By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 20, 2007; B07
Vilma Espin de Castro, 77, a daughter of privilege who became one of the
most powerful women in Communist Cuba -- as the de facto first lady for
her brother-in-law, Fidel Castro, and as a champion of women's rights --
died June 18 in Havana. Her husband, Defense Minister Raul Castro, is
acting president of the country.
The cause of death was not disclosed by Cuban state television, but the
Associated Press said she had "severe circulatory problems."
In 1986, Ms. Espin became the first woman elected to full membership on
the Cuban Communist Party's Politburo, the country's highest
policy-making body. Although this elite designation came late in her
career, her long-standing authority stemmed from her work in the 1950s
as an underground leader fighting with the Castros against the
dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
One of the most feared and ambitious of revolutionary fighters, she also
was regarded as a gifted organizer and diplomat. She was an ideal roving
ambassador for her country after Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and was
reported to have smoothed relations with her country's Soviet sponsors
during the Cold War.
For more than four decades, Ms. Espin filled the role of Cuban first
lady because Fidel Castro was divorced and remained guarded about
letting the public know too much about his female companions. It is
still unclear whether Fidel Castro wed Dalia Soto del Valle, with whom
he is said to have fathered five sons.
Starting in 1960, Ms. Espin spent nearly all her political career as
head of the Federation of Cuban Women. According to news accounts, more
than 3 million of the country's adult women belonged to the federation.
She was credited with improving the status of women in a society known
for its history of machismo by articulating the need for a more equal
environment between the sexes. She gave prominent voice to improvements
in maternal and child health-care policies as well as the need for women
to educate themselves.
She successfully lobbied for passage of the Cuban Family Code of 1975,
which codified the duties of men to participate in household
responsibilities, such as child raising.
"From the feminist perspective, she empowered women in a home to say to
a husband, 'It's my national, patriotic duty to work, to volunteer in
the community," said Ileana Fuentes, executive director of the Cuban
Feminist Network, a Miami-based social-needs organization that tries to
help women in Cuba. "Whether you are for or against Castro, that's an
empowering tool for women."
However, some scholars found that Ms. Espin's federation had
accomplished far less than Cuban propaganda revealed.
In her 1997 review of the book "Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist
Cuba," Ann Ferguson wrote in the National Women's Studies Association
Journal:
"The free higher education system allowed an unprecedented number of
women in a Third World country to become professional and technical
workers, but the highest posts of managers and supervisors, even in work
coded as feminine (elementary school teaching, nursing, waitressing),
were reserved to men."
Vilma Espin Guillois was born April 7, 1930, to an upper-middle-class
family in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba. Her mother was
French and the daughter of a diplomat. Her father, a Cuban, was an
executive at the Bacardi rum distillery.
After graduating second in her class at Santiago's Universidad de
Oriente, she took graduate courses in chemical engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She had long been drawn to campus organizing, and by 1956, she dropped
out of MIT after meeting Frank País, an early leader against the 1952
coup that returned Batista to power.
Within a year, Ms. Espin was a deputy to País in Santiago and took over
in 1957 after he was killed by police during a street protest. Using the
nom de guerre "Deborah," she became a key underground leader
coordinating with Fidel Castro and his followers in the Sierra Maestra
mountain range.
Her work in the underground was considered by some to be more dangerous
than guerrilla warfare because she risked greater exposure as she
arranged for medicine, money and weapons to be sent into the hills. She
also was reportedly ruthless when it came to ordering the killing of
suspected informers.
By mid-1958, Santiago had become too unsafe for her. She fled into the
mountains with a rebel army faction led by Fidel's younger brother,
Raul. They married in early 1959, soon after Batista fled.
After Fidel Castro assumed power, Ms. Espin became among the most
powerful women in the country, with loyalists Celia Sanchez and Haydee
Santamaria Cuadrado. Ms. Espin represented her country at women's
summits abroad, from Copenhagen to Beijing.
In appearance, she dressed with little adornment. She kept her hair in a
bun and could seem matronly. However, she brooked little dissent and
became visibly irate when questioned about the government's notorious
human rights abuses. She denounced human rights campaigners as "worms"
and racist American lackeys.
In 2000, she became the leading spokeswoman among Cuban mothers to bring
6-year-old Elian Gonzalez back to his father in Cuba after the boy had
become the focus of an international custody battle. Gonzalez was
returned that year.
Ms. Espin's clout on the island nation increased with Raul Castro's
assumption of presidential duties in July 2006, when Fidel Castro ceded
power after multiple intestinal surgeries.
She and Raul Castro had four children. One, Mariela Castro Espin, heads
Cuba's National Center for Sex Education.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/19/AR2007061901609.html
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