Sita Valles

Sita Maria Dias Valles (Cabinda, 23 August 1951 – Luanda, c. 1 August 1977) was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, in charge of the União dos Estudantes Comunistas (or  Communist Students' League). She was tortured and brutally murdered following the events of May 1977, presumably in August 1977 in Luanda, Angola. In the assessment of Leonor Figueiredo, Sita Valles had a very short but intense life: her conscience objected to the injustices that ruled the world, and turned into a political whirlwind. Sita Valles has been called "A 'Passionária' de Angola" (The Passionaria of Angola).

Early life

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

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.

Role following the Carnation Revolution

On the Carnation Revolution of April 25 1974, which erupted in Angola following the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in colonial Portugal, Dias Valles was in Moscow participating in a congress. She decided to return to Angola in the summer of 1975 to participate in the revolution

In Luanda she was considered to be part of the ideologically more-orthodox wing of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), seen as pro-Soviet, which was directed by Nito Alves and José Van-Dunem. By 1976, Alves was the new MPLA government's interior minister while Van-Dunem, an ex-political prisoner and a key political commissar in the army. Sita Valles became "a leading functionary in the government’s Department of Mass Organization".

In 1977, Dias Valles married Van-Dunem and had a son with him.

Death

Following Angola's independence, Alves took the helm of a new political movement within the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola known as Fraccionismo; this movement had ruled 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, from 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 Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, then stationed in Angola. Alves, van Dunem and Dias Valles were deposed from their official positions. The attempted coup was followed by a period of two years of bloody pursuit of (real and supposed) followers and sympathizers of Nito Alves  leading to thousands of killings — though it is open to question how far the attempted coup itself was the cause of this pursuit and how far exaggerated accounts of the event were used to legitimate a purge of "an untold number of tiresome critics".

Dias Valles was among those killed in this period. She 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. According to Leonor Figueiredo,
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."

Biographies and studies

 Leonor Figueiredo, Sita Valles: Revolucionária, Comunista até à Morte (Alêtheia Editores, 2014) [translated as Sita Valles: A Revolutionary until Death by David Addison Smith (Goa 1556, 2018). The Portuguese author, 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.
 Leonor Figueiredo, Secret Files of the Decolonization of Angola (Alêtheia Editores, 2009). This study investigated, gathered evidences, and looked for decades-old memories of Valles, José Van-Dunem, Nito Alves and an unknown number of victims which is believed to have probably exceeded 20,000. The study records a brutal history which had grown into a myth for a generation.

References

External links 
Purga em Angola, by Dalila Cabrita Mateus
 Biografia de Sita Valles revela mulher que morreu de olhos abertos perante pelotão de fuzilamento
 Sita Vales, protagonista do “27 de Maio” – In memorium 
 A revolução perdida de Sita Valles
 Zita Seabra on Sita Valles
 Para além da morte trágica de Sita Valles (publico.pt)
 Sita Valles, on Gini.com
 Link to book on the publisher's website

Category:Angolan communists
Category:Anti-revisionists
Category:1977 deaths
Category:1951 births