THE ADVENT— URES OF PRISCILLA

Rio de Janeiro held its first Pride 30 years ago, with Kassandra Taylor at the centre of the festivities. André Aram spoke to the transgender activist about her legacy, and a particular pink bus that was often the star of the show.

Brazil — Pride — History

Brazilian transgender trailblazer Kassandra Taylor clearly remembers that day, June 25, 1995, when the first Pride was held in Rio de Janeiro at the 17th International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) conference. The place chosen was Copacabana Beach, and at the time, it was called a citizenship march.

“We didn’t know exactly what was going on; it was the first time, and it was great to know that something new was happening in Brazil for our benefit. It was already happening around the world, and at that moment, it was here,” Kassandra told GCN.

Almost 3,000 people turned out for the occasion, which is considered by some to be a low number for a city with a population of over 5.5 million at the time. However, there was an explanation. In the 1990s, many were not out to their families, and others who attended the event ran away when the press arrived with cameras to cover that pioneering moment, which featured a 124-metre rainbow flag stretched out by activists and drag queens. “People didn’t want to go, so they wouldn’t be seen. Nowadays, it’s the opposite,” Kassandra says.

But the star of the event, drawing everyone’s attention as soon as it arrived on the beachfront, was Kassandra’s old pink bus called Priscilla, in homage to the Australian film released the year prior. The vehicle brought a spectrum of drag queens, trans people, and gays on board, something never seen before and which caused astonishment among those who were on the famous beach promenade. “It was the beginning of everything, still taboo, me and 10 other people arriving in that old bus that was bigger than the Pride sound cars,” she recalled.

The story of the bus that, by chance, became the main attraction of the first Pride began months before. Kassandra had left the cinema dazzled after seeing The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and without thinking too much, she went to a junkyard and bought a silver-coloured bus for around €3,000. With the help of some friends, she painted it pink, added a rainbow flag, and a good sound system. “I turned it into a replica of Priscilla from the film.” But the purchase of the vehicle wasn’t just for the film; there was also a use for it.

Pioneering has always been part of Kassandra’s life; she was the first in Brazil to open a guesthouse exclusively for the LGBTQ+ community in 1993, at a time when the acronym was limited to just three letters: G (gay), L (lesbian), and S (sympathiser). The development was located in a small coastal district called Itaipuaçu, about 45 kilometres from Copacabana, with less than 15,000 inhabitants at the time. Soon afterwards, in the same space and parallel to the accommodation, she built a gay nightclub. “At first, I faced a lot of prejudice from the locals, including towards me, a trans woman. Until then, there was no accommodation for us, and that was the difference— an exclusive environment for us to be who we really are,” she told GCN.

The puritanical locals didn’t like the idea at a time when there were no laws protecting the LGBTQ+ population, but Kassandra managed to command respect, keep both businesses going, and win the acceptance of those who in the past didn’t look favourably on her. The nightclub was a long way from the city’s gay hotspot (Copacabana), so the bus became a means of transport to get the public to her club. “I was a visionary; I created businesses that didn’t exist at the time in a provincial area.” In a pre-internet era, publicity was through flyers distributed in nightclubs, and many wanted to take the bus, which often looked like a discotheque on wheels. Those were different times.

The meeting point was at 10pm in front of a gay kiosk on Copacabana Beach, where they boarded the Priscilla, decorated with coloured lamps and dolls inside. Along the way, other people joined the journey, which took about an hour. The fun began inside the vehicle, with music and drag queens entertaining the passengers. At 5am, the pink bus left the nightclub and headed back to Copacabana to drop off the people who were tired after a night of fun and flirting.

Priscilla was a means of nightclub marketing and also transport, but when Kassandra heard that there was going to be the first Pride in Rio, she decided that she was going to arrive at the event in high style. Just like in the Australian film, she built a high heel on the roof of the vehicle, invited some drag queen friends, and they arrived at Copacabana Beach on the roof of Priscilla, literally stopping the traffic. The press ran towards the bus to find out who was there, sunbathers came off the beach and surrounded the vehicle, tourists took photos, and Kassandra and her friends made the front page of a popular national newspaper. “There was a volleyball championship on the beach, and when we arrived, it diverted the attention of those who were watching the game; everyone ran to get a closer look at Priscilla. The athletes stopped playing because there was no more crowd,” she recalled.

That would be the first Pride of many to follow, but the only one aboard Priscilla, which had a short life. In 1996, Kassandra decided to sell the vehicle after it presented mechanical problems that could have affected the safety of the passengers. It was the end of an era. She remembers when the bus once broke down before leaving the nightclub/guesthouse early in the morning, and there were dozens of people waiting to get back to Copacabana. The solution was to make several journeys carrying the people in the back of her pickup truck, something unthinkable today with current traffic laws. Both businesses continued even without the travelling billboard.

Since the first Pride, Copacabana Beach has become colourful every year, as has Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. Last year, there were an estimated 1 million people in Rio for Pride and 3 million in São Paulo, considered one of the largest in the world. The event has grown a lot, as has the support of sponsoring companies, security, sound cars, and concerts, making it a great spectacle, albeit a less politicised one.

Kassandra discovered at an early age that she was a woman and had the support of her family as a teenager in São Paulo. As a child, she learned the craft of magic, and when she began her gender transition at the age of 16 with hormones, she broke new ground by performing illusionism in gay nightclubs, while her colleagues did lip-sync.

According to Kassandra, she is the first and only trans illusionist in Brazil: “There is no such thing as a transgender in the ‘magic world,’ not least because this is a very masculine universe; even there are few women in this area. Sometimes I joke that I’m a magician turned magician.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, like many trans women, she went to Europe and the United States, where she spent time, took courses, worked as a host in famous European nightclubs, and learned languages. She returned to Brazil with enough money to build what would become her home and also her seaside business in Itaipuaçu. At 58, she looks back with nostalgia, but not sadness, except when she remembers the countless friends she lost to AIDS; she sometimes attended three funerals a week. She also laments the loss of humanisation with social media: “We’re less human; that thing of touching, feeling, talking to each other, looking into your eyes—all that has been lost. People have stopped going out or are locked in their homes looking at a screen.”

But Kassandra feels like a happy woman; she has gained all her desires, won beauty contests, opened a start-up business, and had gender-affirming surgery in London in 2006, an important step for her. Kassandra witnessed the heyday of Brazilian and international queer nightlife and survived to tell the tale. “At the 1998 Paris Pride, I appeared on the cover of Le Monde newspaper,” she said. She has also lived in Italy, Spain, France, and Miami.

She faced up to a conservative small town and turned it into a haven for LGBTQ+ people, whose greatest challenge was not discrimination but the emergence of technology that damaged nightclubs, making it no longer necessary to go to a disco to meet someone. “Nightlife in 1995 was fantastic; people went out to flirt, nowadays, people meet online,” she says.

Currently, Kassandra’s entire enterprise (house, inn, and nightclub) is up for sale, a decision she made to be closer to her mother, who lives in another state. She can’t say whether the future buyer will continue the business she started in 1993, but for her, there’s no doubt that it’s easier to be LGBTQ+ today than it was three decades ago, even if we’ve always been in all professions and social classes.

That first Pride leaves a legacy of respect and acceptance in a society in constant change. Kassandra and many other trans women paved the way to gain more rights and dignity, as many did, and some even lost their lives for it.

In Brazil, the movement has grown exponentially over the years, adding new causes, achievements, and audiences, and expanding to several other cities beyond Rio and São Paulo. The first Pride was an opening for diversity. A unique moment that brought LGBTQ+ issues out of the closet in one of the most touristic places in the country. “Militancy today is greater because it has expanded, but in 1995 it was an attempt; we were trying to do militancy,” Kassandra said.