HUMAN RIGHTS-CUBA: Ladies in White Fight for Imprisoned Husbands

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 25 2004 (IPS) - They gather every Sunday, dressed in white, outside the Church of Saint Rita – the patron saint of lost causes – on Havana’s bustling Fifth Avenue, but they are still better known outside Cuba than at home.

"I’ve been asked if I’m a santera," said Dolia Leal, 59, referring to the practitioners of the Afro-Cuban santería religion who also dress completely in white. "I explain that no, I’m a Catholic, and the only thing I want is justice for my husband, Nelson Aguiar, who was unjustly sentenced to 13 years in prison."

Aguiar is one of 75 Cubans sentenced in April 2003 to prison terms of between six and 28 years, on charges of conspiring with a foreign power – the United States – to destabilise the country.

And Leal is one of the "Ladies in White", as these women have come to be known. They are the wives of jailed government opponents, and are working together to draw attention to their husbands’ cause, although they stress that they are not an organisation.

While the men in prison call themselves dissidents, the Cuban government calls them "mercenaries on the payroll of the empire," referring to the funding provided by the U.S. government to opposition groups in Cuba.

Promoting dissident activity on the island is just one of the strategies adopted by the United States over the course of more than four decades in its attempts to bring an end to the socialist government led by President Fidel Castro.

The prisoners, and their wives, insist that they are innocent. "I don’t get paid by any empire," said Gisela Delgado, the wife of Héctor Palacios, 63, sentenced to a 25-year prison term, which he is currently serving in the Pinar del Río penitentiary, 150 kilometres west of Havana.

"We have united to fight together for our husbands," Delgado added. "We can’t just sit around doing nothing, waiting for some kind of leniency on the part of the government."

The weapons used in their fight include countless letters to the authorities demanding better prison conditions for their husbands, candlelight vigils, hunger strikes and all-day prayer sessions.

And every Sunday, a group of wives attend mass at Santa Rita Church together, dressed all in white, some wearing T-shirts with photographs of their imprisoned husbands printed on the front. When the service is over, they walk together for several blocks around the church.

"I was expressly prohibited from going to Santa Rita Church, but I keep attending, because it’s my constitutional right," declared Miriam Leiva, wife of Héctor Espinoza Chepe, 63, sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Several months ago, Espinoza Chepe was transferred to Havana from a prison in eastern Cuba because of his delicate state of health. He is currently being held in the hospital ward of the Combinado del Este, the large penitentiary on the outskirts of the capital.

"His health has been steadily deteriorating. He’s been suffering from bleeding for three months now, but I don’t know why, because I can’t talk to the doctors," said Leyva, who is now at least able to visit her husband weekly.

Seven of the 75 prisoners have been released on probation for health reasons, including Marta Beatriz Roque, the only woman in the group. Roque had already spent three years in prison, between 1997 and 2000, for her role in the opposition group known as the Group of Four.

Other prisoners have been moved to facilities closer to their homes, and can thus be visited more frequently by their families. The wives of these prisoners appear to have chosen to keep a low profile, and have maintained a certain distance from the Ladies in White.

"These measures are a result of international pressure. I don’t think they represent a relaxation on the part of the authorities," commented Leal, one of the most active of the prisoners’ wives. She herself has to travel almost 1,000 kilometres to the eastern Cuban province of Guantánamo in order to visit her husband.

For the moment, many of the prisoners remain under the strictest conditions of incarceration, which allow only one visit every three months, and a conjugal visit every five months.

"My husband, Héctor Maseda, has maintained good behaviour, but he still hasn’t been switched to a less severe prison regime," complained Laura Pollán.

She believes that the tough conditions imposed on her husband are the result of her own activism on behalf of the prisoners. "If that’s the case, then they should punish me, not him," she said. Moreover, she added, the Ladies in White are simply women who have been brought together by their shared suffering, and whatever methods they have used are peaceful.

Earlier this month, in a bold act of defiance, several members of the group joined Berta Soler, a microbiology technician, in a public protest on behalf of her husband, Angel Moya.

Moya is serving a 20-year sentence at the Los Mangos penitentiary in the province of Granma, some 800 kilometres east of the capital. Soler had requested his transfer to a hospital in Havana, where he could receive treatment for the slipped disc that was keeping him bedridden.

The women camped out in the small park outside the National Library, a mere 500 metres from Havana’s Revolution Square, the traditional venue for mass rallies and speeches by Castro, and a stone’s throw from the Palace of the Revolution, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, and the Ministry of the Interior.

Soler and five other prisoners’ wives remained in the park from the morning of Oct. 5 until the early morning hours of Oct. 7, when the protest was peacefully broken up by police officers, who drove the women to their homes. No arrests were made.

Just hours later, Soler was notified that she could visit her husband, who had been transferred to a hospital in Havana.

Elizardo Sánchez, the president of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation – an organisation that is not recognised by the Cuban government – said that the action undertaken by the women is unprecedented in the last four decades.

The most common complaints of the wives and other relatives of the prisoners involve inadequate medical care for their loved ones, although the authorities firmly deny these accusations.

According to Sánchez, his organisation has also received reports of beatings in the prisons, although he added, "As a rule, beatings and physical abuse are not used against political prisoners."

Sánchez speaks from experience. "I was in jail for eight years, and they never laid a finger on me. Until now, the top leadership of the country has not permitted the use of physical violence against us," he told IPS.

>From the Cuban government’s point of view, the 75 opponents sentenced in April 2003 were individuals who knowingly conspired with the U.S. government by participating in the subversive activities directed by James Cason, the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Since taking over as the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba, Cason has been even more active than his predecessors in meeting with opponents of the Cuban government, both privately and publicly, and providing them with financial and material resources.

Cason claims that his "interactions with Cuban citizens" are neither provocative nor subversive, but rather "appropriate and routine contacts with legitimate political actors who enjoy international contacts far beyond the U.S. Interests Section."

The arrest and sentencing of the 75 dissidents contributed to the European Union’s decision to suspend its ongoing dialogue with Havana and adopt a series of diplomatic sanctions against the island in June 2003. The sanctions included a new policy of inviting Cuban dissidents to all official European national day celebrations.

Since then, the Ladies in White and other relatives of the prisoners have flocked to these embassy functions en masse, while Cuban government officials have fully ceased to attend, in protest.