Women of the resistance
Aurora Rodrigues
b. 1952
Aurora Rosa Salvador Rodrigues
A law student, she witnessed the murder of Ribeiro Santos in 1972. Arrested in 1973, she was one of the women students most savagely tortured by the political police in Caxias, and she never talked.
- Born
- 20 January 1952, Vale da Azinheira, Minas de São Domingos (Mértola)
Biography
She was born on 20 January 1952 in Vale da Azinheira, in Minas de São Domingos, in the Alentejo; her father was an anarcho-syndicalist.1 In 1969, aged 17, she came to study at the Lisbon Faculty of Law and drew close to the MRPP.1 On 12 October 1972 she was in the lecture theatre of Económicas, the economics school, when a PIDE/DGS agent killed the student José António Ribeiro Santos.31 She then formally joined the MRPP and its student organisation, the Federation of Marxist-Leninist Students.1
She was arrested on 3 May 1973, after a students’ meeting, and taken to Caxias Fort, in strict isolation. The PIDE/DGS subjected her to threats and humiliation, to the “statue” torture, to sixteen consecutive days of sleep torture, to violent beatings and to simulated drowning, plunging her head into a basin of water. She did not talk.1 Three months later she was released without charge, without trial and without having been able to speak to a lawyer. She was one of the women students most savagely tortured by the political police.1
After 25 April, she was arrested again on 28 May 1975, in a COPCON operation that detained more than 400 MRPP activists. She left the party in 1977.1 She told of her experience of torture and prison in the book Gente Comum – Uma História da PIDE (Ordinary People: A History of the PIDE), edited by António Monteiro Cardoso and Paula Godinho, and in 2016 she gave her testimony to the Aljube Museum.1
Places
Dates
People
They crossed paths with her
Isabel do Carmo
b. 1940 · doctor
José António Ribeiro Santos
1946–1972 · law student
Aida Magro
1918–2011 · chemical engineer
Albina Fernandes
1928–1970 · fighter in the French Resistance
Alda do Espírito Santo
1926–2010 · poet
António Tereso
1927–2017 · car mechanic
Videos
A documentary edited by Sofia Gomes for the exhibition “Women and Resistance – New Portuguese Letters and other struggles” (“Mulheres e Resistência – Novas Cartas Portuguesas e outras lutas”), with excerpts from the testimonies the Aljube Museum has been recording since 2015: sixteen women talk about resistance to the dictatorship and the struggle for women’s rights. This version has Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) interpretation; the version without LGP is on the same channel (XmUbNbnHgKg, 2022).
Original page Licença padrão do YouTube — embed permitido pelo canal oficial do Museu do Aljube
Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade, on YouTube. The player only connects to that site when you press “Watch”.
Aurora Rodrigues, in a testimony recorded by the Aljube Museum on 12 October 2016. The museum’s keywords include the student movement, the murder of Ribeiro Santos, the Movement for the Reorganisation of the Party of the Proletariat (MRPP), imprisonment, interrogation and torture in Caxias.
Original page Licença padrão do YouTube — embed permitido pelo canal oficial do Museu do Aljube
Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade, on YouTube. The player only connects to that site when you press “Watch”.
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the murder of Ribeiro Santos, the Commemorative Commission published this account by Aurora Rodrigues, who was in the ISCEF lecture theatre on 12 October 1972. She recalls the climate of 1972 and how the student’s death helped to radicalise the struggle against the dictatorship.
Original page Licença padrão do YouTube — embed permitido pelo canal oficial da Comissão Comemorativa 50 Anos 25 de Abril
Comissão Comemorativa 50 Anos 25 de Abril, on YouTube. The player only connects to that site when you press “Watch”.
Notes on the sources1
- O ano de publicação de «Gente Comum – Uma História da PIDE»: o Memória Comum diz só que aceitou, em 2009, reconstruir a sua experiência para o livro.
Do you know more, or do you have a document? Tell us.
Sources5
- 1Aurora Rodrigues (testemunho e biografia). Museu do Aljube Resistência e Liberdade — consulted on 2 October 2026
- 2Consulta SPARQL de identificadores e datas (P569/P570) de pessoas. Wikidata Query Service — consulted on 2 October 2026
- 3O assassinato de José Ribeiro Santos. Comissão Comemorativa 50 Anos 25 de Abril — consulted on 2 October 2026
- 4Aurora Rodrigues. Museu do Aljube – Resistência e Liberdade — consulted on 2 October 2026
- 5Aurora Rosa Salvador Rodrigues. Memória Comum – Memorial aos Presos e Perseguidos Políticos — consulted on 4 October 2026Magistrada do Ministério Público em Évora; presa a 3 de maio de 1973 nas traseiras da Faculdade de Letras e libertada ao fim de três meses, sem acusação.