Faria Lima Maria do Bosque, more commonly known as Bosquinha, was both Governor of Lusitania and the Mayor of Milagre.[1] She was first introduced in Speaker for the Dead.



At some point, Bosquinha was elected mayor of Milagre and Governor of Lusitania. She swore an oath of loyalty to Starways Congress.[1]

Speaker for the Dead

She was with Novinha at the final Descolada funeral, the one for Novinha’s parents, Gusto and Cida von Hesse. The Mayor also asked Pipo Figueira, several years later, to administer the exam for Novinha to become a xenobiologist as her parents had been before. Bosquinha became Novinha’s guardian, since she had become an orphan.[1]

Later, Bosquinha went with the party to retrieve Pipo’s body from the hill outside the fence after he had been killed by the Pequeninos. She did not originally anticipate Novinha’s grief for Pipo, but when she did see it, she invited Novinha to stay the night with her family.[1]

Years later, the Mayor met Andrew Wiggin when he landed on Lusitania. Although she didn’t expect to like him, she was pleasantly surprised by Andrew's association with San Angelo and the Children of the Mind of Christ, which eased her suspicious edge. She even gained enough trust in the new Speaker to use his file access to save her vital files when Congress began to take punitive actions against the colony for offenses committed by the xenologers. Mayor Bosquinha convinced the other leaders in the colony to trust the Speaker as well, and finally even agreed to rebel against Congress in order to save Miro Ribeira's life, who was stuck unconscious on the other side of the locked fence.[1]

Sometime during the following thirty years, Bosquinha retired as mayor of Lusitania and was succeeded by Kovano Zeljezo.[2]


As the Mayor of Lusitania, she swore an oath to Starways Congress to obey the Starways Code, but she admitted herself that she was suspicious, deceptive, and chauvinistic. She always had the best interests of Lusitania in mind for every decision, although she misled Congress to believe that she was fully supporting the Hundred Worlds. She was a very strong-willed woman, and did not shrink from gruesome tasks.[1]




  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Speaker for the Dead
  2. Xenocide