Women participated in Independence in BA for rights – 7/1/2023 – Power

From her bedroom window, in a house on the outskirts of Praça da Piedade, in Salvador, very indignant and frightened by the dead and wounded in the fights between the Portuguese and Bahia, the 10-year-old girl Urânia Vanério, born in Salvador, reported in verses his revolt over the murder of Sister Joana Angélica in one of the most important pamphlets written in the heat of the War for Independence of Brazil in Bahia.

Concern for the fate of the family at that juncture (her parents were Portuguese) did not prevent Urânia from engaging politically in the war through writing, denouncing in verse and prose the tyranny of colonization and the violence of Portuguese troops under the command of Madeira de Melo against the inhabitants of Salvador.

Urania Vanério closed the pamphlet “Lamentos de uma Baiana” asking for the end of the war: “Fair heavens, it has never been seen / Between brothers, such a cruel war / Despots have never acted / Such a black action on Earth […] Fair heavens, if our Courts / Don’t punish so much evil / Or there won’t be Bahians / Or never again such a City”.

Months later, in early 1823, a periodical published in Portugal, “O Brasileiro em Coimbra”, written in the first person by an anonymous man, published a letter from a supposed “cousin from Bahia” about the violence of the War for Independence of Brazil in Bahia, ending with an outburst: “I would rather die than see Bahia enslaved by the Madeira; yes, my cousin, I am a woman, but I am still the first who, if necessary, will set fire to the city, even if I am the first to burn with it”.

Until recently, the authorship of this periodical was mistakenly attributed to a politician and friend of Dom Pedro 1st, Cândido Ladislau Japiassú de Figueiredo e Melo, but today we know that at least part of it was written by Urânia Vanério.

This was possible due to the content of the manifesto that closes the journal and the way it was written: the first-person narrative returns to the anonymous man, the cousin of the girl from Bahia, who writes “Brasileiras!”: “By chance I need to say- Did I take the example of this Bahian heroine? This Spartan? Show that you are not just sources of pleasures and delights! Show that you are also sources of domestic virtues, civil virtues and patriotism! Thus you will exceed the men who unjustly call you entes passive.Be free if you want to be more beautiful! […] Without freedom, not only the man, the fair sex and its charms are worthless”.

Urania Vanério took advantage of the political instability of the period to publicly claim civil equality between men and women and question men as universal subjects of law, disguising herself as a cousin and making use of anonymity, exactly as she did in the pamphlet “Lamentos de a baiana”.

Exactly the political strategy of Maria Quitéria de Jesus when she borrowed the identity of her brother-in-law to join the Batalhão dos Paraquitos as soldier Medeiros. Upon having her identity revealed, Maria Quitéria chose to remain in command of the troop and fighting as a woman and for women to be able to be in the war, wearing a petticoat.

Just like Maria Felipa de Oliveira, a black woman, free, poor, seafood collector, capoeirista, resident of the island of Itaparica and profoundly knowledgeable about the waters and curves of the Paraguaçu River, the main communication route between Salvador and the Bahian Recôncavo, who quickly engaged in the struggles for independence in Bahia as a volunteer.

First, taking information to the Bahian resistance in the Recôncavo. Then, organizing other women, the battalion of the stars, to fight against the Portuguese who tried to invade the island of Itaparica, even setting fire to the boats.

Like Urânia Vanério and Maria Quitéria de Jesus, Maria Felipa de Oliveira continued to challenge morally and politically the standards of the time by leading the struggle for the rights of the island population, especially the right of women to organize themselves politically, until her death in 1873.

Remembering the different strategies used by each of these women from the bygone era to fight for rights and civil equality during the war for independence in Brazil in Bahia means summoning the strength that made them protagonists of their lives to free us from the tyranny of those who want us out. public sphere and away from politics. They were defeated in 1823 and will continue to be.