Sita Valles

Sita Maria Dias Valles (Cabinda, 23 August 1951 - Luanda, 1 August 1977) was a member of the PCP (Portuguese Communist Party), in charge of the UEC (União dos Estudantes Comunistas or the Communist Students' League). She was tortured and brutally murdered following the events of May 1977, presumably in August 1977 in Luanda, Angola.

Background, family

Born in 1951, she was the daughter of Edgar Francisco da Purificação Valles and Maria Lúcia Dias Valles. Sita grew up in Luanda in a prosperous family of Goan origin.

Political involvement

Pretty, intelligent and charming, she was also bold and independent. She began her political activity on joining the Faculty of Medicine of Luanda, on being connected with Maoist groups.

When she continued her studies in Lisbon, from 1971, she became part of the network of Communist militants and in the União dos Estudantes Comunistas. There, she would grow into one of the prominent figures next only to Zita Seabra.

On April 25, she was in Moscow participating in a congress. She decided to return to Angola in the summer of 1975 to participate in the revolution, which erupted there following the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in colonial Portugal.

Role in Luanda

In Luanda she was considered to be part of the ideologically more-orthodox wing of the MPLA, seen as pro-Soviet, which was directed by Nito Alves and José Van-Dunem (whom she would get married to and have a son with in 1977).

Fraccionismo was the name given to an Angolan political movement, led by Nito Alves, ex-leader of the MPLA, which has been ruling the country since the independence of Angola. This movement surfaced as a difference of opinion that arose in the very heart of the MPLA, after the independence of Angola, against President Agostinho Neto. In Luanda, what was said to be an attempted coup d'etat was launched on 27 May 1977. The attempt was foiled due to the support of the FAR (the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, then stationed in Angola).

Attack on Neto, bloody pursuit

After a short period of peace in which everything seemed to have been solved, an attack took place on the life of President Agostinho Neto. This was followed by a period of two years of bloody pursuit of (reals and supposed) followers and sympathizers of Nito Alves, culminating in thousands of dead. Sita Valles was among those killed in this period.

Shot without blindfold

Sita Valles was accused, without the right of contradiction, of being one of the brains of the alleged putsch of May 27, 1977. She is thought to have been shot in August of that year. The book written on her by journalist Leonor Figueiredo says: "It is said that Sita Valles was shot at five in the morning of August 1, 1977. One shot on each leg, one shot on each arm. The body fell into the ditch that had been previously dug, before the deadly firing. Of what remained of Sita, after the torture and the orgy of rape by the men of the Angola Information and Security Directorate (DISA), the regime's political police. A tractor flattened the ground. It is also said that the beautiful, elegant and intelligent communist of Goan origin -- a Portuguese with an African heart -- remained rebellious until the last moment. She said she was not afraid and that the sooner they killed her the better. By refusing to be blindfolded, she forced the snipers of the firing squad to meet her gaze before pulling the trigger."[1]

Interpreting the conflict

John Saul[2] raises the question "to what extent was the Nito Alves coup the cause, in and of itself, of the inordinate measure of sheer killing that followed it; to what extent was it merely an event exaggerated in its recounting to serve primarily as an excuse for the MPLA to rid itself of an untold number of tiresome critics?". He also notes that in 1976, Alves, by then the "Interior Minister in the new MPLA government, and his close colleague, the ex-political prisoner José van Dunem, a key political commissar in the army (and husband of another left notable of the time, Sita Valles, herself a leading functionary in the government’s Department of Mass Organization) were actually deposed from their leadership posts (as was Valles)". Saul suggests these events marked important lead many Angolans to see "these expulsions as a personal set-back, one feeding a further sense in some popular quarters of a considerable distancing from the MPLA establishment."

Book Revolucionária, Comunista até à Morte

The Portuguese journalist Leonor Figueiredo (a journalist since 1981, formerly with the Correio da Manhã till the end of the 1980s, and then for 21 years on the editorial board of the Diário de Notícias till January 2009, has authored the book Sita Valles: Revolucionária, Comunista até à Morte (Alêtheia Editores, 2014).

She notes that Sita Valles had a very short but intense life (between 1951-1977). Her conscience objected to the injustices that ruled the world, and turned into a political whirlwind. Three decades after her execution—together with José Van-Dunem, Nito Alves and an unknown number of victims which is believed to have probably exceeded 20,000, journalist Leonor Figueiredo, author of Secret Files of the Decolonization of Angola (Alêtheia Editores, 2009), investigated, gathered evidences, and looked for decades-old memories of a young woman and of brutal history, which was grew into a myth for a generation.

Sita Valles has been called "A 'Passionária' de Angola" (The Passionaria of Angola).[1]

References

  1. 1 2 "A "Passionária" de Angola". cc3413. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  2. ↑ Saul, John. ""When Freedom Died" in Angola: Alves and After". Africa Files. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
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