Arajaryr Campos

She was born in Rio de Janeiro on 25 August 1930. About a year after the electoral fraud of 1958 she began working as secretary to Humberto Delgado, then in exile in Brazil.¹ When Delgado left to try to overthrow the dictatorship, he gave her a power of attorney to represent him in Brazil, but she ended up going with him. They entered Portugal clandestinely in the last days of 1961, on the eve of the Beja revolt, and left again after the coup failed.¹

Then came Prague, where Delgado underwent treatment, and Algeria, where they settled when the Patriotic Front for National Liberation was created.¹ The PIDE set a trap for them, “Operation Autumn” (Operação Outono): on the pretext of a meeting with opposition officers, who were in fact agents of the political police, Delgado and Arajaryr were lured to Spain, near Badajoz. They were murdered on 13 February 1965 by Ernesto Lopes Ramos, António Rosa Casaco, Agostinho Tienza and Casimiro Monteiro; she was 34.¹² The bodies were only found in April, beside a track known as “Los Malos Pasos”, near the Portuguese border.¹