Abstract

In January 1979, a delegation of exiled Brazilian communist women activists travelled across Italy during a week-long visit organized by the Women’s Section of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano – PCI). The goal of the women representatives of the Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro – PCB) was to learn from and forge links of solidarity with PCI activists in the context of mounting internal resistance and international condemnation against Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship, in power since 1964. This introductory essay contextualizes a set of six written sources from the PCB women’s delegation to Italy, including written reports and correspondence from both hosts and guests. The journey is a telling instance of cross-border solidarity between two sets of global communism’s little-studied female subjects. Yet, the pathway leading its Brazilian protagonists to Italy was not a straightforward one. PCB delegates did not depart from their home country towards Italy, but from their places of exile across Western Europe. Moreover, most female PCB militants had only fled to Europe between 1973 and 1975, many of them from Chile, their «first» exile until the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular government. The essay briefly discusses this trajectory before providing a detailed chronicle of the visit to Italy. It then shifts focus to the peculiar transnational space created through the exchanges between Brazilian guests and Italian hosts in the trip. The documents introduced in the essay, in that regard, do not only testify to the crucial role played by the PCI – and its overlooked women activists – in the international communist movement of the late 1970s. They also shed light on a gendered practice of internationalism understood as a two-way bond of solidarity.