The organization Nova Frente Negra Brasileira tries to reactivate the only party that has ever existed in Brazil with the centrality of defending the demands of the black and brown population.
The FNB () was founded in 1931, in São Paulo, and is considered by historians to be central in the fight for rights. In 1936 it became a political party, but, before putting candidates on the ballot, it was extinguished by (1937-1945), which banned all political organizations at the time.
For militants of the New Brazilian Black Front, which claims to also bring together descendants of the old movement, Justice needs to explain what happened to the acronym, which was never extinguished by this Power. Nova Frente was founded in 2016, has representatives in 20 states across the country and around 5,000 members, according to the organization.
“We collected legal, historical and political documents and created a protocol to reactivate the Brazilian Black Front party”, says Tadeu Kaçula, national coordinator of Nova FNB. According to him, the movement began dialogue —converted into a process— at the (Superior Electoral Court) in 2022, when the group was received by , then president of the court.
“We understand that, if the TSE approved the Frente Negra Brasileira as a political party and did not revoke the approval, this party never ended. If the members of the party themselves did not go to the TSE and asked to close the registration, it did not end.”
Now, the organization is preparing a document to take the demand to the (Supreme Federal Court). “Last week, we had a hearing at the Supreme Court creating a positive agenda to understand the rites, the legal liturgy to present a thesis —which is already ready— so that the court can judge the reactivation of the Brazilian Black Front Party to be constitutional.”
Kaçula states that the recovery of the acronym would be a historical reparation, considering the weight that the FNB had in its time. According to Petrônio Domingues, doctor in history from USP and professor at the Federal University of Sergipe, the front brought together thousands of members, with an estimated number between 15 and 200 thousand.
It had more than 60 branches and expanded to Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo. According to Domingues, she achieved concrete benefits for the population through pressure on politicians, such as eliminating the veiled ban on black people entering leisure facilities and the São Paulo Civil Guard. There was a school, a newspaper called “A Voz da Raça”, and a football team.
Despite its importance, one aspect of the FNB is currently considered thorny: its political spectrum. While part of the researchers, such as Domingues, argues that right-wing discourse predominated at the top of the association, with an approach to AIB (Ação Integralista Brasileira), another part says that the Front was progressive.
This is the interpretation of the New FNB. According to Kaçula, the old front’s agenda was framed this way because it was focused on affirmative action programs and inclusion of the underrepresented population.
For historian Zezito Araújo, honorary doctorate from Ufal (Federal University of Alagoas), it is biased to try to classify the FNB as right or left through contemporary lenses. He highlights the internal diversity that existed in the organization and considers that the most important thing is to focus on the originality of the movement, which brought together several political trends against .
To this day, the reach of the association is unique. Since then, Brazil has never seen a party whose central focus was the racial issue.
The PDA-B (Afro-Brazilian Democratic Party) is on the list of parties being formed at the TSE, with the mission of “promoting racial, social and economic equality in Brazil, valuing Afro-Brazilian culture and combating structural racism”, according to the organization’s website.
It is headquartered in Brasília and has 155 signatures registered with the court. For the creation of a party to be approved, an acronym in formation currently needs to surpass the mark of 500 thousand signatures, distributed in at least nine states, among other requirements.
More incipient projects are underway in the black movement. Among them is Raízes, with an “anti-racist proposal of black and indigenous protagonism”.
According to Edna Ramos Soares, the organization’s women’s director, the proposal is to promote gender parity and the proportionality of black and indigenous people within the party, since existing parties do not make a serious commitment to the agenda.
One obstacle, however, is the lack of funds to follow the necessary procedures to make the proposal to the TSE, he states.
According to Douglas Belchior, director of the Peregum Black Reference Institute and co-founder of Uneafro and the Black Coalition for Rights, “there has always been debate about the need and viability of black parties” in Brazil.
He says it is important to create an acronym that represents this portion of the population, in a scenario with underrepresentation of black politicians and .
Despite this, he believes that the endeavor is unfeasible at the moment, due to the difficulty in creating a caption that truly represents the black movement.
“This speaks to the complexity of the Brazilian racial debate. It is not simple to discuss this in Brazil, because the black population does not recognize itself as a unified bloc. Its political and ideological diversity also justifies its political dispersion. We were unable to build — this is a challenge for us in the black movement — a political unity that would make a black party viable.”
