Brazil Fund was instituted by individuals that are acknowledged and respected in Brazil and internationally due to their dedication to the human rights cause in its various aspects.
He was one of the most important Brazilian activists in the fight against racial prejudice. Engaged in the Frente Negra Brasileira (Brazilian Black Front), he fought against racial segregation. He was an artist, writer and poet and founded the Black Experimental Theater. As the first African-Brazilian congressional representative, he dedicated his mandate to fighting racism. He was also a Senator and the Secretary for the Defense and Promotion of Afro-Brazilian populations in Rio. He died in 2011, at age 97.
She is a reference to human rights in Brazil. She fought against violations during the military dictatorship for two decades. She was the president of the Commission of Justice and Peace of the Archdiocese of São Paulo and a member of the University of São Paulo Human Rights Commission. In her path towards resistance, she helped political prisoners and reported cases of missing people and torture to international organizations. After redemocratization, she continued to engage in social movements. She chairs the Conectas Executive Board.
She was an important activist of the feminist movement in Brazil. Throughout her life, she wrote 44 books and edited 1,600 publications. One of her books, “The Sexuality of Brazilian Women: Body and class in Brazil,” written in 1996, is a classic study on the sexuality of Brazilian women from the perspective of class. As a publisher, she became known for her resistance to the military dictatorship publishing authors that were banned by the government, back then. She worked alongside her friend Leonardo Boff at Vozes Publishing House forming a partnership which originated the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Liberation Theology. She died in 2011, at age 83.
Catalan from Barcelona, Spain, he joined the Claretian Order, where he was ordained priest in 1943. He arrived in Brazil in 1968 and, three years later he was ordained the Bishop of São Félix do Araguaia (MT). He dedicated his life to confronting injustice, especially slave labor in the Brazilian Amazon. Supporter of the Liberation Theology, he also defends the agrarian reform. Throughout his career he faced many death threats. He is the founder of the Pastoral Land Commission and of the Indigenous Missionary Council. He is a writer and a poet and he lives a simple life as the Emeritus Bishop of São Felix do Araguaia.
