If ()’s arrest is something to celebrate, you can’t think it’s the far right’s shovel, says , 44.
“It became common for people to interpret that it began and ended with Bolsonaro.” It doesn’t end, and we can’t forget that “there has been a real hunt for the left’s dreams” in recent years, he says.
In the same week as this interview, the senator (PL-RJ) became president with paternal support. For Manuela, the movement explains “the fight to be relevant on the extreme right”.
Newly affiliated with , after a quarter of a century in PC do B, Manuela intends to run for the Senate in 2026 for Rio Grande do Sul. It will be her first election after two consecutive defeats to the force she considers “the most harmful in Brazil”.
There were elections “with an unspeakable level of violence”, according to her, with death threats, including: in 2018, as vice-president of the presidential ticket headed by (), and in 2020, in the campaign for mayor of her native Porto Alegre.
Manuela says that, finally, she and her family already have “human conditions” for her return to the political game.
“It’s not easy for a woman like me, whose daughter has been threatened with rape since she was born, to look at [outras mulheres] who were together with those who threatened and mocked.” But gender violence does not discriminate between party colors, and no woman is immune to it “because it is against us”, she says.
Why leave B’s PC?
My marriage to the PC do B turned out very well: 26 years affiliated with a party that gave me a ruler and compass to interpret Brazil.
We assimilate the word “criticism” as something bad. Our culture has a lot of this performance of male violence. Dissent is treated as a tool of destruction, not construction. With women, I have built spaces in which criticism is what makes us better.
Some questions kept me away. The first of these is the way in which the federation’s relationship with the PT occurs. It takes away autonomy from smaller parties.
And we need to reaffirm the need to build broad fronts against what we have agreed to call Bolsonarism, but which is the extreme right — I cannot run the risk of not understanding this because, unlike other people, my life is at risk under the government of these people.
Why PSOL now?
I am on the left of this broad front. My affiliation [ao PSOL] It’s the signal I want to give at a time when people claim that the right thing to do is the pragmatic way out, which erases ideological characteristics. There is a real hunt for dreams, as represented by the left.
Why do you say that the extreme right is bigger than Bolsonarism?
Bolsonaro accumulated what previous organizations preached, such as the MBL, which always likes to pretend it is liberal, but which gave rise to the most harmful extreme right in Brazil.
It became common for people to interpret that the extreme right began and ended with Bolsonaro. This reading carries risks: Bolsonaro’s arrest would be the end of them. Obviously, the conviction is a very important victory for our democracy. But I understand that Bolsonaro was elected, that Pablo Marçal had an extraordinary performance in the São Paulo election “against everything and everyone”, right? Counting there on a speech that we can refute, but which had ideas. We also experienced a defeat of ideas.
What ideas were these that triumphed?
Marçal, for example, puts the denial of the State and violence as an important asset in resolving social conflicts at the center of his discourse. It’s not just anything. Look what happens to women now. Many sectors downplayed violent speeches against women.
Mrs. debated with Cíntia Chagas [ex-mulher do deputado estadual Lucas Bove, do PL-SP]. Does the left have difficulty empathizing with conservative women?
We have an idea of absolute sisterhood that erases the differences that women have among us.
In some moments I will face [mulheres]. And that’s okay. Men face each other all the time. To think that we cannot be the interlocutors of our differences is to degrade ourselves.
We are attacked for issues other than our ideas. And that’s where, or should be, our sisterhood comes in. Say: loudly, you won’t call [uma opositora] of whore. Know how to debate by looking at ideas, not personal life, the woman’s body.
What is it like being around women who are critical of you?
It’s not easy for a woman like me, whose daughter has been threatened with rape since she was born, to look at people who were together with those who threatened and mocked her. I got sick. Is it easy to welcome your tormentor? No. Carla Zambelli released images of me with my eyes amputated. The risk to my life is related to the way she constructed the implicit threat of death, displaying my mutilated body.
Now, this cannot make us lose the ability to look at other women and think that they can be transformed by the concrete struggle that is their existence. How can Cíntia not be welcomed by us? A woman is not immune to violence because she is against us.
It is common to hear that the left is going through internal polarization, as if there were a traditional and an identitarian wing, as conservatives call it. Do you agree?
I refute both the use of this expression, “woke”, and the idea that there is a separation between the left and each other. What is most vibrant about the left is this deep relationship that women, young people and black men are able to establish with society. Consider the example of [vereador do PSOL-RJ] Rick Azevedo. Man, black, from the community, gay, and who raised the flag of [esca la de trabalho] 6×1.
In official reports, it was interpreted as a sign that the left was moving away from causes seen as identitarian.
The narrative that Lula vetoed neutral language is a lie. He made a deal that is what? Simple language in public service. Do you think the doctor is concerned about neutral language or whether he will talk about dosage instead of saying “take the medicine every hour”?
While the far right wants to debate neutral language with me, I want to debate their leaders who belittle the issue of women being victims of femicide. Of course there’s some bullshit about them here.
But can you escape this debate if the other side turns it into an ideological scarecrow?
The more ideological they are, the more popular our agenda is. They come with the unisex bathroom theme — which is a huge social freak, because in my house the bathroom is unisex. And what do we present? The debate about absence from work for people who care for children and the elderly. We have to have more and more popular flags to unmask their strategies.
But the progressive militancy itself is excited about several of these causes, isn’t it? Talking about those who care for the elderly, for example, is not as engaging.
The proof that it engages is, [a isenção do] Income Tax. And I return to the topic of women. Do you think I wanted to stay on my networks all day talking about femicide? But how many networks are talking about this that are not about women?
It has been treated as an example of a left-wing reaction. Are there lessons from Zohran Mamdani for Brazil? Elections [que a esquerda venceu] They show us that, if there is a common message, it is: they are all highly connected with their territories. People thought the blue and yellow art of the Mamdani campaign was beautiful, they say [que essas cores] they’re going to hit it hard here. But blue and yellow is the color of a subway ticket in NY. It refers to something concrete that unites people. The daycare theme [universal gratuita] It’s something radical in the USA, where there is no public service. And imagine, talking about a rent freeze in the temple of global capitalism. There is a clear agenda, but not one of poetic abstraction.
X-ray – Manuela d’Ávila, 44
Gaúcha, is a journalist by training. She was elected councilor in Porto Alegre in 2004, at the age of 23, becoming the youngest member of the Chamber. She then served three terms as a federal and state deputy for PC do B. In 2018, she was a candidate for vice on Fernando Haddad’s (PT) presidential ticket. In 2020, he ran and lost the race for Porto Alegre City Hall. In recent years, outside of electoral politics, she worked at her communications company on campaigns for Guilherme Boulos (PSOL) and Alexandre Kalil (PSD) and founded the institute E Se Fosse Você?, which includes a women’s reading club. In 2025, he joined PSOL.
