When we – the Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco in Spanish] movement of 2003 – began to organize ourselves, we decided to meet in Havana. In fact, many families from Havana opened their doors and we would stay with them.
[The Ladies in White is a civil society organization founded by the mothers, spouses and daughters of dissidents who were imprisoned by Cuban authorities during the Black Spring crackdown in March 2003. They practice nonviolent resistance against the repression of civil liberties on the island of Cuba.]
At first, each of us would find a way to travel to the capital by our own means. Somehow there were always neighbors, people who would help us and give us money to travel to the prisons.
But by the third, fourth, fifth months, Cuban exiles in the United States began to organize and lend their support to us, the families of the prisoners and to the Damas de Blanco.
There was an awakening. They were encouraged by our acts so they began to help us. They sent us white clothing because we had started to wear white clothing, but it was not very good quality.
Help began to arrive. Support arrived to the prisoners’ families. Help from the Plantados organization [Plantados is a U.S.-based civil society organization dedicated to supporting the Cuban opposition and encouraging democratic governance. It is named after the plantados, a term used to describe political prisoners who refuse to cooperate.]
They were well organized. They noted everyone’s name and went to work.
Thanks to them, my family and I were able to survive so that I could visit my husband in prison. All those trips. To be able to take him food in prison. In Cuban prisons you have to take food.
You have to provide everything – grooming supplies – because the prisons do not provide them. With that money we bought and made care packages to take to the prisons. Also, we began to travel to Havana as the Ladies in White.
We later learned other organizations, like the Cuban American National Foundation, began to help by sending money, clothes, and medicine. The Support Group for Democracy, led by Frank Hernández Trujillo, started sending food: canned sardines, Spam, and things for the prisoners. They would send soap, mosquito nets, and undergarments. It was good. [The Cuban American National Foundation and the Support Group for Democracy are civil society organizations that support greater political freedom and civil liberties in Cuba.]
People in Europe began to support us. They organized. A group, People in Need, began to sponsor and send help to prisoners from the Black Spring, the 75
[People in Need is a Czech civil society organization that provides humanitarian relief to oppressed people around the world].
That group sponsored my family. They helped until my husband’s release. They would send money, euros. I may be forgetting names. Even individuals called us to ask for our address and they would send us money and food.
Over all, the Plantados were the ones who most [helped] the prisoners. The Cuban American National Foundation most helped the Damas de Blanco. Other organizations like the [the Cuban] Democratic Directorate also helped.
[The U.S.-based Cuban Democratic Directorate is a civil society organization that supports greater political freedom and civil liberties in Cuba.]
Here in the United States, in Miami, the Municipalities of Cuba in Exile also helped the Ladies [in White] and their cause. [The U.S.-based Municipalities of Cuba in Exile is a civil society organization that supports greater political freedom and civil liberties in Cuba.]
The Federation of Prisoners and Former Prisoners, here in Miami. [The Federation of Prisoners and Former Prisoners is a civil society organization that supports greater political freedom and civil liberties in Cuba, and the release of political prisoners.]
I may have left out someone. I know many have helped. That is why we have had the means to do our work, get together, to work on our initiatives, buy flowers, walk, buy shoes when we don’t have them and get to places.
Alejandrina García de la Riva was born on April 12, 1966, in Matanzas, Cuba. Her first years of life were spent on a sugar mill in the municipality of Calimente. She went to technical school at the Álvaro Reynoso Institute in order to study agriculture and agronomy and held jobs as a statistician, grocer, independent journalist, and a correspondent for Servicio Noticuba, a press agency considered illegal by the Cuban government.
In 1983, Alejandrina married Diosdado González Marrero, a decision that ultimately led her down the path of nonviolent civil resistance. Together the couple has two children and three grandchildren.
In March 2003, Alejandrina’s husband was one of 75 nonviolent dissidents to be arrested in a massive government crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In response, Alejandrina and other wives, mothers, and sisters of those imprisoned during the Black Spring founded the Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco].
The Ladies in White became a formidable civil society organization that planned weekly marches through the streets of Havana, peacefully protesting for the freedom of political prisoners and the expansion of civil liberties and political freedoms in Cuba. As a result of her participation, Alejandrina was arrested and harassed by the Cuban authorities on numerous occasions.
Alejandrina played a crucial role in orchestrating the release of her husband and other Black Spring political prisoners. The Ladies in White lobbied Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the leading representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, and convinced him to negotiate for the release of the prisoners. By 2011, after years of protests and several hunger strikes, the Black Spring dissidents, including Alejandrina’s husband, were released. While the majority of the prisoners went into exile, Alejandrina and Diosdado chose to remain in Cuba.
Alejandrina lives in Mantazas Province and remains active in the Ladies in White Movement.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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