Alda do Espírito Santo

Alda Neves da Graça do Espírito Santo , also known as Alda da Graça or Alda do Espírito Santo (born April 30, 1926 in São Tomé , São Tomé and Príncipe , † March 9, 2010 in Luanda, Angola), was a Sao-Toméic Politician and poet. Alda do Espírito Santo was involved in the MLSTP liberation movement even before her homeland became independent ; she was one of the country's most famous resistance fighters. After independence, she took on various political offices. Apart from politics, she is one of the most famous poets in the country, including the creation of the national anthem of São Tomé and Príncipe, Independência total .

Life

Youth and education

Alda do Espírito Santo was born on April 30, 1926 in the city of São Tomé as the daughter of a wealthy family, her mother, Maria de Jesus Agostinho das Neves (1902-2001), worked as a primary school teacher, her father João Graça do Espírito Santo (1891 –1944) as a post office clerk. After completing primary school in São Tomé, she attended a secondary school in Porto, then from 1948 she studied primary school teaching in Lisbon. In the course of her studies she also joined the Casa dos Estudantes do Império , a student house for students from the Portuguese so-called "overseas territories". In the house she got to know numerous other students who later became prominent leaders of the Luso African liberation movements, such as Amílcar Cabral, Noémia de Sosa, Marcelino dos Santos, etc. There she became politicized and began to campaign for the independence of her country.

In 1953 Alda do Espírito Santo returned to São Tomé and Príncipe, where she began to work as a primary school teacher. In the same year she assisted the Portuguese lawyer Palma Carlos in investigating the crimes committed by the colonial administration in the wake of the Batepá massacre in February 1953. When Espírito Santos visited Lisbon in December 1965, the Portuguese secret police PIDE arrested her on the pretext of having founded an underground movement in the archipelago and held her for two and a half months.

Promotion and engagement in the MLSTP

In the course of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in 1974, Alda do Espírito Santo was publicly involved in the Associação Cívica - pro MLSTP , a support group of the São Tomé independence movement Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP), as the leadership of the party itself was in exile in Gabon lived. She rose to become one of the most famous personalities of the independence movement, in June 1974 she became a member of the Politburo of the MLSTP - a position she held until 1990.

On September 19, 1974, she protested with several other women in front of the governor's palace of the archipelago, in which the Portuguese colonial administration continued to reside until independence. The women's group was told to the Portuguese administration to have deliberately poisoned salt and drinking water. To this day, the day is celebrated as National Women's Day in São Tomé and Príncipe.

With the establishment of the transitional government in December 1974, Alda do Espírito Santo received the office of Minister of Education. Even with the complete independence of the archipelago on July 12, 1975, she remained active and belongs to the closest circle around party leader, head of government and brother-in-law Manuel Pinto da Costa . The MLSTP changes over time to a ruling party that presents itself as Marxist and ruled the archipelago as the sole and only party. She was also always represented in the following governments, first as Minister for Education and Popular Culture (1975–76), for Information (1976–77), and Information and Popular Culture (1977–1980). She then took over the chairmanship of the state parliament, the Assembleia Nacional de São Tomé e Príncipe , from 1980 to 1990.

Even after the island state was democratized and a multi-party system was introduced, Alda do Espírito Santo was still active. After the transformation of the Marxist MLSTP into a more social democratic party, she became a member of the party's executive committee, a position she retained until her death, even though she withdrew from active politics in the mid-1990s. From 1991 to 1994 she was a member of the state parliament for the MLSTP-PSD.

Lyrical creation

Alda do Espírito Santo is one of the best-known poets of the small island state, and her main work - always in Portuguese - was created primarily during her studies, i.e. in the period before the independence of São Tomé e Príncipe. She published several poems in various magazines and anthologies in the 1950s and 1960s. Together with several other poems created after independence, she published this in 1978 in a volume entitled É Nosso o Solo Sagrado da Terra. Poesia de protesto e luta ("The consecrated ground is our earth. Poetry of protest and struggle"). In her poetry, she primarily addressed the resistance struggle, the oppression under the Portuguese, as well as local everyday culture and the folklore of São Tomé e Príncipe .

The best-known opus to this day is the island nation's national anthem with the title Independência total (“Complete Independence”), the music for which Quintero Aguiar composed .

In 1987, together with other artists and cultural workers in the country, she founded the União Nacional dos Escritores e Artistas de São Tomé e Príncipe (UNEAS), the national association of writers and artists. She headed the association from its foundation until her death.

Alda do Espírito Santo has been included in the Daughters of Africa anthology published in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

death

Alda do Espírito Santo died on March 9, 2010 in a hospital in the Angolan capital Luanda , where she had been flown after a sudden illness. The government of São Tomé e Príncipe declared five days of national mourning for the poet and independence fighter after her death.

Works

• O Jornal das Ilhas (1976)
• O Nosso o Solo Sagrado de Terra (1978)
• Mataram o rio da minha cidade (2003)
• Cantos do solo sagrado (2006)
• O coral das ilhas (2006)
• Mensagens do solo sagrado (2006)
• Mensagens do canto do Ossobó (2008)
• Tempo universal (2008)
• O relógio do tempo (2008)

Web links

• Some poems by Alda do Espírito Santo (Portuguese)
• More poems by Alda do Espírito Santo (in Portuguese)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Alda Espírito Santo era a voz feminina de São Tomé e Príncipe. In: Diário de Notícias. March 11, 2010, accessed December 24, 2018 (Portuguese). 
2. ↑ Alda Espírito Santo - poeta do meio do mundo. In: Elfikurten.com.br. July 2015, accessed December 24, 2018 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Gerhard Seibert: Graça, Alda da . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . tape 2 . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 500 f .