Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro was born on August 30, 1821, in the coastal town of Laguna, then part of the captaincy of Santa Catarina in the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves—just one year before Brazil proclaimed its independence. The daughter of Bento Ribeiro da Silva, a drover who traveled the long roads of southern Brazil herding cattle, and Maria Antônia de Jesus Antunes, a descendant of Azoreans from São Miguel Island, Ana Maria was the third of ten siblings. The family lived in a simple wattle-and-daub house on the outskirts of Laguna, in a region called Morrinhos, leading a modest life marked by hard work and the raw nature of the Santa Catarina coast.
Ana Maria’s childhood was marked by early losses. With her father’s death, which occurred between 1833 and 1835, the family lost its main source of income, and her mother began working in homes in central Laguna to ensure their daily bread. During this difficult time, her paternal uncle, Antônio da Silva Ribeiro, frequently visited his nieces and nephews during his droving trips through the region. A committed republican, Antônio preached the need for a revolution to transform the country’s political structure—and his ideas fell on fertile ground in the young Ana Maria, who absorbed those convictions over the years of her adolescence.
At just 14 years old, on August 30, 1835—her birthday—Ana Maria was married to the shoemaker Manuel Duarte de Aguiar in a ceremony at the Santo Antônio dos Anjos Mother Church in Laguna. The marriage, which Ana Maria herself described as a "farce" in a letter to her uncle, was marked from the start by mutual disinterest and produced no children. A few years later, between 1837 and 1838, her husband, a fervent monarchist, enlisted in the Imperial Army and abandoned his young wife—leaving her, in practice, free for the extraordinary destiny that awaited her.
In 1835, the Ragamuffin Revolution had erupted in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, and republican winds swept through southern Brazil. In Laguna, most of the population sympathized with the Ragamuffins’ cause, and the spirit of rebellion grew each year. On July 22, 1839, the Ragamuffin army took the city after defeating the Imperial Navy ships patrolling the bay. The operation was led by the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, exiled in Brazil since 1835 after being sentenced to death by King Charles Albert of Sardinia. Garibaldi had arrived with only the boat *Seival* and emerged victorious, and on July 29, the Catarinense Republic was proclaimed in the city’s municipal chamber.
The meeting between Ana Maria and Giuseppe Garibaldi became one of the most celebrated love stories of the 19th century. He, at 32 years old, spotted the 18-year-old young woman in a group of girls strolling near the seashore, observing her through a spyglass aboard the vessel *Itaparica*. Her image captivated him instantly. He arranged a boat, went ashore, but did not find her at first. Their reunion happened soon after, at the home of a local resident who invited them to dinner—and there, according to Garibaldi’s own memoirs, he looked into her eyes and said, *"You must be mine."* She did not refuse.
From then on, Ana Maria—who would go down in history as Anita Garibaldi—became the Italian revolutionary’s inseparable companion. She fought alongside him in the battles of the Ragamuffin Revolution, taking part in combat on horseback, handling firearms, and facing dangers that would have been considered extreme even for experienced soldiers. In one battle, she was even captured by the imperial army but managed to escape. Her courage and determination on the battlefield, at a time when women were expected to be submissive and confined to domestic life, made her a singular and admired figure among the combatants themselves.
The couple married formally in 1842, after Anita’s first husband was confirmed dead. They had four children together. When the Ragamuffin Revolution was finally defeated in 1845, Anita and Giuseppe left Brazil and sailed for Europe, taking their children with them. In Italy, their saga continued: the couple plunged into the unification wars shaking the peninsula, and Anita once again took up arms and rode alongside her husband through the roads of revolutionary Italy.
The end came cruelly in 1849. Anita, who was pregnant with their fifth child, fell gravely ill during the retreat of Garibaldi’s troops after the fall of the Roman Republic. Exhausted, feverish, and weakened, she died on August 4, 1849, on the outskirts of Ravenna in northern Italy, at just 27 years old. Giuseppe Garibaldi, who carried her in his arms until the end, survived to complete Italy’s unification—but he never forgot the woman who had crossed oceans and battles by his side.
Anita Garibaldi is remembered today as the "Heroine of Two Worlds," a title that precisely captures a life lived with rare intensity. Her name graces neighborhoods, streets, squares, and monuments in both Brazil and Italy. A dispute over her birthplace—Laguna or Lages—was taken to court and resolved in 1998, with a ruling confirming Laguna as her hometown. More than her birthplace, however, what remains is the memory of a young woman from the interior of Santa Catarina who chose freedom when the world expected only silence from her.