After being trained in nursing in the Soviet Union, she took a commanding role in the Northern Front of the war, rising to the rank of political commissar and joining the Superior Council of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP).

There, Silá was recruited into the movement by João Bernardo Vieira, who tasked her with distributing illegal literature and liaising between the mobilisers and the local peasantry.

Despite her mother's pleas, she ran away from home and joined the guerrillas in Cubucaré [pt], where she was trained as a fighter and began her first combat missions.

[8] As part of a program to mobilise young women into the movement,[8] Silá was sent abroad to the Soviet Union, in order to be trained in nursing.

[11] There she developed a close friendship with Francisca Pereira, with whom she shared a similar disposition, as well as an aversion to the cold Eastern European winter.

[14] During one of these meetings, Cabral introduced her to Gérard Chaliand as: "Comrade Titina Sila, who is in overall charge of our public health program in the North.

[20] She then met and married fellow Committee member Manuel N'Digna, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP), with whom she had two children; the eldest dying in infancy in 1972.

[14] Upon receiving news of the death of the PAIGC leader Amílcar Cabral, Silá began making her way towards Guinea-Conakry, in order to attend his funeral.

[4] Silá's remains were taken to Bissau and interred in the Fortaleza de São José da Amura, near Amílcar Cabral's mausoleum.

[3] Along with Amílcar Cabral and Domingos Ramos [pt], Titina Silá has been recognised by Bissau-Guinean political society as a martyr of the war of independence.