Mother of the Revolution

Deolinda Rodríguez de Almeida, Mother of the (Angolan) Revolution, was born 80 years ago today. She was a gifted individual, a poet and translator, but circumstances led her to become a militant nationalist. She was a defender of human rights, but also an activist enabling women to play a role in the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Aged only 29, she was captured, with others, by an opposing liberation movement, and tortured and murdered. She left behind a diary written during most of her adult years, although it was not edited and published until 2003.

Rodríguez was born in Catete on 10 February 1939 into a Methodist family. Her parents were teachers, and she was educated at Methodist missionary schools. In 1956, she joined the MPLA as a translator. She won a scholarship to study sociology at Methodist University of São Paulo; and from there, in 1959, she exchanged correspondence with Martin Luther King. Fearing political problems in Brazil (because of her support for growing Angolan independence movement), she moved to the United States, where she studied at Drew University. However, in 1961, before concluding her studies she returned to Angola. She took part in an MPLA attack on São Miguel fortress prison and police headquarters in Luanda at the start of, what would be known as, the Portuguese Colonial War.

Rodríguez traveled to Guinea-Bissau and Congo Kinshasa, where she helped found the women’s division of the MPLA (Organização da Mulher de Angola - OMA). She underwent guerrilla training in Kabinda. Back in Angola in 1962, she emerged as a revolutionary leader and activist, but also campaigning for human rights. Later, she was given the honorary title of ‘Mother of the Revolution’. She was also associated with the Corpo Voluntário Angolano de Assistência aos Refugiados.

The following year Rodríguez and the rest of the MPLA leadership were expelled from Angola. They fled to Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and then to Cabinda, an Angolan province within Congo. There, fighting intensified, and in 1967, she and four other members of OMA were captured by Holden Roberto’s National Liberation Front of Angola. They were tortured, dismembered and killed in a Zaire prison. The date of Rodríguez’s death, 2 March, came to be celebrated as Angola’s Women’s Day. A little further information is available at Wikivisually, Bookshy books, and in Immortal Heroes Of The World by M S Gill (at Googlebooks).

Deolinda left behind a diary - a rarity in African cultures -  that she had kept from 1956 to 1967. This was edited by her brother, Roberto de Almeida, and published first in 2003 (with an updated second edition in 2018). The book is titled Diário de um exílio sem regresso (Diary of an Exile without Return), and includes a letter sent by Martin Luther King to Deolinda. A short article about the book can be found in the Portuguese language Journal de Angola, and there is a film, based on the diaries, available at YouTube (from which I’ve taken two screenshots). In 2017, Roberto de Almeida handed over his sister’s diaries and letters to MAAN, the Memorial Dr. António Agostinho Neto in Luanda. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any extracts of the diary, in English or Portuguese.