics. Today, at 36 years old, she is serving her second term as a federal deputy and contested an election for the Executive.
Despite having been defeated in the race for Mayor of , she achieved political prominence in the state and in the country, mainly within the left, after competing in the second round.
His entry into politics occurred amid his participation in collectives defending the rights of rural and urban communities. Initially, the parents — a psychologist and retired oil worker — resisted.
“At first, they were scared by the idea, but then they became the biggest activists in the campaigns”, says the deputy, youngest of four brothers.
As a child, she wanted to be an astronaut. That’s why one of his cats is called Terê, in honor of the Russian Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space. The other cat is called Sub, in honor of her grandfather.
“My grandfather, who I never met, was arrested and had his political rights revoked by the military coup. In the prisoners’ wing of the barracks, a cat appeared trying to steal food. She was called Sub, because she was malnourished and considered a subversive”, he says .
Membership took place in 2012, but still without the intention of contesting elections. She was elected councilor in 2016 with 6,200 votes, representing women who debated feminism and female participation in politics.
In 2018, she obtained 112 thousand votes as deputy and, four years later, she was re-elected with 157 thousand, the most voted in the state. She does not rule out being a candidate for mayor again.
As a deputy, she says she has been a victim of cases of political violence and machismo, both in Brasília and in electoral campaigns. “From being barred from entering the plenary, asking where the advisor’s badge is, asking which deputy we are following.”
“If we, women, don’t occupy spaces of power, it could be worse,” she says.
Natália says that she lives without difficulty with right-wing friends, but says she has no Bolsonarian friends: “some things are about values. A person who defends torture, who says that the dictatorship did not exist, that is more than a political option.”
An ABC fan, she likes to paint pictures in her leisure time and wants to learn to play the guitar and piano.
As women who are his references in politics, he mentions the federal deputy Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ), the former president Dilma Rousseff (PT), the governor of Rio Grande do Norte, Fátima Bezerra (PT), the former deputy federal Manuela D’Ávila, as well as Alzira Soriano (first woman mayor in Brazil) and educator Nísia Floresta.
One of the pillars of his mandate is the search for memory and truth about the military dictatorship. The PT member represents the Chamber in the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances, resumed by the government.
“The way in which the transition to democracy was carried out did not respect the principles necessary to obtain justice”, says Natália, citing the lack of trials of torturers and murderers.
The deputy cites the success of the film “I’m still here” when defending that the period of the dictatorship be remembered by younger people, so that it does not happen again.
The PT member is the author of the action in which the .
For Natália, the left needs to recover mobilization within society and improve communication. “That’s where the left’s nerve lies, prioritizing almost only institutional spaces for dispute, which makes us move away from people’s daily lives.”
On the other hand, such as outsourcing and labor reform, the difficulty for the left to act. “Social vulnerability makes people more susceptible to being used by politicians who consider them just a voter ID.”
In 2024, the deputy voted against the Lula government’s spending cut package, being the target of internal criticism in the party. , said that the measures that were voted on did not touch “upstairs”.
Bonavides is part of Articulação de Esquerda, the minority wing of the PT. She says that the current will launch its own candidacy for the presidency of the party in the 2025 internal elections.
“The speech that the PT has to go to the center is a mistake. Why exist then? We have to defend a PT closer to the working class in struggles such as the end of the 6 to 1 scale, which could be better used by the left .”
The deputy defends Lula as a candidate for re-election in 2026. Regarding 2030, she says it is far away to appoint the president’s successors, if he is re-elected.
Asked if the PT failed to create names with great voting potential like Lula, Natália minimizes it. “Parties in general go through a generational transition. A figure like Lula is not produced artificially.”
For Natália, the PT will remain strong even when Lula leaves the political scene. “Lula is beyond the PT electorally, but the PT is bigger than individuals.”
