Casimiro Júlio Ferreira

(Lisbon, 4-02-1909 – Tarrafal, Santiago Island, Cape Verde, 23-09-1941)

Casimiro Júlio Ferreira, son of Joaquim Júlio Ferreira and Elvira de Jesus Ferreira, was born in Lisbon in 1909, where he resided and worked as a tinsmith.

He began his political militancy in the early 1930s, joining the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). He was arrested for the first time in 1931, accused of “posting communist manifestos”, namely propaganda leaflets of the clandestine newspaper Avante!.

Although the Political and Social Defence Police considered him “a rankless element”, “a stranger to any revolutionary organisation” and even “a complete ignorant in communist affairs”, restoring him to freedom a few weeks later, Casimiro Júlio Ferreira participated, in Lisbon, in the preparations for the revolutionary general strike of 18 January 1934.

He was arrested that same day, after meeting with other participants of the movement in Xabregas, having explosive devices that were not used in his possession.

In February 1934, he was sentenced by the Special Military Court to ten years of exile and imprisonment and, in September of that same year, he was sent to the Fortress of São João Baptista, in Angra do Heroísmo.

Two years later, in October 1936, he was transferred to the so-called “camp of slow death”, joining the first group of political prisoners of the Tarrafal Concentration Camp, in Cape Verde.

He died there on 23 September 1941, at the age of 32.