Travesti Historic Center

A Conversation with Keila Simpson

Abstract

This conversation with Keila Simpson reconstructs the memory of travesti territorialities in Salvador's Historic Center during the 1980s and 1990s, bringing together experiences of housing, work, sociability, and resistance. The narrative highlights how solidarity networks sustained community life in the face of police violence and state-led urban renewal and sanitization policies. By examining the dispersal of these territorialities across the city and the emergence of trans activism, the text reflects on the relationships between urban planning, social exclusion, and the right to the city for gender- and sexually-dissident bodies.