Speech

Maria Quitéria was born in 1792 in São José de Itapororoca in Bahia and lived
with her family on a farm. At the age of ten, she lost her mother and took care of
her sister. Despite not having a good education, Maria knew how to hunt, fish,
and handle weapons.
In 1822, when the Interim Council of the Government of Bahia started to recruit
volunteers for the struggles to support Independence, Maria Quitéria became
interested, but when she told her family the idea father’s Maria forbade her.
Even with her father's ban, she decided to go, so with the help of the sister,
Tereza Maria, and her brother-in-law, Jose Cordeiro Medeiros, she borrowed
her brother-in-law's uniform, cut her hair, and joined the army as a Medeiros
soldier in the battalion “Volunteers of Príncipe Dom Pedro”
When her father found out, he sought out the battalion and revealed his
daughter's true identity, but the major did not allow her to be withdrawn because
she was well recognized for knowing how to handle weapons and having great
military discipline. So she started to be recognized by her real name, she
served as an inspiration for other women, who began to join the troops and
even formed a group led by Quiteria.
After the end of the war for independence, Maria Quitéria decided to return to
the region where she lived and with the farmer Gabriel Pereira de Brito, whom
he had a daughter, Luísa Maria da Conceição. After the death of her husband,
she moved to Feira de Santana to try to receive part of the inheritance left by
her father, but gave up and went to Salvador, where she died on August 21 in
1853.
I chose to talk about Maria, because I found her story and her acts interesting,
she was the first woman to join the army and I too had heard about her at
school last year.