RIO DE JANEIRO — A bus is parked in front of Rio de Janeiro’s central station. On it, next to the drawing of a blue scale, is written Justiça itinerante – Tribunal de justiça do estado do Rio de Janeiro. Scarlet just got off that bus. It only took her only 10 minutes to get the piece of paper she is clutching in her hand.
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“Muita coisa,” she says, her words filled with the emotions of someone who has found something again. What she holds is not a lost document, but an official sentence with her new name as a trans woman. She is not more real than the day before, but she feels more “realizada” (realised).
Scarlet is an artist and a communicator. I ask her how she got there, and she takes my question literally, answering that she caught a bus and a train, a five hour trip in total. Then, she adds that she found out about the travelling court through a friend.
“Many trans people don’t have this support network, I have lots of friends who moved to Rio because it’s more open minded and supportive. But many come from places where trans clinics do not exist.” She calls it “trans clinic,” like a place of care. A strange way of referring to a court.
Domestic justice
The inside of the bus hosts a big and welcoming courtroom, just as big as the living room inside of a camper. It is clean, modern and equipped with air conditioning. Judge Andrè Brito and prosecutor Carla Tilley, on duty for the day, sit at a table, with their laptops, shirts and flying papers before them. They smile, and neither of them wears robes or itchy wigs.
In a day, they formalize divorces, maintenance allowances, gender transitions and give out birth certificates for those who lost it or never had one. They do it especially for people living inside the favelas, where the priority is not having an ID card, but a house that doesn’t collapse because of the vibrations of sirens.
The buses take some 50 judges around Rio de Janeiro, especially to places where the state is missing the most. There are 26 operative centers in Rio, thanks to a project started by the state tribunal in 2004. A schedule of the addresses the bus will stop at each day can be found on the tribunal’s website, just like for any other bus schedule. A tribunal that cuts through waiting lists and bureaucratic hurdles, overtaking any obstacle to human rights.
All of this is done for those that cannot afford transportation to go to a “real” tribunal, coming for a marital separation that results in a maintenance judgment for those living on 200 euros a month. It all happens within 10 minutes. Accessibility is not only physical, but also structural, as it shortens the juridical process.
Inside the bus
The queue outside the bus is quite long. People in shorts, colored berets and tropical tops await a consultation with a lawyer, paid by the state for those that cannot afford it. They take requests sitting at small bar tables, shaded by the leaves of a ficus tree blowing in the warm breeze as a monkey passes by.
Five boys and girls come inside and walk past the narrow hallway, making their way through judicial assistants and a printer. They don’t know one another, but they sit around the same table with the judge and the prosecutor. A girl in a bikini, part of the group, sits in stark contradiction with official documents and jaunty costumes.
They are all here to officially change their gender, and none of them are subjected to questions, analysis by psychologists, defense by lawyers, tests or witnesses. Of course, as the judge himself explains, “you can decide not to greenlight the procedure, but the supreme court says that the person’s will is enough.”
Because it is the case this time, the procedure is closed, just like for the other 30 gender changes the court issues every week. The percentage of men and women applying for a change of gender is roughly the same; a majority of them do not want the operation, and those adults that want it do not need the judge’s approval.
Andrè Brito hands out the same documents to everyone: a piece of paper detailing some steps to follow. Hugo, 20, is signing for the last time with an old name, ready to resume an informal life, informal like the Portuguese language. Brito explains that usually men wait for longer before applying for the civil procedure, not before they turn 18. In most cases, this is to avoid being abandoned by their families.
Other “priorities”
Brazil, the same place that celebrates crowded Pride parades and accepts changes of identity without having to specify a gender, is the country where most trans people are killed every year worldwide. For those who cannot afford to leave, “trans people don’t find a formal job, they don’t go to school, a majority of them are kicked out of their homes and belong to the poorest classes. Often, prostitution is their only alternative,” explains the judge.
The group of boys and girls waves goodbye and gets off the bus. They are replaced by a 12-year old girl without a birth certificate. Her mom never received it because, probably, it was lost when her dad went to get it, explains Tilley. But why ask for it so late?
Once the officials obtain all the required documentation, the only thing missing is the girl’s signature, but she cannot write. The assistants color her fingertip and have her sign with the imprint. She never went to school, she had other “priorities.” The country’s illiteracy rate was 7% as of 2022. The quality of education in public school is very low, private schools are too expensive and teachers are underpaid.
It is impossible to reach the girl’s dad. Her mom says that “his phone is broken,” but who knows whether she really tried to call him. I wonder whether that girl really feels reborn now, whether something will really change in her life. I wonder what will change for the state, which feels the growing weight of papers filled with the names of children it abandons in the streets, with ink-stained thumbs.
What human beings need
In such a vast and violent country, where wars between criminal groups and the police involve snipers, choppers and bombs to alert the population before the arrival of battalions for special operations — dealing with 100,000 murders every year in Rio de Janeiro alone — what is the threat of a gender change? What is the danger posed by one additional parent, compared to a single one? What is the use of social workers? Is it to ascertain the legitimacy of a double maternity in a homosexual couple, like it happens in Italy?
Not in Brazil. Here, your surname, your parents’ gender or how many parents you have don’t matter.
“One more is better than one less,” jokes Carina Senna, another prosecutor.
This is the purpose of the tribunal, to bring to people “those things a human being needs the most,” Senna explains. All it takes is a few minutes, wheels without chains and, as far as one can, cushioning the shallowest potholes of an extraordinary, contradictory and perpetually sunny Brazil.
