The challenge of articulating human rights at an LGBT ‘mega-event’: a personal reflection on Sao Paulo Pride 2017

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper brings together Critical Event Studies (CES) and a reflexive/narrative autoethnographic approach in order to stimulate a debate around the commodification of public space, and the management of mega-events of dissent. This is achieved using the example of the researcher’s participation in the 2017 Sao Paulo Pride. Sao Paulo Pride is one of the largest LGBT demonstrations in the world. However, corporate interests in the event have commodified dissent in order to commercialise ‘otherness’, and the city has absorbed the demonstration into its cultural offer as a global brand. The confluence of these factors produces a pattern of place dressing and erasure that depoliticise the event and undermines its capacity to effectively articulate human rights. Currently Brazil has some of the most liberal LGBT laws of any South American state, yet recently Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)/Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) human rights have been threatened by a rapid rise in hate crime and the emergence of an evangelical Christian right in state and regional assemblies. Within such a context the need to revive the roots of Pride as an articulation of otherness that demands recognition, and as a robust defence of human rights for the LGBT/SOGI community, is more pressing than ever.