Comité Gestor
Para la Solicitud del Premio Nobel de La Paz Para Las Damas de Blanco de
Cuba.
nobeldamasblanco@bellsouth.net
(305) 613-7681
Visiten Glamour en Google valoren el reportaje y vean el vídeo que han
hecho.
Este magnífico trabajo se publicó en el Magazin Glamour del mes octubre,
se puede obtener ahora
en diferentes tiendas de periódicos y farmacias.
Por favor escriban dando su opinión a la columnista Mariane Pearl.
Global diary...Cuba
The women who dare defy a dictator
In Cuba, people have gone to prison for speaking out. Mariane Pearl
travels there and finds that the
country's boldest activists are women-and they make their point without
saying a word.
By Mariane Pearl
The silent march of the Ladies in White
On a bright Sunday morning in Havana, I watched as more than a dozen
women dressed in white,
each carrying a pink gladiolus, marched along Fifth Avenue, an elegant
street lined with neatly
trimmed shrubbery and mansions painted in faded pastels. It was a highly
unusual occurrence in
communist Cuba: a political protest, albeit a quiet one. There were no
slogans to be heard, no signs
to be read. The women said nothing, but their silence contained a
significant cry for freedom.
They are known as the Ladies in White-the wives, mothers, sisters and
daughters of 75 political
prisoners jailed in 2003 by Fidel Castro. The women were demanding the
release of these men from
prison. You could say they were staring down a dictator.
I visited Cuba in June-on the second stop in my journey around the world
for Glamour-just weeks
before Castro fell ill and threw the future of his regime into doubt.
The protest I witnessed offered a
poignant snapshot of a Cuba closing in on a half-century of life under
communist rule. Ever since
Castro came to power in the fifties, Cubans had grown used to waiting
for things-waiting in line to
collect rationed food, waiting to be reunited with loved ones who fled
an oppressive regime, waiting
for the embargo imposed by the United States to end. Waiting for history
to turn this seemingly
endless page and move on. In that atmosphere, the Ladies in White
represent the rarest of breeds-
Cubans who found a way to say, publicly: enough waiting.
The men they hoped to free were arrested for being peaceful activists
for democracy and human
rights, according to their relatives. Some were sentenced to up to 28
years. The government claimed
the men were dissidents whose actions undermined the Cuban regime. For
three years, the Ladies in
White have marched on their behalf, almost every Sunday after mass at
the church of Saint Rita, the
Roman Catholic patron saint of lost causes. And they were still marching
as of press time, despite the
political uncertainty in the country. Their gatherings have come to
embody the frustration of a people
longing for freedom.
It felt odd yet reassuring to be back in Cuba on this trip. I have
family in Havana, and I have been
visiting this island since I was a child. My mother was born in Cuba,
and she left in 1965. It seemed
that little had changed since then. People were warm and friendly, quick
to have a drink, dance and
share jokes as if there were no tomorrows to worry about, or simply no
change in sight under Castro's
rule.
After watching the women march, I went to meet Laura Pollan, 54, a Lady
in White who is a teacher of
Spanish literature, at her home. On my way, I saw Dodges and Chryslers
from the sixties, their paint
sun-bleached to pale blue and dusty red, and passed billboards bearing
slogans like "The Nation or
Death" and "Capitalists, You Don't Scare Us."
Laura's home is the informal headquarters of the Ladies in White, or
Damas en Blanco, as they are
known in Cuba. When I arrived, she was sitting on a rocking chair in her
living room, sweating
profusely. Her electric fan didn't work, and she had to rely on
neighbors for water since her own
plumbing was broken. Her front door was wide open to the busy street.
Cars constantly blew their
horns, trying to avoid young men on Chinese-made bicycles. Across the
way, a band started
rehearsing a song celebrating the joys of lovemaking. Children played
soccer on the street corner,
while women wearing tight shorts strolled by, calling out to each other.
Laura told me how her husband, Hector, a journalist, had ended up in
jail. First he resigned from the
Communist party-a highly symbolic gesture. Then he became involved in
groups demanding
freedom of speech and the right to vote. As a result, the government
labeled him "ideologically unfit,"
Laura said. One afternoon in 2003, she came home to find that the police
had ransacked her house.
"They scattered all our papers on the floors, emptied the drawers and
even searched the plants," she
said. As the police led Hector away that day, he told her, "Do not be
ashamed. I am not a thief. I have
never hurt anyone. I am being arrested for my ideas." The government
accused him of helping
terrorists plan attacks against Cuba, and he was sentenced to 20 years
in jail, Laura said. "In fact,"
she added, "the only weapons they ever found were paper and a typewriter
from 1958."
When Hector and the other men were arrested, in what has come to be
known as "Black Spring," their
women started exchanging letters of support. Soon dozens of them began
marching. However, over
time, the protestors' numbers dwindled, Laura said, amid pressure from
the police, who would
sometimes surround the women's houses on Sundays and prevent them from
going out.
Laura's story was interrupted when a man holding little conical paper
bags stopped by her door.
"Here's the peanut man," he shouted in a singsong voice. "Peanuuuts!"
Laura smiled and turned to
me. "We might be ordinary women," she said, "but we have unshakable
beliefs." She paused and
then added, "Listen, if there should be only one Lady in White left,
that will be me."
I also met one of the younger members of the movement, Katia Martin, a
25-year-old mother of
identical twin girls. As we sat in a tiny public park ringed by giant
royal palm trees, she told me about
her husband, Ricardo, and his ordeal in jail. "The stress is killing us
both," Katia said. "Ricardo's
health is deteriorating quickly. He has lost his voice because of a cyst
on his vocal cords, and he gets
no medical attention. The food in prison is terrible, and the hygiene is
the worst." Katia, like the other
women, is allowed to visit her husband only twice a month. It is unclear
when he will be released.
Yet despite the many hurdles for the Ladies in White, their message has
been heard. In December
they received a European Parliament award, the Sakharov Prize for
Freedom of Thought, named
after Soviet scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. The
women were not allowed to
travel overseas to receive the honor, but it helped keep them going.
"I am confident we will free our men eventually," said Lidia Valdes, a
67-year-old housewife who
talked with me one afternoon at her home. Her husband of 40 years,
Arnaldo, an economist and
writer, was sentenced to 18 years. Lidia said she feels empowered by the
group's solidarity. Through
the Ladies in White, she said, "I have come to trust humanity again."
I am moved by the women's peaceful struggle and their colossal but quiet
determination. I can't help
but think of my own late mother, a poor, proud and strong woman. I
imagine her marching along with
these women, holding in the frustration born of this forced silence. As
for me, I don't know if I could
master such self-control and keep silent each Sunday; I would probably
end up in jail. My mom was
lucky she could leave Cuba when she married my dad, a Dutch man, and
moved to Europe in 1965.
After that, most residents weren't allowed to travel freely. But my
mother could never truly leave her
beloved island behind; my childhood was colored with her descriptions of
the music, the food and the
culture.
She waited throughout her life for the Cuban people to enjoy freedom. I
remember once, when one of
the country's periodic mass exoduses occurred, my mother sat in front of
our television in Paris and
sobbed for hours. Entire families fled the island on makeshift rafts,
some built with house doors tied to
truck wheels. We watched as our people became little dots in the ocean,
fading from sight. I learned
then, at 14, how easy it is to take freedom for granted, while others
have to risk their lives for it.
Personally, I can't imagine a more lonely feeling than being imprisoned
for your ideals, on an island.
What better metaphor for isolation? But these jailed fathers, husbands,
sons and brothers, even in the
darkest corners of their cells, have never been alone. They've taken
courage from the Ladies in
White, who have marched because freedom is a quest that knows no
compromise. I'm always
reminded when in Cuba of a favorite quote from Robert Green Ingersoll, a
nineteenth-century
American orator: "What light is to the eyes, what air is to the lungs,
what love is to the heart, liberty is
to the soul of man."
Mariane Pearl is a documentary filmmaker and the author of A Mighty
Heart: The Brave Life and
Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl.
http://www.bitacoracubana.com/desdecuba/portada2.php?id=2956
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