Elisa Branco

Elisa Branco Batista (December 29, 1912 – June 8, 2001) was a Brazilian Communist militant and peace activist, awarded with the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953.

Elisa Branco
Born(1912-12-29)December 29, 1912
Barretos, São Paulo (state), Brazil
DiedJuly 8, 2001(2001-07-08) (aged 88)
São Paulo
OccupationSeamstress, political activist
Political partyPCB
AwardsLenin Peace Prize (1953)

Life

Barros was born in Barretos, São Paulo, to a Portuguese father who owned a boarding house; she lived with her brothers in a house with 21 rooms.[1] When she was a child, her father died of illness and the family had to rent the rooms of his house to refugees arriving from Europe for survive.[2] She moved to São Paulo in 1948 where she learned sewing[3] and began working in pacifist campaigns[4] after discovering and joining the Brazilian Communist Party after the arrest of Luís Carlos Prestes.[5] That year, she was imprisoned together with the other members of the 1st São Paulo state Textile Workers' Congress.

She joined the Federation of Women of São Paulo (Portuguese: Federação das Mulheres de São Paulo) of which she became one of the executives and organized protest actions against the sending of Brazilian soldiers to Korea.[5] At the same time, she was the vice-president of the Brazilian Peace Movement.[2]

On September 7, 1950, during the festivities of the Independence of Brazil at the Vale do Anhangabaú in São Paulo,[6] she joined a gathering of activists carrying a banner saying: "Os soldados, nossos filhos não irão para a Coréia" ("Our soldiers, our children will not go to Korea") to protest against Brazil's support for the United States in the Korean War.[4] Arrested, she was sentenced to four years and three months in prison, which she spent in Tiradentes prison. During her imprisonment, the lawyer for the Brazilian Communist Party filed a habeas corpus for her, but it was rejected. In prison, she teaches her fellow inmates to read, sewing, and body hygiene.[2] She is finally released in October 1951.

In 1953, she left for Europe to attend the Congress for Peace in Moscow where she received the Lenin Peace Prize.[5] From 1951 to 1965, she was member of the World Council for Peace.[3]

During the 1964 Brazilian coup d'etat, she was arrested again by the soldiers but only remained in detention for eight days.[1] In 1971, she was arrested again by the military and stayed 3 days in prison.[2]

She died on June 8, 2000 in São Paulo, at 87 years old.[2]

References
  1. "Elisa Branco, 87 anos: A costureira que ganhou o Prêmio Stalin". Terra (in Portuguese). 2000.
  2. "A comunista que evitou uma guerra para os brasileiros". Redr Brasila Tual (in Portuguese). 2011-05-01. Archived from the original on 2011-05-05.
  3. "Branco, Elisa". Grande encyclopédie soviétique (in Russian).
  4. "PROIN - Publicações e Documentos do Inventário do Deops" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  5. "Homenagem: Elisa Branco". INVERTA (in Portuguese).
  6. Osvaldo Bertolino (2019-09-07). "A prisão da comunista Elisa Branco num 7 de Setembro". Vermelho (in Portuguese).
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