Damares Regina Alves is a Brazilian attorney and evangelical pastor. She has been Minister of Human Rights, Family and Women in the Presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. She is the second female minister appointed to the new government as of December 2018. Damares is concerned about issues such as abortion, women trafficking, suicide, juvenile self-harming, and combatting drugs. Alves is engaged directly in the preparation of youth for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and intends to consolidate a pactuated agenda between different ministries of the Federal Government capable of integrating programs, policies, projects and initiatives under the same, articulated perspective of impact—modernizing education.
Biography
Born in Paraná, Damares went to the northeast along with her family. As a child, she lived in Bahia, in Alagoas and Sergipe. She also lived in São Carlos. These movings are strictly linked to her father's profession, the pastor Henrique Alves Sobrinho, "Quadrangular" Gospel Church—Foursquare Gospel Church—as it is called in Brazil, founder of more thant one hundred church temples through-out Brazil. Damares also became a pastor herself. She graduated in Law in the now extinct, an institution that was uncredentialed by the Ministry of Education in 2011 and that is forbidden to make entrance exams since 2012. In :pt:São Carlos|São Carlos, she worked in the Municipal Secretary of Tourism, acting in the old COMTUR, during the government of the mayor Vadinho de Guzzi. In 1999, shortly before obtaining her registration in the Advocates' Order of São Paulo, she became junior parliamentarian auxiliary, in Brasília. She was a pastor of Foursquare Church and also of the Baptist Church of Lagoinha, in Belo Horizonte. She was coordinator of the educational project of Proteger Program, organization created by Guilherme Zanina Schelb, regional attorney of the Republic in the Federal District and member of the National Association of Evangelical Jurists, known for defending the project nicknamed ", a project that promotes the plurality of ideas and points of view within public school classes. In 1999, Damares moved to Brasília to work as a parliamentary assistant in the office of deputy Joshua Bengtson, also pastor of the Church of the Foursquare Gospel. She also worked for federal deputy Arolde de Oliveira, a senator elected by Rio de Janeiro in 2018, and whose success at the polls in October was due, in large part, to the support of the so-called "Bolsonaro clan." She also served as a parliamentary auxiliary in Senator Magno Malta's office, prior to the bond with the senator in favor of the Espírito Santo state. He was chief of cabinet of another exponent of the neopentecostal bench in the Chamber of Deputies, the federal deputy Goiano João Campos de Araújo. She worked as legal adviser in the National Congress for more than 20 years, before her appointment by Bolsonaro to the ministry of Human Rights. From 2013, during a lecture at a church in Mato Grosso do Sul, Damares has presented herself as a lawyer and master in education, constitutional law and family law, although she never received a master's degree and has a common law degree. In the occasion, Damares was criticizing a delicate said Dutch custom of massage in sons. She argues she was saying she was a Christian master, as in Ephesians 4:11 "And it is he who gifted some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, and still others to be pastors and teachers".
Background
Alves had been a legal adviser in the National Congress for more than 20 years prior to her appointment by Bolsonaro. As Current Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights of Brazil, she, at the United Nations 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March, 2019, affirmed that the combatting violence against women is a definite goal of the government, as well as the growth of girls.
Conservative and religious activism
Deeply religious, she has claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus atop a guava tree, and has stated that "the State is secular, but this minister is extremely Christian, and because of that, she believes in God's design." Alves has indicated that religious views should take greater prominence in national politics. In 2016 journalists reported that she had addressed worshippers in an Evangelical church telling them, "It is time for the church to tell the nation that we have come... It is time for the church to govern."
She also disclosed that she is a supporter of "traditional" gender roles within society and an opponent of what she regards as "ideological indoctrination", suggesting that girls should regarded as "princesses" who wear pink and boys as little "princess" who wear blue. In a viral video, she claimed that Elsa from Disney's Frozen must be a lesbian because the princess ends up alone in a castle of ice. Alves says that "women are made to be mothers." Alves is a vocal critic of the annual carnival festival in Brazil, saying that "carnival parties, unfortunately, is an affront and a disrespect to the Christian faith." Alves promised to pass a bill protecting evangelicals who protest at the carnival.
Personal life
She has an adoptive daughter of Kamayurá indigenous origin, born in 1998 in Xingu Indigenous Park. Some journalists of Época Magazine in Brazil went to the tribe, who claim the child was kidnapped from them; they say she was lured to Brasilia by Damares and an associate named Márcia Suzuki, who presented themselves as missionaries, under the pretense of taking her to the city for dental treatment. Alves and her adopted daughter deny it, while Damares claims she saved her from malnutrition and possible infanticide.
