Raimundo Santos
Name: Raimundo Santos
Biography
Raimundo Manuel Marques Santos was born on May 6, 1953, in Beato. He started working at the age of 12. Later, he would work as an office worker and graphic designer.
At the age of 15, he distributed his first clandestine communiqués. He joined a local cell of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) that organized exhibitions, debates, and free singing sessions with José Afonso or José Barata Moura. He intensified his activity starting with the 1969 election campaign. He was arrested by the PIDE/DGS at the age of 17 in January 1971, and released about a month later, and for four days in May. On November 20, 1971, he was arrested for the last time. In Caxias prison, he began his break with the PCP and approached the Reorganizing Movement of the Proletarian Party (MRPP).
He was tried in June 1972, behind closed doors, in the Lisbon Plenary Court and sentenced to 20 months in prison, but was released. Linked to the MRPP, he dedicated himself to the production of clandestine press, to be distributed in factories, and to graffitiing walls, with calls for desertion or against the colonial war. He represented an essentially working-class line, distant from the dominant student majority in the MRPP. He got a job in a factory in Cabo Ruivo to develop activities with the working class in the eastern zone of Lisbon.
He participated in the funeral of Ribeiro Santos, as did his mother and father, and in the stoning of several embassies. In October 1973, while painting a wall in Cabo Ruivo, he escaped from prison and went underground, jumping into exile in Amsterdam.
Date of Collection: 18.05.2018
