Memorial da Resistência rescues stories about the feminist press

The Resistance Memorial, in the capital of São Paulo, held this Saturday (3) a conversation with women who defied repression during the dictatorship period established with the 1964 military coup in Brazil. They imposed themselves through the press and by challenging imposed gender roles and the authoritarianism installed in the country.

Among these women was Lia Katz who, in the late 1960s, fought in defense of democracy and who joined the “clique of communicators” when she began to participate, together with her friend Rita D. Luca, in meetings of the feminist movement, in São Paulo.

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The meetings strengthened in 1975, when International Women's Year was celebrated, with the holding of the first edition of the World Women's Conference, with the motto “Equality, Development and Peace”. In the feminist press, the highlight was the newspapers We Women, Woman and the Brazil Woman.

The year 1975 marked Lia's return to Brazil – she lived in exile in France for five years – and also the year in which her daughter was born. In Europe, she went to college and raised the “little money” that her parents sent her, enough for the luxury-free life of a student, doing odd jobs for Brazilian intellectuals, such as transcribing tapes.

The time in exile, she points out, served to “be able to review what was happening in Brazil”. “Because the armed struggle was falling apart, everyone was being arrested and killed. I was able to criticize what was happening, to come back with a more elaborate awareness”, she adds.

The warning that there were agents of repression on her trail came early to her, as she was only 17 years old when she left everything behind. The gesture that put her under fire was simple: the leadership of the clandestine organization in which she worked with her boyfriend fell and, as a result, the couple lent the apartment so that the members could hold a meeting. She hadn't even finished high school yet and saw her friends get arrested. “We didn’t stay in prison for so long because she was still very young”, reported Lia in an exclusive interview with Brazil Agency.

According to her, there was, as there still is today, a wing of male comrades who did not care about the issues defending women's rights. This group maintained that movements should focus on social struggle, the implementation of socialism and democratic culture.

“I had no connection with feminism until I attended these groups and became pregnant”, comments Lia, who ended up becoming a children's book writer.

As in the editorial offices of feminist newspapers they were the ones calling the shots and not them, there were stories and articles about the right to places in daycare centers and the daily struggles of working women. “We went to the outskirts to do material, it wasn’t just the club,” she observes.

Today, I would do it differently. “There are some articles that interview black women, but it is very timid, incipient. Our group had maybe one black woman. Structural racism was not discussed at that time. For example, nowadays, plural feminisms are practiced. There was also a group of lesbian women, who ended up joining all the groups,” he recalls.

No text was signed and it was a struggle to keep the publication going, as no one had money. Even singer Elis Regina sponsored newspaper issues.

Asked about how the content was censored, Lia says she doesn't remember well. One memory, however, remains, of when they used the Versus newspaper's newsroom space, a basement. “[A censura] It wasn’t like Estadão, with revenue on the first page”, he says.