Telma de Souza

Telma Sandra Augusto de Souza was born in Santos, São Paulo, on 29 September 1944. She grew up in a political household. Her father, João Inácio de Souza, known as "Joãozinho do Instituto", was a Santos city councillor whose mandate was revoked by the military regime in 1964. Her mother, Hilda Augusto de Souza, was also a Santos city councillor. She later lived for decades in her parents' former house in the Embaré neighbourhood of Santos.

In 1963 she entered the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters of the Catholic University of Santos (now UniSantos) after receiving an award from Casa Ricordi and the Conservatório Musical de Santos. She graduated in pedagogy in 1966. She then took first place among 236 candidates in the entrance exam for the same university's law school and earned her law degree in 1971. She did postgraduate study in educational psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), took courses on education policy and systems in London and Munich, and later completed a master's degree in public health (Saúde Coletiva).

Telma began as a teacher in public and private schools and became active in the São Paulo teachers' union movement and the amnesty campaign. In 1980 she helped found the Workers' Party (PT) and led its Santos branch.

City council and state assembly: elected to the Santos city council in 1982 with 6,249 votes (the PT's top vote getter), she finished third in the 1984 mayoral election with 34,252 votes. In 1986 she was elected to the São Paulo Legislative Assembly with 28,615 votes, 21,330 of them from Santos, earning the nickname "Musa do Cais".

Mayor of Santos (1989 to 1992): she won the 1988 election by 993 votes over Del Bosco Amaral and took office on 1 January 1989 as the city's first woman mayor. Her government reformed the city administration, municipalised the bus system after a strike and a court fight with the operator Viação Santos-São Vicente, intervened in the Casa de Saúde Anchieta psychiatric hospital on 3 May 1989, opened Craids (Brazil's first municipal AIDS reference centre), created polyclinics and home care programmes, defended port workers and restored the bathing quality of the beaches. She ended her term with 97 percent approval according to Ibope and Datafolha and was succeeded by David Capistrano Filho.

Federal deputy: elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1994 and re-elected in 1998 and 2002, she served from 1995 to 2007 and again briefly in January 2011 as an alternate. She authored the law declaring José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva a Hero of the Fatherland.

Later mandates: she ran for mayor of Santos in 2004, 2012 and 2024 (finishing third in 2024). She was elected Santos councillor in 2008, 2016 and 2020, and state deputy in 2010, serving in the Assembly from 2011 to 2014. There she was fourth secretary of the board, chaired the Health Commission from March 2013 to March 2015, coordinated the front for urban mobility in the Baixada Santista and backed Santos as a 2014 World Cup host city. In 2007 she founded the Institute for the Development of the Baixada Santista (IBS), renamed the Instituto Telma de Souza in January 2025.

Telma de Souza was the mother of two children and grandmother of three grandchildren. The names of her children have not been widely published. She lived in the Embaré neighbourhood of Santos, in the house that had belonged to her parents, both of whom were Santos city councillors.

A lifelong member of the Workers' Party, Telma de Souza championed public health, the anti-asylum (luta antimanicomial) movement, the rights of people living with HIV, port workers, women's rights and environmental protection of the Serra do Mar. In her last public posts before her final hospitalisation, during the 2026 Brazilian election, she called for dialogue with all democratic sectors in support of President Lula. Recalling her first days as mayor in a podcast interview, she said she had cried for days after taking office out of fear, because she knew what she should not do but was not yet sure what she should do.

Telma de Souza is remembered as the only woman elected mayor of Santos and as one of the most influential figures in the politics of the Baixada Santista. Her 1989 intervention in the Casa de Saúde Anchieta is widely cited as a landmark of Brazil's psychiatric reform, and the community mental health network built in Santos afterwards became a model for the country. Her administration's home care and mental health programmes were recommended by the Pan American Health Organization as models for Latin America, and Santos's municipal AIDS centre was the first in Brazil. At the state level, her law created the "Dia Mães de Maio" (12 May) to remember the victims of the May 2006 killings in São Paulo. The Instituto Telma de Souza continues her work on public policy for development and social inclusion.

She was the only person to receive all three of the highest honours of the city of Santos: the title of Cidadã Emérita (1994), the José Bonifácio Medal (awarded by mayor Rogério Santos in January 2023) and the Braz Cubas Medal of Honour for Merit (awarded by the Santos City Council in September 2023).

Telma de Souza kept an active YouTube channel with campaign videos, archival footage of the 1989 Anchieta intervention, the "Telma e Você" interview series and a podcast. In 2020 the Fundação Perseu Abramo recorded her testimony for its "História Oral: PT 40 Anos" oral history project. She also appeared regularly on regional outlets such as Boqnews TV, Santaportal, Jornal da Orla and the podcast Baixada em Pauta.

Her 1988 victory by only 993 votes was contested by the PMDB, which demanded a recount that was not carried out. Early in her term her administration froze and then raised bus fares by 40 percent, blaming the federal Summer Plan, and expropriated the bus operator Viação Santos-São Vicente during a strike. The courts reversed the expropriation four months later, and during the return of the company's assets a confrontation left Anésio Pimenta dos Reis ("Kojak"), a municipal transport worker and PT member, dead. The dispute ended with the municipalisation of public transport in Santos. Her decision to remove stray cats released on the seafront by the previous administration also drew protests from residents.

Telma de Souza had suffered an ischaemic stroke about a year before her death and had since restricted her public appearances. She was admitted to Hospital Monte Serrat in Santos on 7 October 2026 after a cardiorespiratory arrest and was treated in intensive care; g1 also reported a stroke and a urinary infection. She died at about 8:27 pm local time on Saturday 10 October 2026, aged 82, of multiple organ failure, as announced by the Instituto Telma de Souza. Mayor Rogério Santos declared three days of official mourning. Her wake was scheduled for Sunday 11 October 2026 from 1 pm in the Salão Nobre of the Palácio José Bonifácio, Santos city hall, followed by cremation at 7 pm at the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica.