Between 1928 and 1937, she lived in a farming community in Guararema, in the interior of São Paulo, formed by individualist anarchists and Spanish, French, and Italian deserters from World War I.

It was the period of her life in which she produced and acted the most, collaborating weekly in the newspaper O Combate [pt], where she established the polemic of greatest impact with the local fascist press; she gave conferences in Uruguay and Argentina, invited by anti-fascist educational institutions; she met Luís Carlos Prestes, in exile in Buenos Aires; she gave pacifist conferences and triggered the anti-fascist campaign in São Paulo.

[5] From this post, Maria Lacerda participated in a number of campaigns to address social inequality, by improving literacy rates and advancing education reform.

[10] As she grew increasingly concerned with the condition that women found themselves in at the time, she began to look for ways to improve it, publicising a number of feminist initiatives that were taking place in Brazil's big cities.

[12] In the following years, Maria Lacerda attended a series of conferences in other cities like Juiz de Fora and Santos, which convinced her to finally leave Barbacena in 1921.

[24] In 1928, Maria Lacera moved to an agricultural commune in Guararema, which had been established by a number of individualist anarchists, immigrant workers and deserters from World War I.

[28] While staying on the commune, Maria Lacerda reached the height of her writing career, publishing a large number of books, articles and conferences, which had a wide-ranging impact.

[29] She also maintained her weekly column in the São Paulo newspaper O Combate,[27] in which she published an article that criticised the reaction to the death of the Italian aviator Carlo Del Prete, denouncing the militarism and fascistic tendencies displayed by much of the Brazilian clergy and mainstream media.

[30] The rise of fascism in Brazil during the early 1930s, particularly with the establishment of groups like Brazilian Integralist Action, aroused Maria Lacerda to begin engaging in antifascist activism.

[38] Following the 1937 Brazilian coup d'état, which established the Estado Novo, the commune at Gaurarema became a target for police repression, resulting in the arrest and deportation of many of the community's members, as well as a number of book burnings.

In the wake of the coup, Maria Lacerda spent months in hiding, before returning to her home city of Barbacena, where she attempted to resume her work as a school teacher and began practising in the occult.

While continuing to teach, she fell deeper into spiritualism, reading horoscopes at Radio Mayrink Veiga and closely collaborating with the Christian anarchist professor Aníbal Vaz de Melo.

Months before the end of World War II in 1945, Maria Lacerda de Moura died and was buried in Saint John the Baptist's Cemetery.

[2] When Jair joined Brazilian Integralist Action in 1935, Maria Lacerda reacted with disgust,[40] publishing an open letter to him in A Lanterna, in which she publicly rebuked him for his decision.

[43] Her activism within educational, anti-clerical and anti-fascist causes brought her closer to many other militants,[44] drawing her particularly close with Brazilian anarchists, especially after breaking with the suffragists over her criticisms of representative democracy.

[56] Inspired by the work of Han Ryner, she held the expression of plural love to be the best path towards social progress,[57] as it would subdue crimes of passion associated with monogamy and eliminate the economic exploitation of women through prostitution.

[64] Drawing from the pacifist philosophy of Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi and Romain Rolland, she proposed a central role for women in anti-war agitation, advocating for a campaign of nonviolent resistance through the refusal of civil service and the carrying out of a sex strike.

[69] Influenced by the rationalist pedagogy of Francesc Ferrer, she advocated for universal access to education as a necessary step in the advancement of liberty and social equality,[70] as well as in the progression of women's liberation.

[71] Throughout her life, Maria Lacerda adopted a number of positions similar to those later expounded by second-wave feminism,[72] especially in her criticisms of traditional sexual morality and the culture of Domesticity.

[73] In addition to her many written works that denounced gender inequality and exploitation, several of her articles were published in Spanish and Argentine anarchist journals during the 1920s and 1930s, including Estudios [es] and La Revista Blanca.