[2] Around 1950, she began a lifelong partnership with Luís Carlos Prestes, the Communist Party's longtime general secretary, a widower.

[1][2] She also published a collection of essays about her time living in exile with her family in Moscow during the 1970s, titled O sabor clandestino de Maria Prestes.

[1] Prestes was given the Diploma Bertha Lutz, a women's rights honor issued by the Federal Senate, in 2012.

[4] She lived among her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in Rio de Janeiro until her death on 4 February 2022, of COVID-19, at age 92.

[1][2] Brazilian women's rights activist Edna Calheiros called her death a "great loss of a compatriot, a comrade, a fighter.