Mônica’s latest exhibition, “Panteras de Saia” (Panthers in Skirts), features portraits of daughters posing with their fathers’ old clothes—leather jackets, dashikis, worn-out boots. In each photo, the daughter holds a symbol of her own fight: a law degree, a stethoscope, a ballot box.
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“The fathers taught us to be brave,” Janaína says. “But they didn’t always teach us to be safe. We are teaching our daughters both.” as panteras em nome do pai e da filha
At a recent protest in São Paulo against police brutality, a line of young women stood in front of the riot police. They wore no masks. They carried no stones. Instead, they held framed photos of their fathers—some alive, some gone. And they sang.
Across São Paulo, Salvador, and Rio, a quiet but seismic shift is taking place. They call themselves —The Panthers. But unlike the revolutionary men of the 1970s, these Panthers move in the name of two forces: the father who fought , and the daughter who continues . The Father’s Blueprint To understand the daughter, you must first meet the father. “But they didn’t always teach us to be safe
Janaína is one of dozens of women now organizing under a new, informal banner: (Daughters of the Panthers). They are lawyers, psychologists, programmers, and community organizers. Their logo is not a snarling cat, but a panther’s silhouette cradling a child. The Daughter’s Strategy The original Panthers were confrontational. These daughters are strategic .
There is a photograph that circulates in the underground archives of Brazil’s Black movement: a man with a raised fist, an afro like a lion’s mane, a leather jacket with a painted panther. Beside him, a girl of maybe seven, her own fist raised—not in imitation, but in inheritance. They carried no stones
“My father believed in the revolution tomorrow,” says , 29, a community health worker in the Maré favela, Rio. “I believe in the child’s homework tonight.”
“We are not erasing them,” Mônica says. “We are completing them.” Not all the daughters had fathers who lived to see their victories. Many of the original Panthers were killed, disappeared, or died from state-sanctioned violence. What remains is absence—and memory.
The original Panthers are mostly gone. But in every girl who raises her fist—not in anger, but in awareness—the panther lives again.