There was a lot of activity wherever they apprehended an opposition member or leader in the 2003 arrests. [In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested 75 nonviolent dissidents in an event known as the Black Spring.]
The neighbors knew where they lived. So, they asked about things and the regime made them public, discreetly. Those who were apprehended were classified as bad, so that the public would have a bad impression of them: as mercenaries, employees [of foreign powers], as people who wanted to destroy the nation and cause damage.
It was done discreetly, but the regime´s media, like television reporters and radio, made this wave of repression, these arrests public.
Each of these men were taken far from their homes, to other provinces. For example: I live in the interior of the province of Matanzas and my husband [Diosdado González Marrero, one of the 75 who was imprisoned] was taken to a prison in the province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba’s utmost western tip.
When I moved to Pinar del Rio, [near] the prison, I met other women talking outside the prison. Family members visiting husbands, children from the same wave of repression as my husband, whom I did not know. There we began speaking: “Hello! How are you? I´m from Matanzas.” Another: “I´m from Santiago de Cuba”. Another: “I am from Camagüey.” We began to get to know each other. What could we do?
We began to wonder what can we do against such injustice. What do we do? It is too much injustice. Then we learned that the same thing was occurring in other provinces. We were getting to know each other. In Havana, in Villa Marista, the location of the State Security headquarters, women were preparing to go to church. An awakening began. Who are the women? Who are the prisoners?
And their names, surnames, their provinces, and addresses began to be shared. We started to communicate by phone. “We will go to the Church of Santa Rita on Sunday. Mass is at 10:30 a.m. and we will go to church dressed in white. Do you think it can be done?” Yes. We all agreed.
We started to move from the provinces to Havana to meet in the Church of Santa Rita, on 5th Avenue and 26th Street, to pray, to attend Mass. And when we went outside [the church], we said: “Let´s walk a few blocks to get attention. And when asked, we will say that we are the families of the 75 who are unjustly in prison. And we are walking silently to protest the injustice of the imprisonment.”
And that is where the Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco in Spanish] movement began. From that meeting in the church. We prayed. We prayed to Santa Rita and then started walking on the wide center sidewalk of 5th Avenue. When we saw that there were other women coming from other provinces, we started walking in pairs.
[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.]
The accredited foreign press corps in Cuba began to visit and ask questions. And we began to state how we felt. This is how the movement emerged.
Not everyone joined overnight. First there were those from Havana. Then those of us from Matanzas, the nearest province to Havana, joined. Then Santa Clara, Pinar del Rio to the east. According to the women, as soon as they received news, then they would agree on a Sunday on which they could travel to the church.
Then gradually it grew until all the families of the 75 joined. And indeed, many women who saw us wanted to join. We started calling them “ladies of support.” We accepted them and they walked with us and stayed.
It was a surprise to both sides. To us — the ladies — and to the others. There had never been such a movement … so many women on the street, dressed in white asking for the release of their families.
People who saw us would blow kisses our way. They were amazed by what they saw, proud of what we were doing. They said we were courageous, that we should continue, that they were with us, that they supported us. Since it is a heavily trafficked road, cars honked their horns and when we looked they would make a victory gesture. They would do that. And that was special to us. It encouraged us, gave us strength and we saw that we were being well regarded by those who felt the same as us.
Everything we did was our own initiative. We organized, we talked, we wrote down what we would do the following week. We still do. We kept it to ourselves so that the security service would not find out. We sought strategies so that we could do activities and not be repressed.
Going out to the streets, to be seen. I do not think we did things because we knew of other organizations. No. It was spontaneous. Our initiative.
I think it has been God’s work. That a woman … should demand family rights. The weaker sex, as we say in Cuba, lacking physical strength. Doing what we do, I think it comes from God’s power that He gives us to continue in what we do.
Many of the families are no longer in Cuba. There are still some, like my husband and others, in Cuba. We chose to continue fighting for other men who are unjustly in prison. Because in Cuba human rights will not be violated as long as we continue our work. This is where we are and where we’ll stay.
The Ladies in White have grown. Many women who endure the same [repression] have joined. Some are family members of prisoners and some are not. Because we are enduring the same. Sometimes they say, “What makes them join?” We endure the same violence, marginalization, poverty, lack of rights.
They see us as an example and join. How far can we go? Until Cuba is a state with rights. Where all have rights, where there is a multiparty system. Where all these movements and opposition parties are able to realize their objectives. Where there are no more prisoners. When no more are unjustly imprisoned. Until Cuba is free. Until then we will continue our work as the Ladies in White movement.
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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