Isabel do Carmo

Isabel do Carmo ComL is a former founder and leader of the Portuguese terrorist organization, Brigadas Revolucionárias (BR), which took part in an armed struggle against the Portuguese government, both before and after the overthrow of the repressive Estado Novo regime.

She was also the founder and leader of Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado (PRP), a political organization never formalized as a party and created to support the BR.

Maria Isabel Augusta Cortes do Carmo was born in Barreiro, on the left bank of the River Tagus to the southeast of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, on 12 September 1940.

She took the ferry to go to High School in Lisbon and later graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon.

In 1958, she took part in the campaign of the communist, Arlindo Vicente, for the Presidency of the Republic.

Vicente eventually withdrew in favour of Humberto Delgado.

A year later she joined the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), where she was, in secret, a member of the leadership of the university sector and of the communist organization of doctors.

As a student and activist in the students' association of the Faculty of Medicine, she participated in student revolts in 1962, having been the first woman to speak at essentially male assemblies.

After receiving a PhD from the same faculty, she practised medicine as an assistant physician at the Hospital de Santa Maria in the north of Lisbon.

Carmo's political activities began when she was 15, when she joined the youth organization of the Movement of Democratic Unity (MUD), a quasi-legal organization that opposed the Estado Novo.

At this time, after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia made her disenchanted with the Soviet Union, and becoming frustrated with the PCP's unwillingness to carry out armed activities, Carmo founded, with Carlos Antunes and Pedro Goulart, the Brigadas Revolucionárias/Revolutionary Brigades (BR).

The PCP leader Álvaro Cunhal was also in Paris at this time.

In 1969 she became a member of the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MUD).

This was a coalition of political parties formed to oppose the Estado Novo in the widely manipulated national and local elections.

In the same year she went to Paris, where she lived between October 1969 and March 1970 together with Carlos Antunes.

In 1970, she was excluded from her position as an assistant at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, by order of PIDE, Portugal's secret police.

However, she continued to perform this position secretly and without remuneration, with the support of her professor – Galvão Telles.

The first violent action by the BR took place on 7 November 1971 against the NATO facilities in Fonte da Telha, in Costa da Caparica.

She would live together with Antunes, who died from COVID-19 in January 2021.

They had a son and a daughter.

She was part of the executive of the Ordem dos Médicos (Order of Physicians) until 1972.

On December 31, 1972, the BR infiltrated the vigil of Capela do Rato, a protest organised by a group of Catholics who took a stand against the colonial war.

The BR carried out a series of bombings in various locations in Lisbon.

Two children decided to play with an object where a clock was visible, which eventually exploded in their hands.

Their parents were humble workers.

One child lost an eye and the other lost three fingers in the right hand.

The father was a gardener and the mother was an illiterate maid.

This outcome forced Isabel do Carmo to go underground so that she could keep on carrying out her revolutionary activities.

The children and their parents never received any support or compensation from the BR.

In October 1973, again together with Antunes, she founded Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado/Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP).

It was the BR's political arm.

Despite its name, the PRP was not a legal party or an autonomous organization: all BR operatives were part of the PRP, but not all PRP militants were part of the BR.

The PRP's main objective was to broaden the base of support and provide political protection for BR terrorist attacks.

Unlike the BR, which, at first, still had some support among progressive Catholics, the PRP established its base among the more-radical far left whose ideology was Revolutionary Socialism.

After the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, which overthrew the Estado Novo, the PRP merged with BR, becoming a single entity — PRP/BR.

This focused on political action, and, for many months, there were no bomb attacks or bank robberies.

Later in 1975, during the so-called Hot Summer of political, social and military instability, the country was ruled by a communist government with the support of Operational Command of the Continent (COPCON), led by Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.

The PRP/BR aim was to have the extreme left play a dominant role in the Portuguese government.

She was held in pre-trial prison from 1978 to 1982.

Carmo, a doctor and a University professor, has published extensively, on both medical and political issues.