About the Stamp
This issue celebrates the two hundred years of birth of a woman who was immortalized as a heroine on two continents for her deeds. The art of the stamp is a composition of Anita Garibaldi in her multiple facets: the woman, the warrioress, the mother. There is also a drawing of a rose, symbol of Anita. Three colors were used, which, together with the color of the paper, represent Brazil, Anita’s birth country, and Italy, which recognizes her and her companion Giuseppe Garibaldi as heroes responsible for the unification of the country. The technique used was computer graphics and calcographic printing (intaglio).
200 Years of Anita Garibaldi’s Birth
Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro was born on August 30, 1821 in the south of the then province of Santa Catarina, part of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815-22). She lived in the village of Laguna when in 1839 the Farroupilha rebels proclaimed the Juliana Republic, separating the region from the Brazilian Empire (1822-89). At that time, she met the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the Farroupilha fighters, with whom she fell in love and later married, becoming known as Anita Garibaldi.
With great courage, Anita participated directly in the combats on land and at sea, alongside Giuseppe, in the defense of the Juliana Republic and, after its fall, in the fights that followed between the Farroupilha and Imperial forces. She was eventually captured in a combat that took place in the Curitibanos region of Santa Catarina, but managed to escape alone through the region’s forests and find Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The couple went with the Farroupilha forces to Rio Grande do Sul, where Anita gave birth, on September 16, 1840, to their first child, Menotti, in the town of Mostardas. The region was attacked by imperial forces and Anita, even convalescing from childbirth, managed to escape on horseback from the attackers, with her newborn child in her arms. The family would go to São Gabriel, home of the Farroupilhas, where Giuseppe requested his departure from the fighting forces, and then moved with Anita and her son to Montevideo, Uruguay.
In the capital of that country, Anita and Giuseppe made their marriage official on March 26, 1842. He would become involved in the struggles of the Uruguayans against the forces of the Argentine dictator Juan Manoel Rosas, having created at that time the Italian Legion, composed of political exiles, the which would also accompany him on his return to Italy and on the struggles for the unification of that country. In Uruguay three more children were born to the couple, Rosita, Teresita and Riccioti, and Rosita ended up dying of diphtheria in 1845.
Giuseppe’s involvement in the movement for the unification of Italy took the family back to Europe in 1848, where he soon became involved in fighting for that cause. The proclamation of the Roman Republic in 1849 was followed by an attack by the French army, with Garibaldi and his volunteers fighting in its defence. Anita, pregnant with her fifth child, went to meet Giuseppe amid the bloody battles for the defense of the city of Rome.
With the fall of the Roman Republic, Anita, Giuseppe and more than three thousand men, aiming to continue the fight, withdrew from the city, escaping the encirclement of French and Austrian troops. During the flight, the army ended up dissolved and weakened, Anita falls ill and needs to be carried by Giuseppe and some of her companions. The group, in the midst of persecution from the Austrians, arrived in Mandriole, in northern Italy, with Anita increasingly sick. She eventually died at Fazenda Guiccioli, on August 4, 1849. Anita had to be buried in a hurry and without the presence of Giuseppe, who had to escape the Austrian siege. Anita’s remains went through several burials later, being even, at one point, hidden by Giuseppe’s supporters, as they feared that they would be desecrated. Her husband and children returned to Italy in 1859.
Anita began to be progressively celebrated in Italy, along with Giuseppe, as the heroine of Italian unification, gaining an equestrian monument in her honor on the hill of Gianicolo, in Rome, under which she was definitively buried in 1932. In Brazil, due to the the monarchic regime, and Anita’s involvement with the republican cause, there was a silencing of her during much of the nineteenth century, even when she was already praised as a heroine in Italy.
With the Proclamation of the Republic, it would be increasingly celebrated, along with people who fought for republican ideals. Her courage, her love for Giuseppe and her engagement in the struggles in Brazil and Italy earned her the nickname “the heroine of both worlds”. She had her name inscribed, by Federal Law No. 12,615, of April 30, 2012, in the Book of Heroes of the Brazilian Homeland, thus officially becoming a Brazilian heroine.
Two hundred years after her birth, Anita Garibaldi is considered a symbol of love, determination, bravery and the ability to fight for ideals, being honored in various ways, in music, poems, books, movies and monuments. Its name was given to streets, avenues, squares, neighborhoods, cities, schools, health centers, among others, in Brazil and Italy. Her name also refers to nativist cultural groups, collectives of social struggles and feminists. Remembering Anita, her life, her struggles and ideals is also a way of highlighting the nonconformity and the search to overcome adversity, fundamental qualities of human beings to face their challenges in building a better world.
Fábio Andreas Richter.
Historian at Fundação Catarinense de Cultura and Doctor in History by UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina)
Technical Details
Stamp issue N. 11
Art: José Carlos Braga
Print system: calcography
Paper: gummed chalky paper
Sheet with 12 stamps
Facial value: R$ 3.55
Issue: 120,000 stamps
Design area: 35 x 25mm
Stamp dimensions: 40 x 30mm
Perforation: 11.5 x 12
Date of issue: August 30th , 2021
Places of issue: Brasília/DF, Florianópolis/SC and Laguna/SC
Printing: Brazilian Mint
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