Posted on 06/01/2003 1:54:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA -- Despite alleged threats from state security, the wives of incarcerated Cuban dissidents gather in an airy upscale church each Sunday to protest their husbands' plight and pray for their release.
Dressed in white and wearing black scarves, the two dozen women sit together quietly during Mass. This rankles Cuban officials.
"They threatened me and said that if I went to the Mass, I wouldn't be able to see my husband," said Dolia Leal Francisco, whose husband, Nelson Aguiar, is serving a 13-year prison sentence. "I said that I am going to the Mass."
Even so, Leal Francisco and other wives said government pressure has forced them to cancel the short, silent marches they held after each service. Other wives have avoided the Mass at the Church of Santa Rita de Casis, the patron saint of desperate causes, fearing their husbands or family members could suffer reprisals.
Two of the wives said state security agents recently spoke to their daughters to press them to stop the protests.
"I am afraid," said one woman who has refused to participate in the church vigil. "My son could lose his job. What will he do? He has to support his wife and child. It's very hard to survive here."
The wives who often are joined by the jailed dissidents' mothers, and daughters have written letters to Pope John Paul II, European Union leaders, the United Nations and other international organizations. They also press their cause in meetings with foreign officials and appeals in international media.
The women say they don't want to become replacements for the jailed 75 dissidents, whose removal has gutted Cuba's opposition movement. Their primary concern is to press the case internationally that the dissidents, who are serving up to 28 years in prison, are innocent.
"He is in prison unjustly, and we have to tell the entire world that he is completely innocent," said Blanca Reyes, the wife of poet and dissident journalist Raul Rivero. Cuban officials label the dissidents as "mercenaries" of an imperialist U.S. government trying to overthrow Cuba's one-party state.
The women are seeking to improve prison conditions for the dissidents, some of whom are being held in solitary confinement and get poor food and little exercise. There are no reports of beatings.
Once overweight, the 57-year-old Rivero has lost more than 30 pounds during his two-month incarceration. He paces 5,000 steps daily back and forth inside his cramped cell, which he is allowed to leave for only one hour a day, Reyes said.
Other inmates reportedly have lost weight and are suffering physical ailments including heart problems. One inmate reportedly is under psychiatric care after being told by guards that he may never see his 6-year-old son again.
"They told him that because of my actions," said Claudia Marquez, the wife of dissident journalist Osvaldo Alfonso. Marquez recently wrote an article for a U.S. publication about the crackdown in Cuba.
The wives say another concern is that their husbands have been assigned to prisons hundreds of miles from home. Few people own cars in Cuba, and public transportation is poor.
Lydia Lima Valdez, a 67-year-old physician, said it took three days to travel back and forth between Havana and eastern province of Holguin, where her husband is serving an 18-year sentence. The trip included two 12-hour bus rides.
"The distance is so far for me," said Lima Valdez. "It's really difficult. I'm too old."
Visits for some inmates also have been limited to one every three months, the wives say. This makes it difficult for family members to deliver food, clothing, soap, sheets and other things their husbands need to make it in Cuba's sparse penitentiary system.
With other avenues of protest blocked, several wives met with a delegation from Iowa and recently attended a packed diplomatic reception at the home of the Norwegian ambassador to Cuba.
Elsa Morejon, the wife of imprisoned dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, said she attended the Norwegian reception because "my husband is in a punishment cell, and I have to get him out of there."
"I talked to diplomats from Spain, Greece, Canada, Chile and Britain," she explained. "If the people of the world don't know about my husband, I can't do anything for him."
Morejon said her husband is in solitary confinement after he refused to wear a prison uniform. Biscet, who is clothed only in underwear, has been denied visits, she said.
Women long have been a powerful political symbol in Latin America, but the wives dismiss comparisons of their campaign to other regional protest movements.
In recent decades, women have formed some of Latin America's most prominent human-rights organizations, including the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. In a twist, even Cuba has placed the wives and mothers of five Cuban spies jailed in the United States at the center of its international campaign to free them.
The wives of the imprisoned dissidents said they knew little about each other before last month but have become bound by their husbands' plight. Some are longtime dissidents. Others have no political experience.
"I am not a political activist," Reyes said. "I am just a housewife. I am only involved in this to defend my husband. I am the only one who can help."
……………..The United States, Canada and the European Union are those threatening to take unspecific action against Havana if the dissidents are not released. Their sentences are under appeal. Sanchez said the dissidents were being held in "inhuman conditions" in small cells where they received water and food "that does not meet minimum sanitary requirements." Sanchez, whose group has monitored Cuban prison conditions for years, said writer and poet Raul Rivero and leading dissidents Hector Palacios and Oscar Elias Biscet were among those in solitary confinement.
The wives of some of the dissidents confirmed Sanchez's statement, a few saying their husbands were being punished for not cooperating with prison authorities. "He told me it was a very narrow cell. He has lost 30 pounds," Raul Rivero's wife, Blanca Reyes, said, after visiting her husband in central Ciego de Avila province. Sanchez said many of the dissidents were sent to prisons far from their homes, making family visits difficult. ***
May 22, 2003 New bond for 'widows' of Cuba crackdown - Face fear of arrest*** HAVANA - In the airy vestibule of Santa Rita Church in the seaside suburb of Mirimar last Sunday, among the pews full of couples and families young and old, a group of 20 unaccompanied women in white blouses and black scarves stood out. They are the "widows" of Cuba's recent political crackdown - the wives of the human rights activists, political-reform campaigners, and independent journalists sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years.
Of the 75 dissidents convicted in hasty trials in April, only independent economist Marta Beatriz Roque is a woman. Every week the wives gather at the church of the patron saint of desperate causes. "We have come to remember our husbands," said Miriam Leiva, wearing a T-shirt imprinted with a photo of her jailed spouse, independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe. "This is an act of solidarity and support for their cause."***
May 22, 2003 Letter from a Dissident's Daughter***My name is Sayli and I am the daughter of Felix Navarro Rodriguez. At this moment my dad is in prison, it is not the first time that this has happened, but the last time I was too small to understand the reasons why they had taken him away from us. My mother suffered a lot, I did as well because I missed him so much, and I didn't know how to console her.
Today however, I understand why my dad and so many other good men have been incarcerated. I have cried so much that I felt my heart was breaking into one thousand pieces, I think that I will never again be able to cry, because right now I feel a great emptiness inside of me. Perhaps you are asking yourself why I am directing myself at you.
I will tell you that I do so for many reasons; one of them being the fact that you are a woman, and this allows me to speak to you as if I am speaking to a mother, mothers always understand better the suffering of their children. Another reason is that you are a journalist and a professional, dedicated to the cause of Liberty for our country in your radio program "Monday Communiqués With Cuba", with Mr. Agustin Tamargo, as well as in your other program; but the main reason why I write to you is than on more than one occasion, during your broadcasts, I have heard your voice break and I realize that you feel the anguish of our people, as if instead of living in a free country, you lived here, with us, and suffered with your own body and spirit our pain. That is a miraculous thing, and even difficult to comprehended.***
June 11, 2001 - Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba? ***A DICTATORSHIP AND DOUBLE STANDARDS So, there are a couple of names named: Rene Montes de Oca Martija and Jose Orlando Gonzalez Bridon. There are thousands of others, belonging to thousands of other political prisoners. Hear (merely) three more: Vladimiro Roca, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, and Maritza Lugo Fernandez. These names mean nothing in our country, except to Cuban-Americans.
Perhaps the most inspiring name of all is that of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, a virtual saint of the resistance. Biscet is a practitioner of civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, his avowed models. He has been imprisoned and tortured since 1998. We know, through his wife, that he has blessed and forgiven his torturers even as they have tortured him. Here is a man-Biscet-whose name should be on many lips. Cuban dissidents complain bitterly that if he were a prisoner of a right-wing regime he would be a worldwide cause. Yet he is anonymous; not even his dark skin seems able to help him. The stream of American celebrities who go to Havana to sup, smoke, and banter with "Fidel" are oblivious.***
"ALLEGED THREATS"? Executions by Castro's Gestapo of their husbands and 25 year jail sentences in Secret Police "trials" of their husbands are "alleged"?
Talk about beginning a report by showing your media bias!!
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