Neither maids, nor quiet: guerrilla women, militants and history writers

Abstract

Who are/were the women of the different militancies that fought against the dictatorships established in their countries? What do they have to say? What is your perspective on the facts? In official histories on the various forms of political resistance against Brazilian dictatorships, which are enshrined in textbooks and academic articles, many names of male leaders appear: Carlos Lamarca, Carlos Marighella, Luís Carlos Prestes, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, Vladmir Herzog, Paulo Freire, Ulysses Guimarães, among others. With the passage of time and the consolidation of democracy in the country, female names began to compose this list of people who, not only contested, but also acted directly against the developments of the civic-military period. Even in a society that insists on defining gender roles by the biological and social aspect, the subjective shift referred to by Beatriz Sarlo (2018) allowed women to gain space to broaden their voices and analyze and report history from a situated perspective. The essay that I write along these lines is in line with one of these reports, that of the survivor Ana Maria Ramos Estevão, in the book Torre das Guerreiras e outras memórias (2021).