In the more than 300-year history of the Brazilian city of Curitiba, no city councillor had ever been removed from office until 2022, when a promising young Black local politician was forced out.
Renato Freitas had been accused of “breaching parliamentary decorum” by leading an anti-racism protest that ended inside a Catholic church – ironically named Church of the Black Men and built by enslaved people in the 18th century.
The expulsion was eventually overturned by the supreme court, but it was far from the last case brought against the 41-year-old Freitas, a rising star in the leftist Workers’ party of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Now a state congressman, he faces three more expulsion proceedings in which his mostly white, conservative colleagues will decide whether to remove him from office once again.
He may also face a disciplinary sanction for allegedly organising a teachers’ protest, which would bar him from speaking during legislative sessions for a month.
Activists, analysts and historians view the cases against Freitas as evidence of how a city that proudly calls itself the “European capital of Brazil” is ill-equipped to deal with a defiant Black politician.
“I go in hard – and that’s upset a lot of people,” said Freitas one July afternoon, sporting his voluminous afro, dressed in a Malcolm X T-shirt, shorts and trainers, and taking occasional drags of cannabis during an interview soundtracked by a rap playlist blasting from a speaker he had brought along.
It was nearby there that, during his first run for office in 2016, Freitas was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace for listening to rap “too loud” in his car and allegedly disrespecting the officer who approached him. He was beaten and left naked in a police station corridor before being released.
Freitas says he has been detained or arrested 16 times – and he has become a leading voice against police violence in a state where, under a far-right governor, police killings have soared.
He defies almost every rule of what a typical political figure looks and sounds like in Brazil: he wears a suit and tie only when strictly required, speaks in slang and rhymes – often quoting or paraphrasing rap lyrics – and has a life story that is anything but conventional.
“I was a criminal child,” said Freitas, who recalls stealing ice-cream and sweets. “I didn’t have access to those things, so I stole them.”
He was raised by his mother, a domestic worker, in a poor neighbourhood near the prison where his father was incarcerated in Piraquara, 13 miles (21km) from Curitiba. After an erratic time at school, Freitas used his wages earned bagging groceries to pay for a preparatory course and entered law school, later earning a master’s degree.
He joined Lula’s Workers’ party and ran twice before being elected in 2020, no small feat in a city that has become a conservative stronghold. Curitiba capital of the southern state of Paraná, was home to the lead judge and chief prosecutor of the Operation Car Wash – the massive anti-corruption investigation that led to the arrest of dozens of politicians, public officials and business leaders from 2014 to 2021. It was also here that Lula was imprisoned for 580 days.
The 2022 church episode unfolded just months before the presidential election which Lula went on to win. Then president Jair Bolsonaro condemned Freitas for “invading” and “disrespecting the House of God”. And despite belonging to the same party as Freitas, Lula said he had “made a mistake” and “needed to apologise”.
The councillor was removed from office by a vote of 25 to 7 by his colleagues.
Despite having regained his political rights, Freitas still resents Lula’s comment. “Before saying I’d made a mistake, he could have spoken to me to find out what happened,” he said, adding that he still intends to campaign for Lula in next year’s election.
Among the current proceedings against him, Freitas is once again accused of “breaching decorum”, this time for leading a protest inside a supermarket in response to the fatal beating of a 22-year-old man who had allegedly stolen a chocolate bar.
“He makes a point of not being a traditional politician,” said Adriano Codato, a political science professor at the Federal University of Paraná, noting that Freitas is not inclined to strike deals with opposition politicians. “However, this anti-political stance can end up being less effective when it comes to securing improvements for his constituents, like schools or paved roads.”
For political scientist Mateus de Albuquerque, the political establishment’s “resistance” to Freitas is also rooted in race: “Curitiba is a city that wants to present itself as ‘European’ and without Black people, but Freitas exposes the fact that they are here and that the police beat and kill them.”
According to historian Noemi Santos da Silva, the notion of Curitiba as the “European capital of Brazil” emerged in the 1950s, based on the belief that its cooler climate, efficient public services and large population of European descent made it a more “civilised” city.
Tourist attractions in the city pay tribute to its history of Italian and German immigration, but although nearly a quarter of residents are Afro-Brazilian, only one square honours the Black population – far from the main tourist routes.
“In a city that pushed Black people out to the outskirts, Freitas dared to occupy a space that was never intended for someone like him,” she said.
Freitas is still unsure whether he’ll seek higher office, perhaps as mayor or governor, but he said: “It’s easier to become president of Brazil than to be mayor of Curitiba, because the country isn’t as hostile to someone like me as this city is.”
