New Delhi: As Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil’s elections Sunday, the Left-leaning side of X was celebrating another name: Erika Hilton. A Black trans woman, Hilton became Brazil’s most-voted female politician after being re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies on 4 October with 15.9 lakh votes.
In the outgoing legislature, Hilton led the call to eliminate Brazil’s ‘6×1 schedule’, and was successful on 14 October, when a constitutional amendment gave crores of workers a second paid day off.
“People cannot live to work; they need to work to live,” she told a special committee of the Brazilian Congress, news agency Presentes reported.
First elected on 15 November 2020 to the São Paulo Municipal Chamber as councillor, Hilton made history as not just the first trans woman to be elected, but also the most-voted female city council candidate that year. In the six years since, she has platformed LGBTQIA+ rights, labour and social welfare, and racial and women’s equality.
“I am a woman who was expelled from home as a youth, who turned to sex work to survive, who lives in a country that still hates my presence — the last country in the world to abolish slavery. I am a woman, I am Black, I am a transvestite and the daughter of the working class,” Hilton told El País.
Since her election as federal deputy for São Paulo in 2023, Hilton has authored over 100 legislative proposals. Of these, at least 21 are bills, and 26 are related to women’s rights.
Hilton’s current triumph comes amid a hostile environment. She has received multiple death threats and faces routine racial and gendered abuse online. Brazil has the highest number of reported murders of transgender people in the world, with 80 recorded in 2025.
Derrotamos a Meta.
Derrotamos as bets.
Derrotamos os EUA.
Derrotamos a milícia.
Derrotamos a Faria Lima.
Derrotamos a turma do Vorcaro.
Derrotamos Flávio Bolsonaro.
Lula é tetra, e de virada.
Isso é HISTÓRIA, e cada uma e cada um de vocês ajudou a escrever 💗
— ERIKA HILTON (@ErikakHilton) October 26, 2026
Becoming Erika Hilton
Erika Santos Silva, known popularly as Erika Hilton, was born in São Paulo’s Franco da Rocha. She grew up in Francisco Morato in a poor, at times troubled, neighbourhood and would accompany her mother to the evangelical church, where she learned to speak in public.
When Hilton came out at the age of 15, her mother disowned her. For the next four years, she had to fend for herself and work as a sex worker to survive. Her mother eventually took her back in.
“My mother is wonderful. I owe everything I have to her,” Hilton said.
She attended the Federal University of São Carlos, studying pedagogy and gerontology, though she did not graduate. As a student, she gathered 1 lakh signatures in two days to protest against a company that was preventing her from using her social name—Erika Hilton—on her student transit card. Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party soon invited her to join its ranks.
In March 2026, Hilton assumed the presidency of the Women’s Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. In her speech, she stressed the importance of overcoming the barriers of hatred and discrimination.
“We are committed to Brazilian women. To confront patriarchal and misogynistic violence, because Brazilian women are concerned about how to defend their bodies (…) how to put food on their tables, how to report aggressors without them returning,” she said.
Also read: What did Obama say in his weekend appearance at a Detroit school