A story of unfinished progress

As a nine-year-old in Brazil, I first understood inequality. Today in the U.S., our rights are still being challenged. The journey for equality continues.

Some stories help us to understand where we came from, not in a geographic sense (that too does), but in the way we see the world, of what Virginia Woolf called “exceptional moments” or “moments of being.” This is one of those stories.

Family celebration at my great-grandparents' house in Brazil, around the same time of the story. Me, looking away. (Photo: Personal Archive)

I grew up in a rural town in the countryside of Brazil, a typical small town in many ways. There’s a square where people gather after the Sunday mass. Everyone cares for one another in both senses: caring as in taking care of, and also in caring about others’ business.

So you can imagine how it was for my mom to get pregnant by a married man. She had to quit her volunteer work as the Church teacher, received a lot of criticism from her own family and embraced the strength only a woman can endure. While his life and marriage continued, my mom carried on with her life, working two jobs most of her life so she could provide for us and counting on the help and love of her mother, my grandma, and a community of friends.

Being raised by a single parent, like many children in my country (7 out of 10 women in Brazil are mothers, half of them solo), meant also being raised by grandmother. My grandma was my second mother, holding the fort alongside my mother like many women did in Brazil. Her Avon’s “Vermelho Café” lipstick was her trademark, applied perfectly without a mirror, a small act of self-care that doubled as self-reliance — she sold the same cosmetics she wore. At family gatherings, her voice would blend with her brothers’ music from behind the kitchen sink, where we’d have to beg her to leave the dishes and join the festivities.

Every morning, she’d stand at the window watching me go to school, her ritual blessing floating behind me: “God bless you, my daughter! Go with God.” Early on I experienced first-hand the sense of duty and responsibility women carried in life. My father was absent most of my childhood and teen years, except for rare visits and occasional gifts. It was only in my young adult life we developed a relationship. My grandfather, on the other hand, was in my life since my birth — although I wouldn’t say he was present — but he was there.

One of my most vivid memories of my grandfather happened after his stroke, his right side paralyzed like the prison bars he once guarded. He worked as a guard in a prison with little to no pay, and would spend his own earnings on light bulbs for the cells - small suns in windowless spaces - because the city couldn’t care less about its inmates.

The prison walls had been cold, but the butcher shop he later opened with his brother had its own kind of warmth — the sticky heat of fresh blood, the steam rising from newly cleaned carcasses. When his brother left for the big city lights, leaving him to shutter the shop, my grandfather’s silence grew deeper than the prison’s midnight hours.

That day, I was probably nine, we were at my grandma’s parents’ house — an old big house with wood floors and long corridors and walls filled with family photos.

I was in the living room with my grandpa while my grandma was in the kitchen, helping with the cooking or cleaning, when my grandpa abruptly and loudly called her over for something. I don’t remember what it was but I can still hear the insolence of his tone, as if she was his property and servant, not the caring lively woman she was. My body grew rigid in anger. I mirrored him and yelled: “Why do you have to talk like that to her? I wonder if you spit on the floor and ask her to clean, she would.”

He didn’t blink and he spat on the floor. And as I unconsciously prophesied, my grandma came quickly from the kitchen to attend to his “order.”

My entire body froze, my eyes hurt from what they had seen, letting rivers come down to water, my mouth opened in horror. With my heart racing and blood through my head, I remember screaming of dread and rage.

I remember running away stomping my feet on those floorboards and hearing the thunder of my shoes meeting the old wood, passing by the walls lined with family photos - generations of women, my ancestors, with their numerous children, fulfilling their childbearing duty in a patriarchal society. Each frame held a story of marriage built on ownership and subservience to husbands, their eyes following me as I ran, as if witnessing my first act of rebellion against the life they had accepted as destiny. I cried from anger, from disgust, from revolt. I ended up in the prayer room at the entrance of the old house, where my family would gather to pray the rosary and hold novenas, with an image of the Holy Spirit on display. My young self somehow was running for refuge and might have thought that was a safe space.

Right after, my grandma came running to calm me down and said: “Oh, my daughter, don't mind it. He's just like that.”

I was nine years old and at that moment I understood something about the world I live in. A world where men feel entitled to their wishes and women do as they command. At that moment I understood something was absurdly wrong and I decided that I would not be confined to these standards. I would not listen to my grandma, who might not have found any other way of being and living. No, grandma, I will mind. And I won't accept that men are just like that — they need to do better.

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A day before leaving office, Biden made a statement about the Equal Rights Amendment. He believed it had met all requirements to become the 28th amendment, which would make men and women equals under the Constitution. But he did not order its publication - it was just another symbolic gesture. I was shocked and a bit embarrassed by my innocence, not knowing this was not yet in the Constitution. That was just a reminder of how vigilant we have to be. As Simone de Beauvoir warned us:

“Never forget that a political, economic, or religious crisis will be enough to cast doubt on women’s rights. These rights will never be vested. You'll have to stay vigilant your whole life.”

Her words echo louder now as we witness renewed threats to reproductive rights, workplace protections, and gender equality under the new administration.

Today, four weeks into Trump’s second term, and inspired by my compatriot

Fernanda Santos

’s words “Writing is a form of emancipation,” I decided to share in this space some of the memories, stories and anecdotes of a Latina woman living in the United States. That’s my contribution to the promise I made to myself and my ancestors: to use the freedom they fought for, and to help create a more equal world for all of us.