Marina Alene

Marina Alene Mbá was a politician and women's organiser in Equatorial Guinea, founder of the women's wing of the United National Workers' Party (PUNT).

Life Marina Alene came from Río Muni in what was then the Spanish colony of Spanish Guinea. As a mother of six children in the 1960s, she studied in Barcelona with Sección Femenina (SF), the women's branch of the Falange movement in Francoist Spain. In 1968 she gained a degree as a general SF instructor, evidently impressing her tutors:

Viewing Arlene as a natural candidate to head a women's organization in an imminent Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the Women's Section assigned her to travel across Spain to learn more about their organizational structure. However, following independence, in the context of growing anti-Spanish protests in early 1969, Alene frightened her Spanish mentors with demands for an entirely independent African Women's Section:

Reports circulated of an "anti-whites" meeting hosted at her house, calling for the need to "step on the whites and crush their heads and not stop until we manage it".

Alene became a member of the Central Committee of the United National Workers' Party (PUNT), representing the party internationally on women's rights issues. She oversaw the transformation of the Equatoguinean Women's Section into a Women's Section of PUNT.