IntLawGrrls' recent post on Portugal's "
Carnation Revolution" of April 24, 1974, prompts me to make this post about a leader in Portugal's
transformation.
She is
Maria Velho da Costa (right), one of “Three Marias” whose collection of feminist, anti-fascist writings was published in the last years of the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship in
Portugal. (The other 2 are
Maria Isabel Barreno and
Maria Teresa Horta.) As detailed
here their work, entitled
The New Portuguese Letters (1972), attracted international attention when the Portuguese government banned and confiscated all copies and arrested its authors for “outrage to public decency” and “abuse of freedom of the press.” The authors were acquitted two years later, shortly after the “Carnation Revolution” that put an end to the forty-year
Salazar-Caetano dictatorship.
Since that time, Velho da Costa, who was born on June 26, 1938, in Lisbon, has devoted herself to filmmaking projects.
transformation.
