Luiz Mott

Anthropologist Luiz Mott is one of Latin America’s best-known sexual freedom activists. At the Carnival in 1980 he founded the non-governmental organisation Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB), the longest-serving active institution for the rights of LGBTQ+ in Latin America. He was born in 1946 in São Paulo, and has been living and teaching in Salvador in the federal state of Bahia since 1978. After graduating in social sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP), he gained a master’s degree in ethnology at the Sorbonne in Paris and a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and mentor of the postgraduate programme of the History Faculty. Mott, as he is generally known, is THE pioneer in the field of ethnosexual research in Brazil.
 
He has written numerous books, including Escravidão, homossexualidade e demonologia (Slavery, Homosexuality and Demonology; Ícone, 1988), Homossexuais da Bahia: dicionário biográfico (Homosexuals in Bahia: a Biographic Encyclopaedia; Ed. GGB, 1999) and Homossexualidade: mitos e verdades (Homosexuality: Myths and Truths; Ed. GGB, 2003).