Gasparin(h)o Damata
(1918 - c. 1980) Brazil
Writer and activist
Pseudonym of Gasparinho da Mata e Silva. Born in Catende, Pernambuco in north-east Brazil, Damata worked as an interpreter on a US military base in Brazil during WWII and then as a petty officer on an American transport ship sailing around Brazil and across the South Atlantic. In 1949 he became a professional journalist and for a time in the early 1960s was the Brazilian press attaché in Ghana.
Returning to Brazil, he lived as a bohemian, buying and selling pictures and antiques in Rio de Janeiro. Damata was one of the founders of the newspaper Limpião, which appeared monthly from April 1978 to June 1981 and acted as the vehicle for the first wave of the Brazilian gay liberation movement. He died in obscurity in the 1980s.
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