A Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro will present the story of a trans woman nearly burned at the stake in the 16th century, highlighting the ongoing violence against transgender people in Brazil, which has the world’s highest reported trans homicide rate.
Born as Francisco Manicongo in what was then known as the Kingdom of Kongo, Xica Manicongo was captured and enslaved in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state. Authorities from the Portuguese Inquisition threatened her with execution for cross-dressing and having same-sex relations, both practices the Catholic Church deemed heretical.
