Marília Arraes

Marília Arraes was born in Recife. She is the daughter of psychologist Sônia Valença Rocha Arraes de Alencar and business administrator Marcos Arraes de Alencar and the granddaughter of former governor of Pernambuco Miguel Arraes.[3] She is also a cousin of the former governor of Pernambuco Eduardo Campos and his son, mayor of Recife João Henrique Campos.[4] She is the niece of the former deputy and current minister of the Federal Audit Court, Ana Arraes.

She graduated in Law at the Federal University of Pernambuco.[5]

She joined the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) in 2005. Marília always had an active job, militating in several socialist campaigns. During law school, she became involved in the student movement, debating gender and the plurality of rights, as well as working on improvement projects for the conservation of the university's heritage.[6]

Between 2007 and 2008, she was Pernambuco's Youth and Employment Secretary under Eduardo Campos' government.[6] At age 24, she was elected as a city councillor of Recife with 9,533 votes,[6] being the youngest parliamentarian in the 15th legislature. During the 2009/2010 biennium, she served as the president of the Youth Public Policy Commission. In 2011, she became the first woman to chair the Commission on Legislation and Justice. In 2012, she was re-elected councillor with 8,841 votes. Shortly after the elections, she took office on the Municipal Secretariat for Youth and Professional Qualification, under Geraldo Júlio's administration.[7]

Marília Arraes in her first term as city councillor of Recife.

Marília returned to the City Council of Recife in April 2014. But, due to what she considered a "ideological shift" to the right on her political party, she resigned her candidacy as a federal deputy. She also denounced interference by the Brazilian Socialist Party leadership in the party's youth. In July of the same year, Marília announced her support for President Dilma Rousseff's candidacy for reelection. Since August 2014, she started to act as part of the opposition to the Recife's mayorship commanded by the PSB. In February 2016, she formalized her disaffiliation from the party, citing a lack of internal democracy and a change in the party's convictions and ideologies.[8]

Soon after, Marília joins the Workers' Party (PT) of Pernambuco. The councillor had her membership card approved by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during PT's 36th birthday party, in Rio de Janeiro. The act of affiliation took place on March 3, 2016, at the City Council of Recife.[8]

In October 2016, Marília decided to run again in municipal elections, running for her third term. She was elected with 11,872 votes, one of the highest votes in the current legislature and one of the most expressive among PT parliamentarians in the Northeast, North, South and Midwest regions. She assumed the leadership of the opposition bench in Casa José Mariano (City Council of Recife), reaffirming her political position and her fight alongside the people of Recife in search of a better city. Committed to the party's ideals, Marília was the head of the group of parliamentarians and leaders who coordinated all the resistance against the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff.

In 2018, she was summoned by the militancy of Workers' Party to contest the pre-candidacy for the Government of Pernambuco. She even led the initial polls, but the project was not carried out due to the national guidelines of the party, which opted for the consolidation of an alliance with other parties and support for the reelection of the then governor, Paulo Câmara, from the Brazilian Socialist Party.[9]

Supported by the same militancy and by numerous sectors of civil society, she entered the race for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. She won with a significant vote with 193,108 thousand votes - the second most voted federal congresswoman in the state in the 2018 elections. She is the fourth woman elected as a federal deputy in the history of Pernambuco.