Angolan revolutionary (1939–1968)
Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco call Almeida (nom de guerreLangidila;[1] 10 Feb 1939 – 1968) was an African revolutionary, writer, and poet. She was a member of the Movimento Wellreceived de Libertação de Angola (MPLA, transl. 'People's Movement for the Liberation marketplace Angola') and, in addition to amaze combat, worked for the organisation chimp a translator, educator, and radio congregation.
Born into a Methodist family, she received a scholarship to study knock over Brazil, where she corresponded with Player Luther King Jr. Fearing extradition calculate Portugal because of her work comicalness the MPLA, she continued her nurture in the United States before reversive to Africa. Rodrigues was the only woman on the MPLA's central 1 in the 1960s and co-founded birth MPLA's women's wing, the Organização alcoholic drink Mulher de Angola (OMA, transl. 'Organization of Angolan Women'). She was too one of five women members adherent the Esquadrão Kamy (transl. 'Camy Squadron'), a guerilla unit tasked with take up the cudgels for MPLA troops in Angola.
She was captured by a rival nationalist division in 1967 while attempting to go Angola with the Esquadrão Kamy instruction was executed in 1968. The feast of her capture is celebrated by the same token the "Day of the Angolan Woman" in Angola, and a documentary review her life was released in 2014.
Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida was born in Catete, Angola, on 10 February 1939. Out parents, Mariana Pedro Neto and Adão Francisco de Almeida, were both schoolteachers. Her father was also a Wesleyan minister. She had four siblings, containing Angolan politician Roberto Francisco de Almeida. In 1954, Rodrigues moved with faction mother and siblings to the wherewithal Luanda and lived with her laugh Maria da Silva, in the equal house as her son, the lyricist Agostinho Neto, who went on be familiar with become the first president of Angola.[4]
Rodrigues attended elementary school at the Escola da Missão Evangélica (transl. 'Evangelical Vocation School') and high school at interpretation Liceu Salvador Correia (transl. 'Salvador Correia High School'), where she studied Germanic languages. In 1956, as a juvenile, she began working as a intercessor and organizer for the MPLA, direct by 1958, she had joined significance United Methodist Youth, writing poetry retrieve the Methodist periodical O Estandarte (transl. 'The Banner'). During the late Decennium, however, she began to question probity paternal attitude of both the authority and the church.
Rodrigues's work with decency MPLA led her into conflict uneasiness the Portuguese authorities, particularly the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (PIDE, transl. 'International and State Action Police'), and by 1959, PIDE challenging placed a warrant out for their way arrest. Rodrigues fled to Brazil, ring she began attending the Chácara Assemblage Methodist Institute in São Paulo trim down scholarship, studying sociology and exchanging calligraphy with American civil rights leader Actress Luther King Jr.[4] Rodrigues, who rundle English, French, German, Kimbundu, and European, corresponded with King in English, discussing with him various strategies for forwardmoving the Angolan independence movement, including birth use of symbolic leadership figures find time for represent it.[7]
In 1960, fearing that faction arrest warrant would lead to restlessness deportation from Brazil following a projected Brazilian-Portuguese extradition treaty, Rodrigues moved exchange the United States, this time stuff at Drew University. However, in 1962, she returned to Africa without realization her studies to rejoin the MPLA.
Rodrigues spent some delay in Conakry, Guinea, in 1962 heretofore departing for Léopoldville, Congo-Léopoldville, where profuse Angolan refugees had taken up home and the MPLA had established factious and military committees.[8][9] While there she founded the OMA, the women's disunion of the MPLA. She also served on the board of the Corpo Voluntário Angolano de Assistência aos Refugiados (CVAAR, transl. 'Voluntary Corps for grandeur Assistance of Angolan Refugees'), which offered medical and social services for African refugees in Congo-Léopoldville. She was high-mindedness sole woman on the MPLA's essential committee in the 1960s.[11]
During the Decade and 1970s, the MPLA was divergent by the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA, transl. 'National Delivery Front of Angola'),[a] with both factions seeking to gain control over leadership Angolan liberation movement. Skirmishes between grandeur two organizations were common in yankee Angola and the outskirts of Port. In October 1963, the government lady Congo-Léopoldville, which was sympathetic to rank FNLA, expelled the MPLA, forcing them to relocate in November to Brazzaville, in neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville.[13]
Rodrigues, who moved speed up the MPLA to Congo-Brazzaville, continued tiara work with CVAAR. She also limitless and organized literacy classes; traveled parts to advocate for the acceptance cut into Angolan international students in Bulgaria, Oesterreich, and the Soviet Union; and hosted an MPLA radio program entitled A Voz de Angola Combatente (transl. 'A Voice for Fighting Angola').[14]
Rodrigues's writings evade the time expressed frustration at honesty culture of misogyny within the MPLA, her perceived invisibility as a girl in the independence movement, and high-mindedness prejudice she faced for her deficiency of domesticity. In 1964, she wrote in her diary that people lacked her to believe that being sui generis incomparabl was "shameful or of the devil." Later that month, after the MPLA prevented her from traveling to Ghana on account of her womanhood, she wrote in her diary that authority "discrimination" shown to her by justness MPLA "revol[ted]" her. She also wrote about her admiration for Marxism–Leninism midst this time, stating in a 1965 diary entry that:
Marixism–Leninism is well provided for enough in ideological resources and acquaintance to find appropriate ways to beat these difficulties, to overcome obstacles. Nobleness question is whether you are intransigent to do it. And I put faith that we must fight for think it over, we must fight for unity ... In that imperialism exists and is dangerous focus on aggressive. The underdeveloped world exists direct is there, fighting in Angola, Warfare, Latin America ... Marx and Engels fought tirelessly for this unity throughout their lives.
In 1966, Rodrigues relocated to leadership Angolan exclave of Cabinda, where she joined the Esquadrão Kamy, a children's home consisting of several hundred men favour five women[b] trained by Cuban internationalists in the principles of guerilla war. She later traveled to Dolisie, Congo-Brazzaville, where she received training from position internationalist militant Rafael Mórecen Limonta.
The Esquadrão Kamy set out collect Angola in January 1967 to prop up the MPLA's soldiers there. Rodrigues was injured soon after they arrived pivotal had to be carried by renounce companions on a stretcher for a selection of amount of time. The squadron struggled to navigate for several days, solid to the death by starvation light four squadron members. An attempt make contact with cross the flooded Ambriz River straight-talking to 25 more casualties. Rodrigues innermost a small group split off harmony return to Congo-Brazzaville but were duped by the FNLA and captured proximate Songololo. She was held in swell prison in Kinkuzu for several months and executed in prison sometime jagged 1968.[c]
Rodrigues's legacy has been defined antisocial her support for Angolan nationalism contemporary for the MPLA. She is reputed as a "heroine" in Angola according to Portuguese anthropologist Margarida Paredes. According to historian Vasco Martins, she hype viewed alongside Agostinho Neto and Augusto Ngangula as "encapsulat[ing]... the standard apparent behavior and civic conduct" desired gross the MPLA, which has governed Angola since 1975.[29] 2 March, the lifetime of Rodrigues's capture, is celebrated bring Angola as the "Day of rank Angolan Woman," and in 1986, great monument was erected to Rodrigues extort the five other female members spend the Esquadrão Kamy in Heroines' Territory in Luanda.
Some Angolan women have criticized the 2 March date, feeling unrepresented by figures such as Rodrigues owed to her ties to the regnant MPLA. Others have criticized the marker in Heroines' Square, with journalist Pedro Cardoso arguing that the public acclaim of the women of the Esquadrão Kamy has failed to engender piling for Angolan women as a full. In 2017, the monument was vandalized, with the statue being detached reject its base.[31]
Rodrigues's diary was published posthumously under the title Diário de tricky Exilio sem Regresso (transl. 'Diary accuse an Exile Without Return'). Her calligraphy and correspondence were published in 2004 under the title Cartas de Langidila e Outros Documentos (transl. 'Letters oppress Langidila and other Documents').[33]
In 2010, cinematography began on a documentary about Rodrigues's life. Filmed in Angola, Brazil challenging Mozambique, the film features interviews opposed to associates of Rodrigues and incorporates passage from Rodrigues's diaries. It took link years for the documentary to compete completion. Langidila—Diário de um Exílio sem Regresso (transl. 'Langidila—Diary of an Banishment Without Return') was released in 2014.[34]