House of Students of the Empire - The resistant in the shadows

“I know you are going to the House of Students of the Empire, a den of communists and a place for easy women.” Perhaps her memory is  betraying her. Perhaps those weren’t exactly the words her father wrote. But six decades later, Angolan Maria do Céu Carmo Reis has no doubts about the recriminations. She quotes them by heart. By the time her father's letter arrived, it was already too late. The “enchantment” with the House of Students of the Empire (HSE) had become irreversible. “I went to a poetry recital. 
Listening to all those poems was so beautiful, so exalting... I never stopped going there,”she recalls at her home in Luanda. When she first began attending the HSE at the end of 1961, the then-medical student was 18 years old. Today, she is 80. “Portugal is one and the House of the Empire, founded by boys, nurtured by boys and followed with enthusiasm, will be the great extension of the nation,” proclaimed the Minister for the Colonies, Francisco Vieira Machado, when he announced the creation of the HSE in 1944 (read Freedom passed through here). At first glance, female students seemed to be excluded from the organization, but this was not to be. Although they were an “absolute minority”, notes historian Helena Wakim Moreno, several women actively participated in the HSE throughout its two decades of existence (1944-1965), whether at the Lisbon headquarters, where they represented 21% of the members, or in the Coimbra (23%) and Porto (12%) branches. By 1960, the HSE's headquarters had around 600 members, the canteen served about 200 meals a day, and 14 (male) students lived in the home sponsored by the organization.
The protagonists of these pages belong to the final generations to experience the HSE. Their testimonies take centre stage, in contrast to those of other significant women with whom it was no longer possible to speak. In total, nearly two dozen former HSE regulars were interviewed. Maria do Céu Carmo Reis left the city of Silva Porto (now Cuíto), the capital of Bié province, in October 1961. Before her departure, her father granted her legal emancipation, “thus enabling her to govern her person and property as if she were of age.”
At the time, the age of majority was 21, and only the patriarch, as the head of the family, could emancipate his children. It was only when the plane landed at Lisbon airport that the tears began to flow. Now it was real—Angola had been left behind. The medical degree had been imposed on her by her father, a white Portuguese man well positioned within the colonial administration.
Her mother was Angolan and mixed race. “With your colour, and in this society, you can only study Law or Medicine,” the patriarch had told her. “He believed that only those degrees could allow a mixed-race woman to rise socially,” she explains. Despite being more than six thousand kilometres away from Bié, the harsh realities of Angola echoed through the halls of the HSE headquarters. “Angola must be independent,” she thought obsessively. Maria do Céu left the “metropolis1” in September 1962, heading to Paris and then joining the liberation struggle. Less than a year later, the political police issued an arrest warrant for her. Once again, the student association proved to be a “house of students against the empire,” as historian Cláudia Castelo described it. However, the University of Lisbon professor clarifies that many of those who frequented the HSE did not share “any anti-regime ideology.” For instance, the Angolan Sinclética Torres (1928–1991)—the first Black woman MP in Portugal—was one of the leaders of the women's section in the Coimbra delegation and served in the dictatorship’s National Assembly between 1965 and 1974. “Those who had an anti-colonial political conscience, or who were developing one within the HSE and beyond, were likely a minority” —but a very vocal one.

THE DANCE OF THE SMALL NOTES

“The atmosphere was lively, but it hadn't yet reached its peak. That wouldn't happen until after midnight. There were  perhaps a hundred people in the hall, half of whom were dancing [...] The ball was a pretext for people to meet up and rekindle old friendships.” With these words, Angolan writer Pepetela, a former member of the HSE, describes a party at the association in his novel A Geração da Utopia [The Generation of Utopia]. Sara, the fictional protagonist, is Angolan, white, the daughter of a “wealthy businessman” and a medical student—a typical profile within the House. “In my day, women had little visible participation in the HSE, except at get-togethers. They were sidelined in cultural, associative, and political activities. It was a very macho environment, in my eyes now,” the writer admits to VISÃO.
The concerts by Ngola Kizomba, a band made up of House members, were a guaranteed good night out. “There, you discovered the body through dance. And the pleasure it brought!” rejoices Maria do Céu Carmo Reis, once the companion of Artur Pestana dos Santos (Pepetela's birth name).
The joy of African music at the HSE parties contrasted with the sadness of the songs the Angolan remembered from the days when her father was a civil administrator in the Andulo region. “It was a forced labour area, and the workers sang on their way to the large cosee plantations. I remember the singing being extremely sad,” she recalls. It was common for these workers not to receive their meagre wages, which were absorbed by the costs of accommodation and food. “The continuity of practices, initially akin to those of slavery, and, later, the coercion in labour recruitment, became one of the main tools used by national liberation movements to denounce colonialism,” says historian Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, co-organizer, along with Cláudia Castelo, of the book Casa dos Estudantes do Império: Dinâmicas Coloniais, Conexões Transnacionais [House of Students of the Empire: Colonial Dynamics, Transnational Connections] (Edições 70). The coercive recruitment of labour was only formally abolished in 1962.
Maria da Luz “Lilica” Boal, 89, witnessed the forced emigration of Cape Verdeans to São Tomé due to hunger. In addition, growing up next to the Tarrafal labour camp on the island of Santiago (Cape Verde) was “a great wake-up call.” The HSE would do the rest: “Oh, I learned so much. The House was like an open door to understanding the reality of our countries during colonization. It was a great school for raising awareness of African nationalism,” she says in her garden in Praia, Cape Verde. The association also left lasting memories on her palate... “The canteen served a bean soup that was wonderful!” The cook, also Cape Verdean, was asectionately called Mamã [Mummy] Domingas.
Lilica Boal began attending the HSE headquarters in 1959 but left the country clandestinely before finishing her History and Philosophy degree, joining the “flight of the hundred” in 1961 (read Leap to Independence). She worked closely with Amílcar Cabral and directed one of his most cherished projects, the pilot school of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in Guinea-Conakry. In addition to being a member of parliament and working in the Guinean and Cape Verdean Ministries of Education, she was a co-founder of the Cape Verde Women’s Organization.
Many people came to the HSE just for the parties, including curious “metropolitans2.” The girls typically arrived accompanied by their boyfriends or male relatives. There were groups of women who dared to go together, but rarely did any of them enter alone. The “dinner dances” served as an attraction to raise funds and recruit new members.
Celebrations of special occasions made the HSE feel like the family it could be, but from time to time, there were also arguments and even fights, whether for passionate or political reasons.
Even among the sambas, merengues, and tangos, small notes circulated. “Sometimes they were instructions to go to a certain street to hand out leaflets; I imagine they were from the PCP [Portuguese Communist Party]. When that day came, I would go out scared, but I would go,” says Ana Maria Cabral, 82, Amílcar Cabral’s widow for half a century. The most secretive conversations sometimes took place in the library, during parties. Information from friends abroad was exchanged, and, of course, all sorts of rumours were discussed. The House, however, was not just about parties and meals. 
The cultural and sporting programs were another attraction, even though the number of members attending wasn’t always enough to satisfy the organization. Writers Jorge de Sena and Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, poet Alexandre O’Neill, historian José-Augusto França, and architect Keil do Amaral were among the guest speakers. Members themselves sometimes took the place of speakers, such as Agostinho Neto, Mário Pinto de Andrade, and Alfredo Margarido. It was rare for women to take the stage; one of the exceptions was Angolan writer and journalist Lília da Fonseca.
The creation of the Overseas Studies section in 1958 helped bring members closer to Africa and fostered an anti-colonial outlook. “It wasn’t just me, because I was the daughter of white settlers; even the Black and mestizo members said they didn’t know their land very well,” says 83-year-old Mozambican Aida Freudenthal, who attended the House from 1962 onward while studying History at the University of Lisbon. African geography, the history of colonization, and political and social issues—such as segregation and racism—were some of the topics covered by the section, which was established after the House had been placed under an Administrative Commission, resulting in the loss of their ability to elect their own leaders for five years (read The years of unrest). The HSE osered almost a parallel degree for those most interested in the African continent. 
Literature also played a “subversive” role (read Changing Histories). John Steinbeck, Alves Redol, and Érico Veríssimo were among the authors in the library, and banned publications also circulated. Guinean Ana Maria Cabral read Jorge Amado’s The Knight of Hope with the utmost discretion. “They wouldn’t let me take the book home, no way! They told me I had to go there at a specific time if I wanted to read a few more pages,” she says from Praia. It was her older brothers who introduced her to the HSE in the second half of the 1950s. By the time she entered as a high school student, she had already lost her innocence about the regime. She first heard about the PAIGC within the association.
Ana Maria didn’t feel welcome in Lisbon. “I was called all sorts of things. They’d say to me, ‘You’re Black, but you’re pretty.’ I’d get angry. There was a soccer player called Matateu, so they called me Matatua!” recalls the former Cape Verdean ambassador. In 1962, shortly after getting married, she fled Portugal. Ana Maria eventually divorced in the mid-1960s after her husband became violent. She left Czechoslovakia—where she was vice president of that country’s section of the General Union of Black African Students (UGEAN)—for Guinea-Conakry, together with her first son, joining the ranks of the  PAIGC. She remarried in September 1972, four months before the assassination of her husband, Amílcar Cabral.
The ease with which Ana Maria managed to get divorced abroad contrasts with the disiculty experienced by Maria Eduarda Correia. “Because I’m a woman, I couldn’t separate, despite all the osenses that happened in my marriage,” she says at her home in Mira-Sintra, Portugal. Maria Eduarda arrived in Lisbon from Sá da Bandeira (Lubango), the capital of Huíla province in Angola, in 1959. The daughter of white settlers, she visited the HSE almost every day but didn’t consider herself politicized. If she couldn’t meet her friends at the association, she would “go to Rialva [café], have a drink, and chat for a while”—a bold move for many women. And it was essential to keep an eye out for “pidesc3 ears,” as Pepetela called them.
The secrecy was such that the former employee of the Portuguese Quality Institute only found out about her older brother’s political involvement after he left the country. “I lost my identity a long time ago. When I was younger, I was ‘Commander Jujú’s sister.’ Now I’m [writer] Ondjaki’s aunt,” she jokes, at the age of 804. The German studies student at the University of Lisbon returned to Angola in 1962. In the early 1970s, already the mother of three children, she tried to file for divorce, but the lawyer she contacted told her she would never get custody of her children. In the following years, she sought out other professionals, who told her the same story.
Maria Eduarda's story comes as no surprise to historian Irene Flunser Pimentel. Since the signing of the 1940 Concordat between the Portuguese state and the Vatican, civil courts had been barred from dissolving Catholic marriages. While men only had to allege their wife’s adultery to file for divorce, a husband's infidelity was only considered valid grounds if it caused a “public scandal.” Maria Eduarda ultimately divorced only after the April 25, 1974, revolution.

PROGRESSIVE AND SEXIST

The conservatism of society at the time didn’t always stay at the doorstep of the HSE. In fact, gender equality was not a priority for the liberation movements. “The ideologically dominant category of 'the people' took precedence over the individualization of men and women,” explains Maria do Céu, who, after abandoning Medicine, studied Sociology in Algeria. In 1969, she settled in Dolisie, in Congo-Brazzaville, in the 2nd Military Region, where she taught elementary school students and members of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). She resigned  from the party a month before the April 25th Revolution due to her involvement in Revolta Ativa [Active Revolt], a faction that demanded more democracy within the movement.
“Women’s bodies were domestic, women’s work was domestic, women’s tears were domestic. We weren’t asked to think; we were asked to do. We were denied intellectual work, even if we were studying,” adds Maria do Céu. The former university lecturer saw only one way to counter these prejudices: “I wore a miniskirt, smoked in the street, went to the beach in a bikini, cooked badly, and wasn’t interested in domestic life—all those things they considered a provocation.” The men were disappointed when they realized that none of them was synonymous with “easy woman.” After all, even in the context of liberation struggles, harassment was often tolerated.
Historian Ângela Coutinho identifies processes of “invisibilization” of women by both the anti-fascist opposition and the independence movements. All those women who welcomed militants into their homes, cared for fighters, cooked for those in the guerrilla movement, or passed on clandestine information were left in the shadows. Still, she argues that the PAIGC, MPLA, and Frelimo5 were among the most progressive African movements. “Women were elected to the highest leadership bodies of the PAIGC and the MPLA, and Frelimo had a female detachment,” she explains.
Cape Verdean writer Dina Salústio encountered machismo “everywhere,” including at the HSE, where she first entered at the age of 21 in 1962, while studying to become a schoolteacher in Lisbon. One day, she dared to call a friend “machista6,” which led to a humorous episode. “He thought I had said 'Marxist' and replied, 'with great honour.' He didn’t even know the word machista existed!” she says, laughing, at the age of 82, in the Cape Verdean capital.
“My mother used to say I looked like a man because I was never at home,” reveals Olga Lacerda Lima, the woman who wore her hair “like Angela Davis, before Angela Davis” (referring to the North American activist known for her iconic Afro). At 88, the Angolan still carries the electrifying energy of her youth, concentrated in her 1.56 meters. “I went out at night, smoked, drank, and, modesty aside, I was very pretty,” she says defiantly, before adding, “It wasn’t usual for people to have my irreverence.” Criticism, she admits, “was never lacking,” but Nené Lacerda, her nom de guerre, never “gave a damn” about what others thought. Her freedom also shocked the political police: “Morally, it appears that the person referred to is endowed with a somewhat frivolous temperament, without, however, exhibiting a truly scandalous bearing, leading a fairly free life,” wrote an agent in March 1965.
It wasn’t until the end of 1961, when she was no longer studying, that Olga became a regular at the HSE headquarters—not all the members were university students, some were still in high school, while others were already working. “I realized it was a place where our minds could develop in a certain direction, but there were still many ways of thinking about independence, and there were also white people who didn’t want to lose power,” she explains. Olga is blunt: “I have the best memories of the House of Students of the Empire, even though it was white women with higher education who counted. I don’t remember any mulattoes or Blacks being heard there. We were just numbers, as usual,” she accuses.
Eventually, she began to feel the desire to join the Angolan guerrillas. Olga initiated a series of contacts, including with HSE members, who could help her leave the country illegally. Her plans were cut short by PIDE on March 14, 1963. “I spent practically seven days without sleeping. When I fell asleep, they’d slam a drawer shut to wake me up,” recalls the former employee of the Social Services at the University of Lisbon. After a week of interrogations at the political police headquarters, the 27-year-old was transferred to Caxias prison, where she remained for two months. She didn’t seek a lawyer: “You needed money for that, and I didn’t know any important people. I hung out with HSE people and that was all. I only began to have status after I married Herberto Helder7,” she says. After her release, she abandoned her plans to escape and returned legally to Angola, where she met the poet. They married in 1973, and Olga moved permanently to Portugal.
“I have observed and spoken to many young women, and I have come to the embarrassing conclusion that 90%—either because they do not know, do not feel, or because they are not allowed to—do not occupy the place that belongs to them,” lamented Angolan Maryse Taveira in her Message to Young Women, published in the February 1959 edition of the headquarters' cultural bulletin, Mensagem (Message). There were several appeals to female members published by the HSE, which even created a women's section: “To discuss problems specific to African women and others of interest to all women,” read the January 1960 edition of Mensagem.
It was Angolan doctor Manuel Dias Monteiro who, even before becoming president of the HSE, established the women's department, which focused on women's health. “We used to tease him, saying he created the section just to meet Kina,” jokes 86-year-old Angolan Guilhermina Gurgel. “Actually, I think it was for ethical reasons that he went ahead, to show that women were present too,” says the former Social Work student, who fulfilled her dream of working in the Sambizanga musseque in Luanda. Manuel and Gracinda (Kina) Amaral Monteiro got married in the HSE cafeteria in 1964, where their friends hosted a reception in their honour.
Few interviewees recall the women's section, perhaps a sign that it never truly took hold, especially since references to its existence in Mensagem are scarce. However, a circular filed by the International and State Defence Police (PIDE), dated February 1963, announces a colloquium on sexual physiology organized by the Lisbon women's section. Angolan independence activist Vitória Almeida e Sousa was identified by PIDE in June 1965 as the department’s director. The then-medical student was detained for three years, between 1965 and 1967, and subjected to various forms of torture. The Coimbra delegation also established a women’s section in 1957, led by Angolan Maria Angélica Pinto da Cruz.

INESCAPABLE RACISM

“So, Nené, how are you?” Angolan Maria Adélia Cohen was livid when she heard the question. How, after all, did PIDE inspector José Barreto Sacchetti know her nickname? “I knew who he was, but it never occurred to me that he would know my petit nom,” she reflects, now 80, in Lisbon, forgiving her adolescent naïveté. That day, the future university professor had gone to the PIDE dungeons in Coimbra to visit one of her HSE comrades, Angolan Daniel Chipenda, who had been arrested in June 1961. 
The members of the Coimbra delegation had long been under the watchful eye of Sacchetti, who would later become director of the political police's Investigation Services. The strong presence of students asiliated with the Youth MUD8, along with their close ties to the Ateneu de Coimbra—“an essentially communist organization”—only added to their unfavourable reputation.
The Mensagem ao Povo Português [Message to the Portuguese People], published in November 1960, denounced the violence in the colonies and demanded the selfdetermination of the peoples, without euphemisms. The manifesto was issued in the name of “university students representing the colonies.” PIDE identified a Coimbra postmark on the letter and had little trouble attributing its authorship to the city’s delegation.
The students quickly mobilized, signing a petition contesting the imposition of a second Administrative Commission on the HSE, which stripped them of their ability to elect their own leaders for seven months. Among the roughly 70 signatories, fewer than a dozen were women. One of them was Angolan Maria Ilda Teles Carreira. “I had no hesitation when I signed. I already had a certain nationalist consciousness and felt protected by the strength of the group,” she reflects at the age of 82.
The daughter of Angolan colonial osicials, Maria Ilda had a brief connection to the Coimbra delegation in 1961 before joining the famous escape (read Leap to Independence). She later received self-defence training in Zambia, worked in radio for the MPLA (an experience that shaped her career as a radio journalist), and joined the Angolan Women’s Organization. Maria Ilda felt the inequality on her skin: “We mestizos were never treated very well. We were only Portuguese on paper.” 
The interviewees are unanimous in describing their classes as virtually monochrome throughout their school careers—meaning non-white classmates were the exception. It’s important to recall that until the abolition of the Indigenous Statute in 1961, African “indigenous” people were denied full citizenship rights. They were subject to special taxes, their property rights were severely restricted, and they were vulnerable to forced labour, among other humiliations. “Discrimination was inscribed in the act of birth,” says historian Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo. The status of “assimilated,” granted to “indigenous” people who proved to be “civilized” (as defined by the Indigenous Statute), required, for example, speaking Portuguese, completing the first cycle of high school, or abandoning traditional practices in favour of the “Portuguese way of life.”
Among other benefits, the “assimilated” could rise to the civil service (though primarily at lower levels), and their children gained access to state schools, although they still did not enjoy the same rights as Portuguese born in the “metropolis” or the children of “metropolitan” parents. “Only a very small number of people benefited from educational services,” says the professor from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Coimbra. The gender imbalance was also evident: in the 1960/1961 academic year, only 29.1% of university students were female.
Helena Wakim Moreno believes that the students who attended HSE belonged, in some ways, to an elite. “That’s not to say they were part of an economic elite, but at least they were part of a cultural elite,” argues the author of the doctoral thesis Intellectuals from Angola at the House of Students of the Empire (Lisbon, 1944-1965). “At the House, all members had the same rights; it was a rehearsal for democracy,” observes Aida Freudenthal, a former researcher at the Tropical Scientific Research Institute in Lisbon, where she currently resides. Most of the women interviewed claim not to have experienced or witnessed episodes of racism at the HSE. Aida, however, is more cautious: “It wasn’t because we left our colonized homeland, where we grew up seeing racism every day, that those prejudices weren’t present—even if we didn’t realize it.” Born in Mozambique, she quickly acknowledged her privilege—her father was in the navy and her mother was a housewife. “We benefited from privileges that Black people didn’t have.
Europeans were always privileged, even when they were barefoot,” the historian acknowledges. “The Porto delegation of the House of Students of the Empire was created,” the Jornal de Notícias newspaper announced, discreetly, in its 15 March 1959 edition. By the following month, PIDE was already gathering information on the leaders of its latest headache.  Among them was the young medical student Maria do Rosário Vieira Monteiro. At 23, she had been elected second secretary of the General Assembly. “I felt a tremendous joy when we managed to get that ‘lump’ of a house,” says the 88-year-old. “It was on Bragas Street; I remember it perfectly,” adds her younger sister, Maria Júlia Monteiro Jaleco, 81, also a student at the University of Porto, but studying Biological Sciences. 
Born in the village of Chibia, in the Huíla province of southern Angola, both entered higher education with the support of scholarships, as did many of the interviewees by VISÃO. Sitting in her sister's living room in Coimbra, Maria do Rosário pulls out a cigarette and says, “When there was a need for someone who could hit the ground running, they'd put me forward.” When the second Administrative Commission was imposed on the HSE, the regime claimed it could not find anyone trustworthy enough to manage the Porto delegation, and, as it was the most recent, it was closed in January 1961. When Maria do Rosário specialized in Tropical Medicine in Lisbon, she served as secretary of the Supervisory Board during the 1962/1963 academic year, but she remained deeply disheartened by the closure of the Porto branch.
Other women held important positions at the HSE, including Mozambican Maria Leonor Correia de Matos (vice-president of the general board), Cape Verdean Orlanda Amarílis (head of the library), Goan Celme Cruz (secretary of the general assembly), Mozambican Francisca Barreto (one of the people responsible for reorganizing the library in 1957), and Angolans Inácia de Oliveira (director of Mensagem) and Astrid de Carvalho (secretary of the general assembly, detained for a year in Caxias). However, fewer than a dozen held management positions, and none served as president of the HSE.

SHOCKING DISAPPEARANCE

“The events of Student Day '62 are a lesson,” stated an editorial in Mensagem published during that turbulent year. The HSE expressed support for the protests against the ban on Student Day celebrations and joined the Academic Mourning rally. Aida Freudenthal was one of around 90 women arrested when the police violently interrupted the hunger strike organized by students in Lisbon's university canteen at the beginning of May. In  total, nearly a thousand people were arrested. “I didn’t go on hunger strike, but I was there supporting my colleagues,” she says. Aida was never questioned but spent one night in detention.
With the student protests in full swing and the Colonial War underway, the PIDE's surveillance of the HSE intensified. “There was a thug at the door who made us open our purses before entering,” recalls Maria Eduarda, who was also detained at Cidade Universitária [university square]. The HSE board had the audacity to send a telegram to the political police on 23 May 1962, protesting “energetically against the indecorous and vexatious spectacle caused by the presence of PIDE agents at the door of our association two days ago, searching respectful members.” The response to the provocation was not long in coming. The following day, the political police raided the House, interrogated the leaders, and seized propaganda.
During the height of the academic crisis, the HSE hosted numerous meetings of the Inter-Association Reunion (RIA), which brought together representatives from all the student associations. It was in the attic of number 23 on Duque D'Ávila Avenue that, in the dead of night, various manifestos of the RIA—led by future President Jorge Sampaio—were drafted and printed.
Rute Magalhães, HSE member no. 428, became involved in academic activism early on. “I was still a kid, but I was very lively,” she says at 79, in Lisbon. The daughter of settlers, she moved to Malanje, Angola, at the age of five. At HSE, she was part of both the Editorial and Overseas Studies sections. She translated MPLA communiqués from French into Portuguese and secretly photocopied them within the HSE—some of which were sent in shoeboxes to Angola. Political prisoners in Tarrafal also received letters and parcels from her.
The year 1965 would once again see the repression of university students, and the then Chemical Engineering student at the Instituto Superior Técnico would be excluded from all national schools for six months, along with around fifty other students. Rute was unable to escape arrest in 1968 on suspicion of “subversive activities.” She was released after two weeks in Caxias prison and decided to enrol in a course she truly enjoyed: History. Like Aida Freudenthal, she would later become one of the co-authors of the reformulation of secondary school curricula and textbooks for History in independent Angola.
Despite being imprisoned in the Tarrafal concentration camp, Luandino Vieira, one of the occasional members of the HSE, inadvertently contributed to the association's closure. The HSE had already honoured the Angolan writer with the João Dias Prize in 1962. However, in May 1965, the prominent Portuguese Writers' Society (SPE) awarded him the Grand Prize for Novel for his book of short stories Luuanda. Rute Magalhães first confirmed that the book could be submitted for the competition and later accompanied Carlos Ervedosa, then president of the HSE, when he delivered some copies to the writer Manuel Ferreira, who sent them to the prize jury. Rute was among several people questioned following this episode, which led to the closure of the SPE. In the PIDE records, she is identified as the head of the HSE's Overseas Studies section. Curiously, one of the most active protesters against the awarding of the prize to Luandino was Mário António Fernandes de Oliveira, a member of the association, highlighting the heterogeneity of the House.
Meanwhile, in 1962, General University Studies for Angola and Mozambique had been formalized, and by January 1963, the Overseas Territories Ministry had stopped subsidizing the HSE. A secret report from the Ministry in March 1965 called for an end to “the agitators of the HSE once and for all.” To give the closure a semblance of legality, the authorities ruled in August 1965 that the organization was prohibited from operating because it was not associated with a higher education institution. In fact, the members had already admitted they preferred extinction to surviving muzzled. “On 2 September 1965, at eight o'clock, a large contingent of PIDE, supported by an armed brigade from the public security police, invaded and occupied the House of Students of the Empire. [...] From that moment on, the House of Students of the Empire ceased to exist,” read a final appeal from the members.
Aida Freudenthal learned of the closure a few days after arriving in Luanda, where she lived with her husband, Angolan Percy Freudenthal, whom she met at HSE. “We were expecting it to happen. It was sad...” she laments, emphasizing that HSE changed the course of her life. Since its closure, many democratic achievements have been conquered, particularly in terms of gender equality. However, Maria do Céu Carmo Reis osers a warning: “In an instant, things can go backwards; it only takes a fraction of a second. The new generations have a responsibility to show the way forward.” They shouldn't lack inspiration. Freedom passed through here Instead of contributing to the “triumph of the Portuguese spirit”, the association supporting students from the colonised territories became an embarrassment for the regime In the early 1940s, the sense of helplessness felt by young “overseas students” upon arriving in Portugal led them to establish various “student houses,” organized by geographical origin. On 3 July 1944, the Minister for the Colonies, Francisco Vieira Machado, announced the unification of all these associations during a visit to the Angola House. Marcelo Caetano9, then national commissioner of Mocidade Portuguesa, became the honorary president of the organization—which would cause him “the greatest disappointment.”
The House of Students of the Empire (HSE) began operating at 1 Praia da Vitória Street, near Arco do Cego, in October 1944, before relocating the following month to 23 Duque D'Ávila Avenue, also in Lisbon. Branches were later established in Coimbra (1945) and Porto (1959). Their mission remained consistent: to oser cultural and sporting programs to members, while providing “social support” through scholarships and other services.
The Lisbon headquarters, for example, featured a library, canteen, residential quarters (in a separate building), and a medical centre. Initially, it was primarily the children of settlers and colonial administration osicials who attended the HSE. Over time, the number of Black students gradually increased. The House's (relative) democratic shift began as early as 1945. From that point on, the association's leadership grew increasingly anti-fascist and, later, anti-colonial. 
The PIDE began monitoring the HSE early on, closely tracking the activities of members who would later become prominent figures in the liberation struggle. After independence, several members went on to become prime ministers, including Angola's Fernando França van-Dúnem, Mozambique's Pascoal Mocumbi and Mário Machungo. Others ascended to the presidency: Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique), Pedro Pires (Cape Verde), Miguel Trovoada (São Tomé and Príncipe), and Agostinho Neto (Angola).

CHANGING HISTORIES

The women’s struggles against the colonial regime also unfolded through words. Within the HSE, literature foreshadowed the upheaval that would challenge the dictatorship “Everyone knows the fatal fate of the African woman, the last woman who is the last among Blacks, who are already the last in the ordinary conception of other civilised peoples,” wrote Alda Espírito Santo (1926-2010), in January 1949, in Mensagem, the cultural bulletin of the House of Students of the Empire (HSE). In Luares de África [African moonlight], she deconstructs the idea of an exotic continent, presenting a reality marked by the susering of women, whom she considered “doubly colonized” due to both their skin colour and gender. The poet from São Tomé thus achieved the remarkable feat of writing a text that was simultaneously feminist, anti-racist, and openly anti-colonial. In 1953, the news of the Batepá massacre— which claimed around 500 lives and became a foundational event for São Toméan nationalism—was detailed in a letter sent by the writer to “dear friends,” including members of the HSE and the Centre for African Studies (CEA) (read The Mythical 37).
Unlike Alda Espírito Santo, the Angolan Alda Lara (1930-1962) was the daughter of Portuguese settlers and made her debut in the first issue of Mensagem in July 1948. At 18, her discourse was still shaped by the colonial narrative, but the poetry of the medical student gradually aligned more with the reality of Angolans—see her poem Prelúdio [Prelude] (1951), later popularized by the song Mãe Negra [Black Mother], sung by  Paulo de Carvalho.
HSE was responsible for publishing several anthologies of poetry from Angola, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe, which have since become foundational to Portuguese-speaking African literature. Among nearly a hundred published authors, fewer than 20 were women. Notable among them are the Portuguese poet Glória de Sant'Anna (1925-2009), the Angolan writer and journalist Lília da Fonseca (1906-1991), and the São Toméan poet Manuela Margarido (1925-2007). Their works stood on equal footing with those of other writers like José Craveirinha, Luandino Vieira, Rui Knopfli, and Viriato da Cruz.
The association also published the Overseas Authors collection. However, none of the 22 books were written by women. The 23rd volume would have been the first by Noémia de Sousa (1926-2002), whom Zeca Afonso called “the mother of all Mozambican poets,” but the closure of the HSE in 1965 prevented its publication.

THE MYTHICAL 37

The House of Students of the Empire was not the only space for the “political socialisation” of Africans in the “metropolis”. There were others where the presence of women was even more evident Esperança Dias de Sousa regretted opening the door as soon as the visitors showed their PIDE badge. Although she was only 12 years old in 1954, the political police were nothing new to her. Occasionally, the family managed to anticipate the onslaught, such as one night when her older cousins soaked banned books and pamphlets in the bathtub until dawn to soften the paper, then flushed them down the toilet. “We were persecuted in that house throughout our lives,” laments the 81-year-old Portuguese woman born in São Tomé. That wasn’t just any house. Esperança Dias de Sousa lived at 37 Actor Vale Street in Lisbon, where the Centre for African Studies (CEA) operated clandestinely between 1951 and 1954. The organization aimed to contribute to the “re-Africanisation of minds,” in the words of Amílcar Cabral, who was also a regular at the House of Students of the Empire (HSE). The hostess was her aunt, Andreza Graça Espírito Santo, who had abandoned her career as an assistant teacher in São Tomé to accompany her nephews studying in the “capital of the empire.” Her cousin, Alda Espírito Santo, a poet, teacher, and activist from São Tomé, also lived there.
The founding group of the CEA included Mário Pinto de Andrade, Francisco José Tenreiro, Amílcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto and Marcelino dos Santos, as well as Alda Espírito Santo and Mozambican Noémia de Sousa, both of whom were responsible for one of the seminars (on Black Thought) organised by the CEA. Many of the founders were regulars at the HSE. Other female visitors were Julieta Espírito Santo (also a cousin) and Maria Helena Vilhena Rodrigues from Trás-os-Montes (north of Portugal), Amílcar Cabral's first wife. Sunday lunches, where there was no shortage of São Toméan delicacies, camouflaged many of the political meetings. 
Esperança was detained for questioning at the end of 1960, after accompanying her aunt Andreza to Lisbon airport to bid farewell to doctor Agostinho Neto, who was then making a stopover in the capital on his way to banishment in Cape Verde. The PIDE identified “a large number of white, mixed-race, and Black Africans” due to their “ostentatious farewell demonstration,” and noted that among them were several HSE members, who were “very active in favour of the independence of the Overseas Provinces.” Esperança often attended lectures organized at the HSE, where she met Guinean Ana Maria Cabral. Her friendship with Cabral's widow continues to this day. “I was the one who introduced her to Amílcar,” she whispers proudly at her home in Amadora, Lisbon.

THE LEAP TO INDEPENDENCE

In the summer of 1961, 60 students from the colonized territories fled Portugal clandestinely to join the liberation struggles—among them were about a dozen women “Pelé! Pelé10!” the revellers shouted as they glimpsed young Black men through the windows of the two cars moving slowly through the crowd. Although they didn’t know it, they were witnessing a top-secret mission. The drivers aimed to transport two groups of African students to the Portuguese border as discreetly as possible. However, the Protestant pastors behind the escape were unaware of the Portuguese festive calendar. On the night of June 23, 1961, even though it was past midnight, the streets of Braga were still flooded with people celebrating São João. The sea of revellers had to be pushed back, much like the biblical episode of the crossing of the Red Sea, as American pastor Charles Harper describes in a book he co-wrote about the adventure with another traveling companion, pastor William J. Nottingham. Both were linked to Cimade, a French NGO with extensive experience in the clandestine rescue of refugees.
Maria Ilda Teles Carreira, then 19, was in one of the cars, but she wasn’t scared. “We had a certain spirit of adventure,” admits the Angolan, who was leaving behind her Chemical Engineering course at the University of Coimbra. Moreover, her older brother, Henrique “Iko” Teles Carreira—a deserter from the Portuguese Army and future Minister of Defence of Angola—was on the same trip, which made her feel protected.
After the outbreak of the Colonial War in Angola in March 1961, hostility towards Africans living in the “metropolis” intensified. PIDE  surveillance also grew more oppressive. At the same time, some young men from the colonies feared being mobilized and forced to fight alongside the Portuguese Army. For many, the solution was to leave the country. In this context, the MPLA, led by former members of the House of Students of the Empire (HSE), called on the more politicized students to join the fight for independence. However, the movement lacked the resources to carry out such a risky mission. It was up to representatives of the Students' Movement of Angola (MEA), which had emerged from the HSE, to seek support. After connecting with the Methodist bishop of Frankfurt and the Protestant World Council of Churches, the students secured the necessary help through Cimade. With that, the path was cleared for Operation Angola.
The female fugitives were a minority in what would become known as the “Escape of the Hundred,” a term encompassing both legal and illegal departures from Portugal throughout 1961 and 1962. Many of those who left had attended HSE, as PIDE noted: “HSE served as the main recruiting centre in Lisbon.” However, the group also included students from Coimbra and Porto. Operation Angola would be “infiltrated” by independence-minded students from Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe, most of whom were not Protestants.
A first group of 19 students crossed the Portuguese-Spanish border near Monção, in northern Portugal, on June 16, 1961. By the 20th, they had arrived in Irún, Spain, and managed to enter France via Hendaia. Another 41 students, divided into three groups, made the crossing to Spain between June 23 and 28, and all met up in Paris on July 2. The secret operation, however, was not without its setbacks: road accidents, perilous boat crossings on the river Minho, a smuggler who failed to show up on the designated date, and even an unexpected arrest at the Franco-Spanish border nearly brought everything to a halt.
For 89-year-old Maria da Luz Boal, the hardest moment came months before she left. Anticipating that they would soon have to flee the country, the Cape Verdean student and her husband, Angolan doctor Manuel Rodrigues Boal, arranged for their daughter's maternal grandmother to take her to Cape Verde. Sara was only 17 months old at the time. Her parents would not see her again until she was five.
Virginia Liahuca, a native of São Tomé, was not politically active and was far from imagining that her husband would become a member of the Union of the Populations of Angola (UPA). All she knew was that the Angolan doctor listened to clandestine radios at home and had revolutionary friends, most of whom were HSE members. When José Liahuca confided in her that they were going to flee the country in a few days, the nursing student’s reaction was immediate: “How? I’m eight months pregnant...” Posing as religious tourists from French-speaking African countries, the students travelled on false passports. “When we boarded a bus in Spain to head to France, everyone started singing in Kimbundu and other languages instead of speaking French. It was crazy,” recalls the 87-year-old former nurse, who worked at the Lourinhã health centre in Portugal, before bursting into laughter. The best-behaved of the group, she says, was Johny Vieira Lopes, who was not yet three years old. At 65, he confirms to VISÃO that he was given sleeping pills during the journey to keep him from crying or speaking Portuguese. His parents, Angolan João Vieira Lopes and Cape Verdean Virgínia Vieira Lopes, prominent members of the HSE, hid the real passports of several fugitives in his nappy—though not all of them reached their destination in the best conditions... 
The group of 41 fugitives eventually aroused suspicion at the French-Spanish border and was arrested. Virgínia Liahuca shared a cell with Angolan Mimosa Rodrigues, who pleaded for her partner’s baby not to be born there. To Salazar’s dismay, they were all released the following day, reportedly with the intervention of U.S. and French diplomats. Nendela Liahuca was born less than a month later, in Versailles, on 29 July 1961.

CHRONOLOGY

The years of unrest
During its two decades of existence (1944-1965), the House of Students of the Empire faced numerous confrontations with the Estado Novo dictatorship
1944
The House of Students of the Empire (HSE) was founded in November, with its head osice located at 23 Duque D'Ávila Avenue in Lisbon. The Coimbra branch was established by the end of the year and began operating in February 1945.
1946
Several HSE leaders support the Democratic Unity Movement (MUD) and join the Youth MUD11. PIDE keeps a close eye on them. The cultural bulletin Meridiano, published by the Coimbra students, is launched and remains active until 1953. The following year, PIDE raided the Lisbon headquarters.
1948
Leaders and members of the House, aligned with the MUD and Youth MUD, support General Norton de Matos's candidacy for the presidency of the Republic. The Lisbon HSE begins publishing the cultural bulletin Mensagem, which was printed sporadically until 1964.
1950
The HSE students' section from India refuses to sign a manifesto rejecting the statements made by the Prime Minister of the Indian Union, Jawaharlal Nehru, who opposed the Portuguese presence in Goa, Daman, and Diu. The PIDE accuses the HSE of being “a den of opposition and crypto-communists.”
1952
Under the pretext of tax irregularities, the Ministries of Overseas Territories and National Education impose an Administrative Commission on the HSE headquarters, stripping it of the freedom to elect its leaders for five years and placing management under the control of the Mocidade Portuguesa [Portuguese Youth Organization], in line with the regime's rule.
1955
11 MUD and Youth MUD were opposition movements. The Administrative Commission is extended to the Coimbra delegation, which, like its Lisbon counterpart, sees its cultural activities reduced to the slogan: “nothing against the nation, everything for the nation.”
1957
Groups of members become involved in protests against Decree 40 900, which sought to undermine the autonomy of academic associations. The Administrative Commission is dismissed, but the HSE is obliged to present new statutes, reinforcing its political neutrality and eliminating sections based on the students' geographical origins.
1959
In March, a new delegation opened in Porto, located at Bragas Street, No. 284. The HSE was now present in all cities with universities governed by Portugal, with the exception of Goa.
1960
The pamphlet Mensagem ao Povo Português [Message to the Portuguese People], which denounces the abuses of colonialism, is circulated. PIDE attributed its authorship to HSE Coimbra and raided the premises at Sá da Bandeira Avenue, No. 54. An old dispute between the headquarters and the Coimbra delegation was used as justification for the appointment of a new Administrative Commission.
1961
At the beginning of the year, the government shuts down the HSE in Porto, citing an inability to find anyone trustworthy to run it. Between June and July, dozens of “overseas” students, many of whom were HSE members, fled Portugal clandestinely. After seven months, the Administrative Commission ceases to manage the HSE, on the condition that the association submits new statutes.
1962 
The HSE expresses solidarity with the Academic Mourning protests following the ban on Student Day celebrations. The headquarters hosts several meetings of the InterAssociation Reunion (RIA), chaired by Jorge Sampaio, and helps facilitate the printing of propaganda. The PIDE raids the HSE, and several leaders are interrogated.
1963
The funding allocated to the HSE by the Ministry of Overseas Territories is revoked, despite the organization having presented new statutes the previous year, though not fulfilling all the authorities' demands. The persecution of the House intensifies, particularly against members with ties to the PCP.
1964
Several members are detained. The HSE is subjected to searches, and its leaders, with the support of academic associations, appeal to the Ministry of Overseas Territories, urging that these incidents “not be repeated.”
1965
The HSE issues a final s tatement denouncing the regime's abuses, condemning the invasions of its premises and the detention of its members. In early September, PIDE raids and permanently shuts down both the Lisbon headquarters and the Coimbra delegation.