Women in Cuba

By: Vilma Espín, Asela de Los Santos, Yolanda Ferrer

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: “We believed in women’s courage and capacity to fight. We knew the precedent would have enormous importance in the future.” . . . Your internationalist mission today “is not a military necessity. It is a moral necessity, a revolutionary necessity.” Quote by Fidel Castro to Women’s Antiaircraft Artillery unit leaving for Angola, 1988. As working people in Cuba fought to bring down one of the bloodiest tyrannies in the Americas more than sixty years ago, the integration of women in the ranks and leadership of the July 26 Movement underground and Rebel Army fronts in the mountains of eastern Cuba was not an exception. It was an integral part of the course that has been followed for decades by the leadership of a revolution that was then just beginning. “We were living in a class society where women faced discrimination,” Castro said. “A society where a revolution had to come about, in which women would demonstrate their capacities.” Here is the story of those women. The story of what they did, and how it transformed them as they transformed their world and the men they fought alongside.