Fernanda de Paiva Tomás (8 November 1928 – 15 September 1984) was a member of the
Portuguese Communist Party
The Portuguese Communist Party ( pt, Partido Comunista Português, , PCP) is a communist, Marxist–Leninist political party in Portugal based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself patriotic and internationalist,Portugue ...
who spent close to a decade as a political prisoner, from 1961 to 1970, under the authoritarian ''
Estado Novo'' regime.
Early life
Maria Fernanda de Paiva Tomás was born on 8 November 1928, in Mortágua, in the
Viseu district of Portugal. She attended the Faculty of Arts at the
University of Lisbon
The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, th ...
. Coming from a family of
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
supporters, she married Joaquim Augusto Cruz Carreira, who was also a communist activist.
Communist Party and imprisonment
Paiva Tomás was detained by the police twice as a student for taking part in anti-war demonstrations, the first time when she went to put flowers on a World War I memorial. At the age of 23 in 1952 she went underground, working for the
Movement of Democratic Unity, of which the Portuguese Communist Party was a member. Her husband was arrested in 1958 and sentenced to four years in prison. For nine years she worked with ''
O Militante'', the Communist Party magazine, until she was also arrested on 6 February 1961. Held in
Caxias prison near Lisbon, she was tortured with two periods of sleep deprivation lasting 80 and 94 hours, and being held incommunicado for 20 days with no change of clothes, to try to get her to reveal the location of the Communist Party's planned Fifth Congress. According to the Portuguese secret police, using the pseudonyms of "Ana" and "Marques", she had served as a member of the central management of the
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
regional organization of the Communist Party, controlling the eastern sector of the capital, and was an alternate member of the Party's Central Committee in 1960.
[
Paiva Tomás was the author of one of thirteen letters included in a manifesto sent clandestinely from the prison in May 1961 and directed to "women's and democratic organizations in the whole world", in which torture was denounced and the conditions under which opponents of the '' Estado Novo'' regime were held were criticised.][ While in prison she met ]Julieta Gandra
Julieta Gandra (1917–2007) was a Portuguese doctor who was imprisoned by the Portuguese authorities for supporting Angolan Independence. She was Amnesty International's "Prisoner of Conscience of the Year" in 1964. Early life
Maria Julieta Gu ...
, with whom she would live after her release. Their relationship, carried out in full sight of the other prisoners, led to considerable criticism and hostility but was tolerated by the authorities.
Release from prison
Having been sentenced to eight years in prison and having served eight years and six months, Paiva Tomás was due to be released in September 1969. However, her sentence was extended because she was deemed to be a security risk. In 1970, her son, Alberto, at the age of 15, wrote to the Portuguese president, Marcelo Caetano, to protest against her detention. Shortly after, she agreed to sign a document stating that she would abstain "from acts whose performance may be of interest" to the Communist Party. Three weeks later, on 19 November 1970, Paiva Tomás was released. After the Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution ( pt, Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25 April ( pt, 25 de Abril, links=no), was a military coup by left-leaning military officers that overthrew the authoritarian Estado Novo regime on 25 April 1974 in Lisbo ...
and the fall of the ''Estado Novo'' in 1974, she went in 1975, together with Julieta Gandra, to Angola
, national_anthem = " Angola Avante"()
, image_map =
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, capital = Luanda
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. Gandra had been asked to go there to set up a national health service for Angola prior to its independence
Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
and Paiva Tomás worked in the Ministry of Education.[
Maria Fernanda de Paiva Tomás died on 15 September 1984, from a brain tumor.
]
References
{{Authority control
Portuguese communists
Portuguese anti-fascists
Portuguese prisoners and detainees
1928 births
1984 deaths
People from Viseu District