Oppositionjournalistwriterpresident of the National Council of Portuguese Women (1945–1947)president of the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peacepolitical prisoner
Born
6 October 1893, Torres Novas
Died
6 December 1983, Lisbon
A journalist and writer, she edited “Modas e Bordados” (Fashions and Embroidery), chaired the National Council of Portuguese Women until the regime closed it down in 1947, and responded with “As Mulheres do Meu País” (The Women of My Country). She was arrested several times and lived in exile in Paris.
She was born in Torres Novas on 6 October 1893.4 Divorced, and the mother of three daughters, she made her living from journalism: in the 1920s she joined the Agência Americana de Notícias (American News Agency) with the support of Virgínia Quaresma, and she was one of the country’s first professional women journalists.17 She published her first book, of poetry, in 1923, and also wrote for children, sometimes as “Rosa Silvestre”.18
In 1928, at the invitation of Ferreira de Castro, she became editor of Modas e Bordados (Fashions and Embroidery), the supplement of O Século, written “from woman to woman”.13 In 1930 she organised the exhibition “Mulheres Portuguesas” (Portuguese Women) at the newspaper, under the slogan “Let us be intelligently women” (Sejamos inteligentemente mulheres). She chaired the Portuguese Women’s Association for Peace and, from July 1945, the National Council of Portuguese Women. Signing the lists of the MUD Juvenil (Youth Movement of Democratic Unity) that year was, for her, her first political act: “In doing so, I came out of anonymity”.1
In January 1947 the Council brought together three thousand books written by women at the National Society of Fine Arts. Under pressure from Salazar, the editor of O Século forced her to choose between the newspaper and the Council;6 she chose the Council, which the police closed down on 28 June that year.19 She responded by travelling the country: As Mulheres do Meu País (The Women of My Country), published in instalments between 1948 and 1950, is a great work of reportage on the life and work of Portuguese women.9
In 1949, at a meeting of Norton de Matos’s campaign, she asked: “Could it be that the Estado Novo is afraid of women’s enlightened minds?”1 She was arrested several times and taken to Caxias. During her 1950 imprisonment, which lasted six months, she wrote the Cartas Políticas (Political Letters), and a sentence of hers from that time remains: “I looked around me and began to take more notice of the other women: some resigned and heroic in their courage and silence.”10 In December 1953 she was arrested at the airport, on her way back from a meeting of the World Peace Council. She went into exile in Paris from 1962 to 1969, supporting Portuguese refugees.4
On 1 March 1974, at the age of eighty, she gave evidence at the Boa-Hora Court as a defence witness for Maria Isabel Barreno, one of the “Three Marias”.1 After 25 April she was honorary president of the Democratic Women’s Movement and honorary editor of Mulher – Modas e Bordados (Woman – Fashions and Embroidery).3 She died in Lisbon in 1983.
From the archives
At the Gulbenkian Art Library, Ana Barata draws a portrait of Maria Lamas on the occasion of the exhibition “The Women of Maria Lamas” (“As Mulheres de Maria Lamas”), open to the public from 26 January to 28 May 2024.
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In other archives
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A teacher and feminist, the first woman on the Central Committee of the MUD, whom José Gomes Ferreira called “the Indomitable” (a Indomável). The regime closed her school, barred her from teaching and arrested her several times.
An underground communist activist, she was arrested in 1959 and sentenced to eight years of major imprisonment plus security measures, which she served in Caxias. A deputy from the Constituent Assembly onwards, she chaired the Parliamentary Committee on the Status of Women from 1983 to 1985.
An actress, translator and reciter of poetry, she was vice-president of the National Council of Portuguese Women and, in 1947, spoke about Virginia Woolf at the Exhibition of Books Written by Women. Troubled by the exhibition, the regime closed the Council down that same year.
An obstetrician and pioneer of “painless childbirth” in Portugal. She campaigned for Norton de Matos in 1949, on the Central Committee of the National Democratic Women’s Movement, and for that she was imprisoned in Caxias and barred from teaching at the Faculty of Medicine.
A general of the First Republic, in 1949 he was the united opposition’s candidate for President of the Republic: he held rallies at A Voz do Operário and withdrew on the eve of the election. Like many in the opposition, he advocated a colonialist policy, which he set out in 1953 in “África Nossa” (Our Africa).
The first woman recognised as a civil engineer in Portugal, and a communist activist, she was arrested sixteen times by the PIDE. In 1949 she was held in Caxias, in the same cell as Maria Lamas.
Notes on the sources6
The dates of her arrests: four (1949, 1950, 1951 and 1953) according to Virgínia Baptista; three, between 1949 and 1962, according to the Aljube Museum; 1949, 1953 and 1962 according to Wikipedia.
When she started at “Modas e Bordados”: 1928 (Virgínia Baptista; Wikipedia) or 1930 (CIG); the MDM gives April 1929 for her joining “O Século”.
The number of instalments of “As Mulheres do Meu País”: 15 (Virgínia Baptista) or 24 (Teresa Joaquim).
The dates of her exiles: Virgínia Baptista gives 1953, 1956–1957 and 1961–1969; the MDM gives Madeira from the end of 1957 to 1959 and Paris from June 1962 to 3 December 1969.
The date of death (6 December 1983) was read only in Wikidata.
That the airport where she was arrested in December 1953 is Lisbon’s: the MDM writes only “at the Airport”.
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