Deolinda Rodrigues

Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida , Deolinda Rodrigues for short (born February 10, 1939 in Catete , Luanda Province , Portuguese Angola , † around March 2, 1967 ) was an Angolan resistance fighter of the Angolan liberation movement MPLA , in the underground she carried the battle name Langidila . She worked as a writer, translator, poet and radio presenter during the Angolan liberation struggle and is considered a co-founder of the Angolan women's organization Organização da Mulher de Angola . Rodrigues was tortured and killed by the competing liberation movement FNLA .

Life

Youth and education

Deolinda Rodrigues was born on February 10, 1939 in Catete in the Luanda province of the Portuguese colony of Angola as the third of five children of a Methodist family. Rodrigue's parents worked as schoolteachers for the Methodist Church in various parts of the country. a. in N'Dalatando , Caxicane and Catete . There she learned to read and write in the Methodist mission schools. In 1954 she moved to the capital Luanda with her mother and siblings . After her mother moved back to her father's inland, she remained in the care of Maria da Silva, mother of the poet and later Angolan President Agostinho Neto .

Rodrigues got involved early on for the small liberation organization Partido da Luta Unida de Angola, which later united with other organizations to form the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA). A few years later after the MPLA was founded, Rodrigues officially joined it. Thanks to a scholarship from the Evangelical Church, she studied sociology at the Methodist University of São Paulo from 1959 . After the governments of Portugal and Brazil signed an agreement to extradite resistance fighters, Rodrigues moved from Brazil to Illinois (USA).

Fight underground

In the USA, however, Rodrigues dropped out of her studies and returned to the African continent to devote himself to Angola's struggle for independence. First she stayed briefly in Conakry ( Guinea ) before moving to Kinshasa ( Zaire ) in 1962 , where the headquarters of the MPLA liberation movement was located. There she initially got involved with the Angolan refugees looked after by the MPLA (as part of the so-called Corpo Voluntário Angolano de Assistência aos Refugiados ), and later built up the Angolan women's organization Organização da Mulher de Angola , whose medical section she initially headed. At the MPLA's first national conference at the end of 1962, the delegates elected her to the Comité Director, where she took over the management of the department for social affairs. She also hosted the MPLA radio show A voz de Angola (voice of Angola).

In 1963, the Zaire government expelled the MPLA from the country, so that it moved to Brazzaville (Republic of Congo). From there, Rodrigues made various international trips, including a. to Bulgaria, Austria and the Soviet Union. In October 1966, the MPLA selected Rodrigues for military training in order to be able to use them later on and behind the front against the Portuguese colonial government.

On March 2, 1967 (or according to other information 1968) Deolinda Rodrigues was captured along with four other MPLA comrades (Engrácia dos Santos, Irene Cohen, Lucrécia Paim and Teresa Afonso) near Kamunda by militiamen of the competing liberation movement FNLA . She was then taken to the FNLA base camp in Kinkuzu , where she was presumably tortured and murdered. Meanwhile, there are still doubts about her death, the date of death and the actual cause of death.

Since the independence of Angola, the (presumed) death of Deolinda Rodrigues - March 2nd - has been celebrated as a national women's day.

Publications

Deolinda Rodrigues' diary was published posthumously in 2003 under the title Diário de um exílio sem regresso ( Eng .: "Diary of an Exile Without Return"), and in 2004 her letters under the title Cartas de Langidila e outros documentos ("Letters Langidilas and other documents ").

Between 2010 and 2014, José Rodrigues and Nguxi dos Santos shot a documentary on Rodrigues' life with the title of their posthumously published work Diário de um exílio sem regresso rotated. In 2015 the film was shown in all provinces of Angola.

bibliography

• Margarida Paredes: Deolinda Rodrigues, da Família Metodista à Família MPLA, o Papel da Cultura na Política, in: Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, number 2 / 2010. Available online .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Deolinda Rodrigues. (No longer available online.) In: mpla.ao. MPLA, archived from the original on March 23, 2016 ; Retrieved September 6, 2016 (Portuguese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Reginaldo Silva: O "racismo" de Deolinda Rodrigues - Rede Angola - Notícias independentes sobre Angola. In: Rede Angola. March 4, 2015, Retrieved September 6, 2016 (Portuguese). 
3. ^ Oswaldo Faustino: Saiba mais sobre a história da militante de Angola Deolinda Rodrigues contada pelo colunista Oswaldo Faustino. (No longer available online.) In: Raca Brasil. June 25, 2014, archived from the original on August 29, 2016 ; Retrieved September 6, 2016 (Portuguese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ "Deolinda Rodrigues not foi morta em 2 de Março", diz Ruth Neto - ANGONOTÍCIAS. In: ANGONOTÍCIAS. March 6, 2007, accessed September 6, 2016 (Portuguese). 
5. ^ Angola: Documentário de Deolinda Rodrigues apresentado em Luanda. Agência Angola Press, August 25, 2015, accessed September 6, 2016 (Portuguese).