To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Ladies in White are still resisting tyranny after 20 years. Members of Congress seek to rename street in front of Cuba Embassy after Oswaldo Payá
Cuba had undergone a Spring that began in the weeks prior to Pope John Paul II's visit to the island nation in January 1998. Christmas returned after being initially banned in 1969 for the 10 million ton sugar harvest campaign. It would remain forbidden in Cuba for the next 27 years, and returned as a gesture to the visiting Pontiff. Over the next five years Cuban civil society grew and movements and groups spread across the island.
This Cuban spring came to an end on March 18, 2003 with a massive crackdown on Cuba dissidents by the Castro regime's secret police. Over a 100 were rounded up, but 75 would be subjected to political show trials and sentenced to lengthy prison terms ranging up to 28 years in prison. What drew the dictatorship's wrath? Some had organized a petition drive, legally recognized within the existing constitution; others were independent journalists or human rights activists.
The largest cohort detained were associated with the petition drive called the Varela Project, but the main proponent of the initiative, Oswaldo Payá, was not arrested.
The dictatorship's agents thought they had crushed the Cuban democratic opposition, but they did not count on the wives, daughters, and sisters of those who had been unjustly imprisoned.
The Ladies in White were founded by Claudia Márquez Linares, Blanca Reyes Castañón, Dolia Leal Francisco, Miriam Leiva Viamonte, Gisela Delgado Sablón, Yolanda Huerga Cedeño, Marcela Sánchez Santa Cruz, and Berta de los Angeles Soler Fernandez, whose loved ones were among those jailed in the March 2003 crackdown.
On March 30, 2003, this group of women, that came to be known as the Damas de Blanco [Ladies in White], visited the Santa Rita Church in Havana, Cuba for the first time. Marti Noticias published an extensive article and the above short documentary on the Ladies in White on March 30, 2023.
Laura Inés Pollán Toledo had not yet joined the movement, but did soon after.
Twenty years later, and this movement endures in Cuba, and the women's demands remain firm: free all prisoners of conscience and dismantle the laws that jail Cubans for exercising their fundamental rights.
There are over a thousand political prisoners in Cuba today, and four of them are Ladies in White. Their names are: Tania Echevarría Menéndez, Saylí Navarro Alvarez, Sissi Abascal Zamora, and Aymara Nieto Muñoz.
There is plenty of reason to fear for their safety. Dissidents have been known to suddenly become ill and die in custody of state security.
Long time leader of the Ladies in White, Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, died under these suspicious circumstances in 2011.
Today in the Miami Herald, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart published the OpEd "We want to make sure Cuba’s regime never forgets the power of Oswaldo Payá" in it they describe a regime engineered car "accident" that led to the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012.
The dictatorship waited ten years to carry out their deadly reprisal against the Christian Liberation Movement leader.
The two Members of Congress are working to see that the street that runs in front of the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC be renamed after the slain opposition leader.
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