(A series brought to you by Feminist Global Resistance)
The Series:
Patriarchy ensures that male (almost exclusively white colonizer) history is remembered though a few women shine through or are given a twisted footnote.
More often, women are relegated to lost tomes and forgotten lore. Some shine through in song and tales while others, more recently, are beginning to have their stories told (progress?)
Throughout history, women around the world have stood to fight patriarchy, some winning, some losing, but they often brought revolution and change, their lives given for the just causes of freedom, liberty and justice.
This series will focus on the stories of some of those women who have stood up to patriarchy fighting oppression and colonization; confronting violence and abuse; And sacrificing everything in a fight for freedom, justice, and human rights. There have been many. I have chosen just a few of those who inspire me by their bravery and resolve.
Learn their names, learn from them, let them inspire you to do great things.
Part 13: Titina Silá, Freedom Fighter
Ernestina Silá, Titina Silá (1943-1973), “an African revolutionary”: Leader People’s Militia Committee in the North, African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde(PAIGC); Martyr Of Guinea-Bissau’s War of Independence
The Portuguese Empire
In the 1400’s, explorers, like Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco de Gama, financed by Prince Henry the Navigator, sailed to, explored, and settled in South America, Africa, and Asia. Portugal’s empire, which survived for more than six centuries, was the first of the great European global empires and outlasted all others as well, surviving until 1999. Unfortunately for Portugal, they had neither the “manpower” nor the resources to maintain control of such vast holdings so their Empire began to decline.
It was the move for independence within the colonies which, finally, crushed the Empire and sealed its fate.
Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau
When explorers from Portugal sailed down the coast of western Africa, in 1430, they were looking for gold. They weren’t looking to jump in on the slave trade in Africa had existed for centuries.
It was in the 1500’s that Portugal colonized the African region that is present day Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and two archipelagos off the coast of Western Africa, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. Trading posts were established but, instead of competing with the Muslim merchants that had been established since 1325, they offered trade for the Mediteranean and European markets.
While the continental lands, of the Portuguese African holdings, were rich in gold, diamonds and “human commodities” (slaves), the uninhabited archipelagos became the base for the Portuguese slave trade.
Portuguese African Slave Trade 1450-1900
Image: © Alistair Boddy-Evans.
The Portuguese began trading humans in Africa, selling people they purchased from local traders to the Muslim traders and making considerable amounts of gold doing it. Muslim merchants paid handsomely for slaves, using them as porters on the trans-Saharan routes (with a high mortality rate), and for sale in the Islamic Empire.
By the late 1400’s, as the Portuguese expanded their market into India and after the establishment of sugar plantations on Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde Islands, they developed a slave market selling them to the growing plantations.
By 1500, the Portuguese had traded approximately 81,000 enslaved Africans. The European slave trade was just about to begin lasting for the next three centuries
By 1836, the Portuguese placed a ban on shipping slaves from the coast of Angola and, by 1875, slavery was made illegal throughout the Portuguese Empire but this didn’t bring freedom to the western African colonies. There was still gold, ivory and diamonds to be had; People to subjugate; And oppression to sustain.
Actual Portuguese colonization in Africa was a late and convoluted process. It started with trade posts and forts on stolen lands and with the violence of capturing, kidnapping, enslaving and subjugating the indigenous tribes. It ended with years of violent conflicts including “pacification campaigns” (1890s) and finally the liberation wars of the 1960s and 1970s.
For Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe, the Portuguese used a combination of rule based on political, military, and religious systems. Until the very end, coercive labor, severe taxation, racial discrimination, authoritarian politics, and economic exploitation were the fundamental pillars of Portuguese colonialism in Africa.
“Scramble For Africa” (aka, Partition of Africa, Conquest of Africa or Rape of Africa)
After centuries of occupation and colonization (that went from mere exploitation and theft of people, land and resources to full colonization of territory, in earnest, in the 19th century), the western Africa colonies continued to suffer abuses by the Portuguese Empire.
As for the Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau region, the Empire had fought territorial battles with the French and the English for decades, leaving its fate to other imperialist powers (1884–85 Berlin Congress) – thirteen European nations, the Ottoman Empire, and the U.S. – to adjudicate in the late 19th century. Africans were not invited.
The lands and the people were being torn apart, as was the rest of Africa, under the bickering imperialist nations of the world.
The Europeans called Africa the “Dark Continent” (coined by “adventurer” and explorer, Henry M Stanley) because it was unknown to them. They soon used the term to imply a more sinister idea of ‘Darkest Africa’ (another term coined by Stanley) a place where the inhabitants were “savage” and brutal. White Europeans at the time (after the industrial revolution) justified their oppression and colonial greed declaring that industrial towns and technology were indications of civilization. The African peoples did not have the technology” nor were their villages “industrial’ towns and cities, therefore they were considered “uncivilized”. This paradigm to justify European colonists abuse and oppression in their colonies ignoring the established African tribes and kingdoms; their rich histories; and there centuries old cultures thereby making Africa and the people the perfect target for colonization under the guise of “helping” to advance civilization.
The paradigm was not only promoted by politicians and their government bodies, but also promoted in literature, entertainment, and public commentary through the 19th century and well into the 20th century. Exploration in the name of “research” and “science” were used to expand colonial power.
In the words of Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. 1 (First published January 1, 1878):
“Only by proving that we are superior to the savages, not only through our power to kill them but through our entire way of life, can we control them as they are now, in their present stage; it is necessary for their own well-being, even more than ours.”
Expeditions brought human specimens back to Europe and the US. “Human zoos” became all the rage with captured or traded peoples from the African continent (as well as the Middle East, Asia, tropical islands, and South America) on display. Some of them kept in cages for the amusement of those willing to pay.
The people of Guinea, like the rest of the continent, had no say in the matter of their fate. They resisted, revolted, and mutinied by any available means whenever possible.
Then came “Pacification” – a 49-year-war of “pacification” against the local African communities resisting their rule
HER Story:
Ernestina “Titina” Silá was born in Tombali, Guinea-Bissau, in 1943.
By 1943, the military dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar (ruled 1932-1968) had been in power for 6 years. Salazar’s 36 year rule was characterized by systematic repression of civil and political rights, mass torture, arbitrary arrests, concentration camps, police brutality against civil rights protestors, electoral fraud and colonial wars that left hundreds of thousands dead.
Titina was born just 7 years after the last of three brutal pacification campaigns by the Portuguese against the Guinean population. She grew up under the brutality, oppression, and the constant threat of destruction by the Portuguese. That is all she knew.
She could have resigned herself to the abuse and domination of colonizers. She could have worked and died an early death as a result of poverty and disease (Malaria, Dengue, Influenza, Pneumonia, severe malnutrition). She could have waited for a new “pacification” campaign to come to her village; steal their livestock and food supplies; destroy their homes and their village; arrest, torture and kill villagers.
The Portuguese cared little about their subjects; Only about their production
By the age of 18, in 1961, Titina was approached by the organizers of the African Party for Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde; PAIGC). She joined in the fight.
The PAIGC, founded September 19, 1956, was originally formed to peacefully campaign for independence from the Portugeuse Empire. At first, the goal was to organize workers in the towns, hoping that through demonstrations and strikes they would convince the Portuguese to negotiate for independence, but after the massacre of striking dockworkers by Portuguese security forces at the port of Bissau in 1959 (Pindjiguiti Massacre), the founders (Amílcar Cabral who became Secretary General; his brother Luís, Aristides Pereira; Fernando Fortes; Júlio Almeida; Elisée Turpin; and Rafael Paula Barbosa, who became the party’s first President) decided that a peaceful liberation through nonviolent resistance was impossible. This was a turning point for PAIGC. They realized that independence could not be won without an armed struggle – a fight that had to be based on the mass participation of the people. They began preparing for a full guerilla war against Portuguese rule; A war for full liberation and complete independence.
Amilcar Cabral became the leader of the revolution.
In 1963, Titina went to the Soviet Union to complete a political internship. Upon her return to Guinea-Bissau, she began recruiting and training women to join the fight for independence growing her group of feminist guerilla fighters to 95. Her dedication to the cause, her determination, and her bravery elevated her to a leadership role in the resistance and she was becoming a hero to the people of Guinea-Bissau. She was placed in charge of important operations that were vital to the war effort to include distributing literature among the people, facilitating communication between local peasants and PAIGC mobilizers, recruiting people to support the liberation movement, leading the People’s Militia Committee in the North (in her late teens), organizing the movement of people and goods for the supply of resistance troops, and finally training as a guerrilla and engaging in combat.
As Amilcar Cabral stated, “Titina was a tireless fighter, kind, simple, an exceptional person and a great patriot”.
For Titina, it wasn’t all work and warfare. She met and married a fellow comrade in the PAIGC and had two children. Sadly, her role of “mother” was cut short.
On January 20, 1973, Titina’s mentor and the leader of the PAIGC, Amilcar Cabral, was preparing for independence and the formation of the People’s Assembly of Guinea-Bissau. On that fateful day, he was assassinated by a disgruntled former PAIGC rival, Inocêncio Kani, together with another member of PAIGC from one of the rival factions within his own party.
On January 30, 1973, at the age of 30, Titina Silá and a cadre of fellow guerilla freedom fighters were ambushed by the Portuguese military while crossing the Farim River on their way to Cabral’s funeral.
Titina Silá, freedom fighter, guerilla warrior and feminist never saw the end of the war and the full independence of Guinea-Bissau but she was a driving force that led to that independence and the removal of the Portuguese Empire from her homeland just one year after her death.
Friend and comrade, Francisca Pereira ,memorialized Silá with these words:
“Titina symbolized the kind of woman that PAIGC is trying to produce. Strong enough to withstand even the kind of test that the north front presented, she was always able to find a solution to the most difficult problem. She had natural leadership qualities and the people responded to her because she was neither selfishly demanding nor authoritarian. Everybody loved her. …. She was always willing to sacrifice herself for the struggle and that is how she died. She was someone formed by the revolution and who had attained the ideal of what the Guinea-Bissau woman should be.”
Today, Titina is celebrated as a hero and a martyr for the revolution – Memorialized on buildings and schools; a monument was erected in her honor near the river Farim where she died; and January 30, the date of her death, is celebrated annually as National Women’s Day in Guinea Bissau.
Titina embodies the Revolution, Every act she took from the age of 18 until her death at age 30, was for the people and a dream of freedom.