Titina Silá

Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Ernestina "Titina" Silá (1 April 1943 – 30 January 1973) was a Bissau-Guinean revolutionary. Recruited into the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), while she was a young woman, she joined in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence against the Portuguese Empire.

As one of the first women in the PAIGC, she quickly became a popular leading figure in the revolutionary movement and was often praised by its leader, Amílcar Cabral. After being trained in nursing in the Soviet Union, she took a commanding role in the Northern Front of the war, rising to the rank of political commissar and joining the Superior Council of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP).

While on her way to attend Cabral's funeral, in January 1973, she was ambushed and killed by the Portuguese. As a revolutionary martyr, her memory has been commemorated by memorial dedications and her example used to educate young men and women on gender equality. The day of her death, 30 January, is celebrated as National Women's Day in Guinea-Bissau.

Biography

On 1 April 1943, Ernestina Silá was born in the village of Cadique Betna, in the Tombali Region of Portuguese Guinea.Template:Sfnm In the late 1950s, while the anti-colonial movement was first beginning to mobilise, Silá and her mother moved to Template:Ill. There, Silá was recruited into the movement by João Bernardo Vieira, who tasked her with distributing illegal literature and liaising between the mobilisers and the local peasantry.Template:Sfn In 1962, she joined the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) – becoming one of its first woman members – shortly before the outbreak of the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence.Template:Sfn

Although her mother tried to dissuade her from her activism, before long, Silá had convinced almost everyone she knew to either support the PAIGC or even to join it themselves. Despite her mother's pleas, she ran away from home and joined the guerrillas in Template:Ill, where she was trained as a fighter and began her first combat missions.Template:Sfn Known for her "joyful" disposition,Template:Sfn Silá quickly became "one of the most loved leaders of the revolution",Template:Sfnm and developed into an "iconic female soldier".Template:Sfn At the request of Luís Cabral, in 1964, Silá designed "elegant look[ing]" uniforms for the newly-recruited PAIGC militiawomen.Template:Sfn That same year, Silá attended the first party congress of the PAIGC in Cassacá, where she was praised for her activities in the south and taken under the paternal wing of the party's leader Amílcar Cabral.Template:Sfn

As part of a program to mobilise young women into the movement,Template:Sfn Silá was sent abroad to the Soviet Union, in order to be trained in nursing.Template:Sfnm In 1965, Silá travelled alongside Carmen Pereira to Kyiv, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.Template:Sfnm There, at the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute,Template:Sfn healthcare lessons were transmitted to the Buissau-Guinean nursing students through several languages: first, the teacher spoke Russian; this was translated into Spanish by an interpreter; which Pereira converted into Portuguese notes before giving the lesson in Guinea-Bissau Creole; finally, Silá translated the lesson into Balanta for the nursing students.Template:Sfn There she developed a close friendship with Francisca Pereira, with whom she shared a similar disposition, as well as an aversion to the cold Eastern European winter.Template:Sfn

Upon their return, Pereira and Silá became leading figures in the independence movement.Template:Sfnm Silá was assigned to the northern front, the most hotly contested front of the conflict,Template:Sfn where she took charge of the region's healthcare.Template:Sfnm She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the assistant to the front's commander, for whom she established a militia training camp.Template:Sfn She was later appointed as political commissar of the northern region,Template:Sfnm which put her in charge of social reconstruction and political education in the area.Template:Sfn She rarely left the front, only doing so to attend PAIGC conferences, official visits or high council meetings.Template:Sfn During one of these meetings, Cabral introduced her to Gérard Chaliand as: "Comrade Titina Sila, who is in overall charge of our public health program in the North. She saw combat in the South, gun in hand."Template:Sfn In 1970, she joined the Superior Council for the Fight (Template:Langx; CSL),Template:Sfnm joining Carmen and Francisca Pereira as the only women on the 75-member body.Template:Sfn She then met and married fellow Committee member Manuel N'Digna, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP), with whom she had two children; the eldest dying in infancy in 1972.Template:Sfnm Worried about similarly losing her young daughter Eva, Silá had her placed in the care of her grandmother, in the safe zone of Boké.Template:Sfn

Upon receiving news of the death of the PAIGC leader Amílcar Cabral, Silá began making her way towards Guinea-Conakry, in order to attend his funeral.Template:Sfnm At the end of January 1973, while crossing over the Farim River, Silá's detachment was ambushed by a patrol of the Portuguese Navy; and Silá herself was shot.Template:Sfnm A Cuban doctor attempted to save Silá,Template:Sfn but she fell into the river and drowned,Template:Sfnm as she was not able to swim. The rest of her detachment managed to escape, but they had lost their political commissar.Template:Sfn

By the following year, Guinea-Bissau had declared independence, which was formally recognised in the wake of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.Template:Sfn Silá's remains were taken to Bissau and interred in the Fortaleza de São José da Amura, near Amílcar Cabral's mausoleum.Template:Sfn

Legacy

Photograph of the grave of Titina Silá, with a wreath of flowers placed on it

Grave of Titina Silá in the Fortaleza de São José da Amura

Along with Amílcar Cabral and Template:Ill, Titina Silá has been recognised by Bissau-Guinean political society as a martyr of the war of independence.Template:Sfn To commemorate her memory, a square in the capital of Bissau was named after her.Template:Sfnm In March 1977, a state-owned fruit juice factory named after Silá was opened in the town of Bolama,Template:Sfnm but it was closed by the mid-1980s.Template:Sfn

Silá was one of the few women to be recognised in the leadership of the anti-colonial movement.Template:Sfn Although significantly more attention is paid to her male counterparts,Template:Sfnm in the 21st century, Silá is still celebrated in Guinea-Bissau as a war hero.Template:Sfnm Her example has also been used in political education classes, in order to educate young men on gender equality and inspire young women to take on responsibilities as leaders.Template:Sfn In a eulogy to Silá, Francisca Pereira recalled that:Template:Sfn

Each 30 January, marking the anniversary of Silá's death, Guinea-Bissau celebrates "National Day of Guinean Women" in order to commemorate the women that died for the country's independence.

Bibliography

• Template:Cite thesis

External links

• Documentos Amílcar Cabral/ Fundação Mário Soares: Lucette Cabral, Titina Silá, Osvaldo Lopes da Silva, and Maria da Luz Boal photographed at an exchange of POWs during the independence struggle, Dakar, Senegal.