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In Memoriam

Maria José Belo Meca Maranhão

Tuesday 11 June 2019, by Toupeira Vermelha

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Dear comrades, we regret to report on the passing away on June 3, of comrade Maria José Maranhão. Brazilian anti-fascist, internationalist, trotskyist, revolutionary socialist, she was also a feminist, a social and labor activist, a geographer, university teacher and academic. "Zé" Maranhão graduated in Geography in the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1970.

Militant of the Communist Workers Party (POS - Partido Operário Comunista), she was persecuted by the military dictatorship in Brazil and went to Chile, where she lived during Pinochet’s coup. While the fascist military hunted left wing militants on the streets, smoke escaped from her house’s chimney in mid-September - she and other comrades burned VI International documents, including a complete Inprecor collection.

She barely avoided being arrested but managed to escape. Later, she was exiled in France until the end of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal, in April 1974, brought her to that country.. In Portugal, she was a militant of the LCI (International Communist League - Liga Comunista Internacionalista), and then a member of the PSR’s (Socialist Revolutionary Party - Partido Socialista Revolucionário) leadership.

During the PREC (the Revolutionary Process In Course, the revolutionary period also known as "the hot summer", from 1975 to mid-80s), she was active in the popular struggles for access to housing, while in the 90s she was a municipal deputy for the PSR in Lisbon and also a teachers’ union leadership member.

The collective Toupeira Vermelha shares condolences with all family member, comrades and friends.