“Whoever doesn’t know Lolita doesn’t know Recife”: homosexual/transvestite resistance and political formation under the Civil-Military Regime (1964–1985)

Abstract

This article analyzes the political-formative dimension of Lolita’s resistance, a figure from Pernambuco known between the 1960s and 1980s for her public performances amid the repression of the Civil-Military Regime. Grounded in Cultural History, the study adopts bibliographic and documentary research as its methodology. The sources mobilized include newspaper reports and interviews she granted to the press of the period. The theoretical framework engages with Michel de Certeau’s (2014) notion of “tactic,” aiming to understand forms of everyday disobedience that escape traditional records of institutionalized politics. The analysis reveals that her public presence and performative gestures functioned as practices of resistance which, outside formal educational institutions or organized activism, illuminate political dimensions in the formation of dissident subjects, broadening the ways of understanding education in authoritarian contexts.