ONCE UPON A HISTORY

Unconventional Rebels

Women in the Cuban Revolution

Kimberly Simmonds, B.A.

1

Fidel Castro has been praised for his use of women in the armed forces since the dictator

was just the leader of the rebel army that overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Cubans, however,

would have found a woman involved in combat and national affairs hard to accept before this

time. Richard Gott, author of Cuba: A New History, wrote that “up until 1959, Cuban politics

were decided by the gun. Visiting travelers in the nineteenth century often noted that women

were nowhere to be seen. They remained at home with good reason.”1

Before 1959, middle and upper-class white women were the only women to become

involved in politics and advocacy, but they were not involved in combat. The affluent women

would protest for suffrage and other social development for women, like better educational

opportunities. Women were, however, still expected to be first and foremost, mothers and wives,

“to raise honest and productive (male) citizens who would lead the nation in the right direction,”2

and to “direct the reproductive activities of the household which are necessary for the

reproduction of labor power.”3

Not all women were hiding out in their homes, cooking and darning socks for their

families, though. While the perfect 1950s housewife was surely emulated in Cuba, as it was in

the United States, apron tied neatly around a crisp, full skirt while she happily cared for her

children, husband and home; those same skirts “were sometimes used to transport weapons, the

houses used to hide guerillas and the matrimonial status to camouflage male militants.”4 This

paper will show that during the Cuban Revolution, there were women who stepped out of their

1 Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 5.

2 Johanna I. Moya Fabregas, “The Cuban Woman’s Revolutionary Experience: Patriarchal Culture and the State’s

Gender Ideology, 1950-1976,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 62-63. 3 Linda L. Reif, “Women in Latin American Guerilla Movements: A Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics

18, no. 2 (January 1986): 148. 4 Julie D. Shayne, The Revolution Question: Feminisms in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba (New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 2004), 115.

2

assumed and traditional roles to assist the rebels with their fight in a number of ways, making it

quite possible that the war against Batista could not have been won without them.

A variety of sources were consulted while researching the women who gave up their

everyday comforts and lives to take part in the revolution, including journals on women’s history

and politics, a number of biographies, newspaper articles from the era and histories of Cuba.

The three women that are included in this paper were chosen in part because sources were more

readily found for them, but also because they were each intriguing and different from one

another. Though Celia Sanchez may have been an obvious choice for the topic, having been

Fidel Castro’s Girl Friday, the women written about here required a little more digging in the

exploration of their backgrounds and their time in the underground of the Cuban Revolution.5

By 1953, Fidel Castro had a huge following, especially among women.6 Women at that

time were not expected to perform or to become experts at tasks that competed with their

reproductive responsibilities, therefore making them appear lower in status than the men they

worked with and making them responsible for the more “feminine” jobs that they would not have

to battle with men for.7 Although women who were involved in the Cuban Revolution had so-

called “feminine” tasks, there were women who went further than just participating in those

roles. When Fidel planned the attack on the Moncada Army Barracks in an attempt to overthrow

Batista, there were only two women involved. The attack on July 26, 1953 was a failure, with

most of the rebels being killed or captured. The two women participants were captured and

imprisoned, one of which was Haydee Santamaria.

5 Celia Sanchez was another woman deeply involved in the Cuban Revolution. Celia acted as Fidel’s “right hand

man” during their time as rebels in the mountains, as well as after the success of the revolution. Before the other women began to arrive in the mountains, Celia organized schools, hospitals and kitchens so that the rebel soldiers and the peasants in the area could be cared for, and was someone the other women could look to for guidance and support. For more information on Celia, look to Richard Haney’s book in the bibliography. 6 Richard Haney, Celia Sanchez: The Legend of Cuba’s Revolutionary Heart (New York: Algora Publishing, 2005), 19.

7 Reif, 148.

3

In the early 1950s, Haydee, who was in her late twenties, moved to Havana with her

younger brother Abel. Haydee was born on a sugar plantation in 1922, though her parents were

middle class, small-time landowners. “Long identifying with the oppressed-from the baby

chickens on her family farm to the Cuban independence heroes,”8 Haydee and her brother both

quickly became involved in the student movement taking place against Batista and the corrupt

government. After the Moncada attack, Abel was tortured and killed in prison. The story of

Haydee and Abel’s time in prison was made famous by Fidel during his defense of the assault in

court, called History Will Absolve Me: “…showing her the eye, they said, ‘This eye belonged to

your brother. If you will not tell us what he refused to say, we will tear out the other.’ She, who

loved her brave brother above all other things, replied with dignity: ‘If you tore out an eye and he

did not speak, neither will I.’”9

Haydee was imprisoned for seven months after the attack, and even though she endured a

lot of pain and heartache in those seven months, it did not end her resolve to take down Batista

and his regime.10

In fact, once released from prison, Melba Hernandez, the other woman

involved in the Moncada confrontation, and Haydee both set to the task of printing and

circulating thousands of copies of History Will Absolve Me and held the faction together while

Fidel finished out his sentence.11

Distributing the publication was one of the hardest tasks for

Haydee to complete: “Melba and I were the Moncada women…just thinking that we might fail

8 Betsy Maclean, ed., Haydee Santamaria (New York: Ocean Press, 2003), 4.

9 Fidel Castro, “History Will Absolve Me,” Castro Internet Archive,

http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm (accessed January 26, 2011). 10

In addition to losing her brother after the Moncada attack, Haydee’s fiancé Boris was also murdered for taking part. 11

Shayne, 119.

4

Fidel, who had such confidence in us, was terrible.”12

Haydee and Melba’s hard work paid off by

helping the fledgling group gain members.

After Fidel was released from prison in 1955, Haydee helped to found the July 26

Movement and organized and arranged things for Fidel while he was in Mexico planning the

armed expedition for Cuba that was to take place on November 31, 1956. Much of her work

involved being a part of the underground front and planning an uprising in Santiago as a member

of the National Directorate and the July 26 Movement.13

The uprising was squelched by

Batista’s forces when Fidel’s expedition aboard the ship, the Granma, arrived two days late due

to inclement weather. The ship had been spotted by the Cuban coast guard which alerted the

army as to its whereabouts. The next day, the army attacked the rebels, who did not have much

of anything with which to defend themselves. Some men surrendered, some were captured and

some were killed, but of the eighty-two men who came ashore from the Granma, only twenty-

two were part of the group that reorganized itself after the ambush.14

While the rebels fought off the army and tried to establish a place to work and

communicate from in Oriente, Haydee and those involved in the cells to overthrow Batista as

part of the underground were working hard to raise money, weapons and new recruits. In

February of 1957, Haydee traveled with other members of the National Directorate, including

Vilma Espin, who will be discussed further later on, to meet with Fidel, Che Guevara (who had

become involved in the revolution after meeting Fidel in Mexico) and the rest of the rebels to

plan what the next steps of the movement should be. Che Guevara later wrote of her in his diary:

12

Maclean, 21. 13

The National Directorate was like a board of directors for the July 26 Movement. They would assist Fidel Castro in making the decisions that would best benefit the Movement and would assign others to the work they were set to, or would carry out the missions themselves. Haydee took a leading role in the Directorate, spreading the news of the July 26 Movement throughout the provinces of Cuba in order to gain support. 14

Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 207.

5

“Of the women, Haydee seems the best oriented politically.”15

This must have been the case, as

Haydee was assigned the task of creating a political platform for Fidel after their meeting, as

well as continuing with her duties of raising cash and supplies, distributing propaganda and

smuggling volunteers into the Sierra. She would make trips back and forth between the Sierra

and Santiago:

There is a story of Haydee’s train trip to Santiago weighed down with a suitcase

filled with weapons. As she was getting on the train, a soldier offered to help her

with her luggage. Shocked by the incredible weight of the bag, he asked what on

earth she could be carrying. Calm and collected in what seemed to be any

situation, this shy girl from the countryside somehow convinced that soldier that

she was on her way back to university, with a suitcase full of books. Her July 26

companeros thought they had surely been found out when they saw Haydee

stepping down from her compartment with the very same soldier at her side,

carrying their precious cargo. Instead, the soldier walked up to the patiently

waiting militants, dropped the suitcase at their feet and with a squeeze of his hand

and a wink, Haydee sent him on his way.16

Those who worked with Haydee said that she was also great at disguising herself so that

she might go unnoticed in any situation. She said, “I have always had a great facility for putting

on weight. Just wanting to put on a little, I have gained 20 pounds as if it were nothing. And if I

wanted to slim down, I could lose weight as well.”17

Haydee also used a pregnancy ploy in order

to obtain the detonators needed to set off mines. She would travel into Santiago to obtain the

detonators, hide them in her pregnancy smock and travel back to the Sierra with the assistance of

15

Anderson, 227. 16

Maclean, 5. 17

Maclean, 26.

6

one of Batista’s soldiers under the guise that she was not feeling well and she did not want to be

ambushed by one of the insurgents. The soldier would get her through any checkpoints without

any further questions or stops, and once she got close to where the rebels would pick her up, she

would just tell the soldier to drop her off because she needed to walk to the mule that was going

to carry her the rest of the way home.18

During this time, Haydee was considered a combatant in the rebel army. In 1958, Haydee

was sent abroad to the United States to raise money and buy weapons and ammunition for the

movement. After a close call with the Central Intelligence Agency (who did not recognize her as

Haydee Santamaria, but knew she had a fake passport), Haydee was sent back to Cuba just one

day after Batista fled the country and the revolution was considered a triumph. Once Fidel took

power, she was named the director of the Casa de las Americas, a cultural institution where

“Haydee transformed herself from guerrilla to cultural emissary, choosing to wield art and

culture as powerful weapons for social change.”19

Haydee served as director of the institution

until 1980 when she took her own life.

“Haydee’s story reminds us that a revolutionary’s life is filled not only with the great joy

of ideological commitment, but, more often than not, with tremendous, almost overwhelming

pain.”20

Haydee’s life had, indeed, been filled with a great deal of pain. She lost her brother and

fiancé in the Moncada attacks; she lost those who fought alongside her as part of the

underground; and in January of 1980, she lost her dear friend, Celia Sanchez, to cancer. The grief

she felt was too much for her to live with, and in July of that same year “Haydee Santamaria did

18

Maclean, 47-48. 19

Maclean, 6. 20

Maclean, 3.

7

what revolutionaries are not supposed to do: she laid down her revolutionary armor and took her

own life.”21

Unlike Haydee, who became involved in the movement in her late twenties-early thirties,

Delsa Esther “Tete” Puebla was just fifteen when she joined the fight.Tete came from a poor

peasant family and was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters. Her entire family supported the

movement in some way, including her two brothers who were members of the rebel army, and all

of her uncles who were officers in the rebel army stationed in the Sierra.22

Her family was

determined to fight against Batista because of the abuse, torture and murder they endured at the

hands of the dictator and his henchmen.

Tete helped the movement in similar ways to Haydee Santamaria. Originally, Tete helped

to sell bonds to raise money, transport weapons and assist in getting rebels to the Sierra. She

pretended to be pregnant like Haydee, and would wear wide skirts held up by crinolines as well.

She hid anything she could carry back to the rebels in her skirt. Flirting with the enemy was not

beyond Tete either. She asked the army’s officers to go out for a drink, all the while toting

something to bring back to the insurgents. Like Haydee, she rode right with the officers, through

their checkpoints in order to smuggle items out. She also invited the officers over to the home

where she and the other women were living for extra cover while there were women in the next

room over doing things like making tacks to stop traffic in the towns.23

When Tete and the other women moved to the Sierra, they were not very well organized.

At first they helped with the cooking, sewing, tending to the sick and wounded, taught the

21

Maclean, 2. 22

Mary-Alice Waters, ed., Marianas in Combat: Tete Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, 1956-58 (New York: Pathfinder, 2003), 30. Waters is used as the main source of information on Tete Puebla because there is not much published about the life of Tete. Waters’ book contains Tete’s life story in a question and answer format, giving her history straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. 23

Waters, 34.

8

soldiers and the peasant children how to read and write.24

In late 1957, Tete became a part of

Che’s column. She was sent on a mission to arrange for a truce in order to hand over Batista’s

captured and injured soldiers to the International Red Cross because, as a woman, they did not

think she would be shot. Che pulled Tete aside and told her that three things could happen to her:

“They can accept the truce and everything’s fine. Or they can kill you. Or they can take you

prisoner and bring you to Bayamo.”25

Tete said to him, “Well, the truce has to be arranged in any

event, and I’m willing to do it.”26

After some back and forth, Tete successfully set up the transfer

of two hundred of Batista’s men.27

The women then had a chance to fight the war themselves. On September 4, 1958, the

Mariana Grajales Platoon was formed.28

“Castro proposed that Cuban women, with their heroism

and exemplary behavior, with the countless sacrifices in the struggle against tyranny, both in the

armed struggle and the underground, had earned the right to participate in a direct and organized

fashion in the final combat against the dictator.”29

There is some question as to who the

commander of the female group was. Hugh Thomas’ book, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom,

which is considered the standard in Cuban history, names Olga Guevara as the woman in

command of the unit.30

Tete herself said that Isabel Rielo was the commanding officer of the

platoon. Thomas makes no reference to Tete, but Tete said that she was named second in

command of the unit which consisted of thirteen combatants. 31

The name of the squad was

chosen as a tribute to the heroine of the War of Independence and mother of a general who

24

Waters, 36. 25

Waters, 41. 26

Waters, 41. 27

Waters, 45. 28

Shayne, 120. 29

Shayne, 120. 30

Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 1011. 31

Waters, 52.

9

fought for independence for thirty years. “…anonymous women took this road, in which the

gigantic and heroic figure of Mariana Grajales stands out: humble, Black peasant woman- the

true example of the mambisa mother.”32

The formation of the platoon was a huge

accomplishment for the women who had been assisting the rebels during the Revolution. The

unit grew to the size of a company during the final stages of the war, and was maintained

aftwards.33

The women working in the Sierra Maestra had been urging Fidel to let them fight for

some time, but had not been allowed to do so. “We had already proved that women could do just

about everything,” Tete reported. “We withstood the bombings, delivered weapons and were in

the places where fighting was taking place.”34

Fidel himself taught the women how to shoot, and

once they were good at it, he assigned them as his personal security detail. According to Tete, he

took the time to teach them in order to express his confidence in women and women’s equality.35

On January 2, 1959 in Santiago de Cuba, Fidel Castro wrote:

It has been proven that not only men can fight, but in Cuba, women also fight.

The best evidence of this is the Mariana Grajales Platoon, which so distinguished

itself in numerous battles. Women make excellent soldiers, as good as our best

male soldiers, and I wanted to demonstrate that. At the beginning, the idea

involved a lot of effort for me because there was a lot of prejudice…Within our

ranks, women remain a layer that needs to be freed, because they are still victims

of discrimination on the job and in other aspects of life. So we organized a

32

Elizabeth Stone, ed., Women and the Cuban Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1981), 48. 33

Stone, 10. 34

Waters, 50. 35

Waters, 53.

10

women’s unit…A people whose women fight alongside men-that people is

invincible.36

Indeed, there was prejudice on behalf of the men, and the men were not happy about the

turn of events that allowed the women onto the battlefield with weapons. Tete recounted the

disagreement the men had about the women being allowed to fight: “There still were not enough

weapons for everyone, and the men were saying, ‘How can we give rifles to women when there

are so many men who are unarmed?’ Fidel answered: ‘Because they’re better soldiers than you.

They’re more disciplined.’”37

Tete also said that the men thought that if Batista’s soldiers were to

throw a lizard at the women soldiers, the women would drop their weapons and run away from

them.38

Regardless of how the men felt about the women being able to join the fighting, the

women joined in on their first combat mission on September 27, 1958 at the Battle of Cerro

Pelado.39

After the battle, Eddy Sunol, one of the officers who most opposed the women

combatants, wrote a letter to Fidel to express how his narrow-mindedness had been incorrect:

I have to tell you that after having been one of the main opponents of women’s

integration, I’m now completely satisfied. I congratulate you once again because

you are never wrong. Beforehand I believed that this time you were mistaken. I

wish you could see-even if it were a movie, so you could smile with joy-the

actions of Tete in particular, as well as the other companeras. When the order was

given to advance, some of the men stayed behind, but the women went ahead in

36

Waters, 59. 37

Waters, 51. 38

Waters, 52-53. 39

Waters, 55.

11

the vanguard. Their courage and calmness merits the respect and admiration of all

the rebels and everyone else.40

After the movement overthrew Batista in January 1959, Fidel gave Tete the assignment to

travel back to Oriente and tend to the victims of war. She helped create schools and foster homes

for the poor children who had been displaced somehow during the fighting.41

In 1964, she was

transferred to Havana, where she was put in charge of schools for war orphans and social

security for those involved in the Rebel Army.42

In 1966, she was transferred to the general staff

and currently serves as a general of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. She also worked

in the Revolutionary Armed Forces Directorate of Attention, which assisted soldiers and the

families of soldiers in Cuba. As of 2003, Tete was involved in a number of other organizations,

closely tied with the Communist party and their vision.43

Before the revolutionary victory, according to Tete, women were just bed decorations,

objects in the background that served no real purpose. After the revolution, however, things

changed. Women began to organize themselves in a way that had never been done before so that

they could change their working conditions and free themselves from the notion that they were

not of substance. On August 23, 1960, several nascent women’s organizations came together to

create the Federation of Cuban Women, of which Vilma Espin was president.44

Vilma was not new to women’s organizations, nor was she unfamiliar with the

revolution. Born in 1930 to a wealthy family (her father was a lawyer for the Bacardi Rum

Company), Vilma was given every opportunity growing up. According to an official account of

her life printed in The New York Times, “She could have been a simple society girl, but her

40

Waters, 55. 41

Waters, 63. 42

Waters, 67. 43

Waters, 91. 44

Waters, 72.

12

formation, combined with her own emotions and personality, made her a revolutionary leader.”45

She was one of the first women from Cuba to graduate with a degree in chemical engineering

and completed a year’s worth of post-graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology in 1955.46

Her affluent status and intelligence took Vilma to places one would never think a young

girl from society would end up. She was 25 years old when she began participating in the July 26

Movement. Vilma worked as a messenger for Fidel in Mexico in 1956, went back to Cuba to

participate in the uprising in November of that year and then joined the rebels in Oriente after the

landing of the Granma. “Vilma was the most interesting” of the National Directorate members,

according to an entry outlining Che’s first meeting with the men and women who ran the

underground movement while Fidel and Che had been training and arranging things from

Mexico. 47

She was considered a leading strategist in the movement and one of the few women

who worked side by side with the men to advance the revolution. Having studied in the United

States, Vilma was also fluent in English and translated for Fidel when he was being interviewed

by Herbert Matthews, a senior correspondent for The New York Times in 1957.48

Her assistance

with translation was a huge step forward for Fidel and the rebels, who created a ruse to make it

look like there were a lot more troops than there actually were while the journalist was visiting.

Matthews reported that Fidel was alive and well and that “[t]housands of men and women are

heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands.”49

45

Anthony DePalma, “Vilma Espin, Rebel and Wife of Raul Castro, Dies at 77,” The New York Times, June 20, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/world/americas/20espin.html 46

DePalma. 47

Anderson, 227. 48

Shayne, 122. 49

Anderson, 236.

13

Although she assisted with translation for Fidel when American journalists came to the

Sierra to meet the rebel leader, Vilma continued to be a leader in the movement. In 1958, Vilma

became a combatant in the Rebel Army, and remained in that post until Batista fled Cuba in

January 1959. That same year, Fidel asked Vilma to organize the Federation of Cuban Women, a

group that would compile all of the existing women’s associations in to one.

Before Vilma took on the role as president of the Federation of Cuban Women, she asked

Fidel why such an organization had to exist in the first place. “I asked precisely, ‘Why do we

have to have a women’s organization?’ I had never been discriminated against. I had my career

as a chemical engineer. I never suffered. I never had any difficulty.”50

Images of Vilma and the

other women revolutionaries carrying rifles and wearing the olive green fatigues during the war

helped to transform the commonly held ideas on the roles of women in Cuba, and she eventually

accepted the position as an advocate for women’s rights. The position as president was held by

Vilma until her death in 2007.51

She also served as a member of the Communist Party Central

Committee since 1965, was a member of its Political Bureau from 1980-1991and was a member

of the Council of State from 1976 -2007. In 2001, she received the title Heroine of the Republic

of Cuba for her efforts to secure the rights of Latin American women.

On Monday, January 15, 1959, two weeks after Batista escaped from Cuba and allowed

Fidel to take over, Time magazine featured an article on “The Hemisphere: Women of the

Rebellion.” The author seemed surprised that women were seen, celebrating their victory right

alongside the men: “Spotted proudly among the bearded troopers as the main rebel army moved

into Havana last week were handfuls of gun-toting girls. They were women of the

revolution…[and] kept the hidden rebellion alive. Fidel Castro had a word of grateful praise for

50

Reif, 156. 51

DePalma.

14

‘the valor of the Cuban women in the waiting and praying and smuggling of guns, ammunition

and messages.’”52

Fidel Castro found it very important for women to be treated equally and fairly during the

revolt, and he had a deep respect for the women who chose to help out his cause. Because of the

admiration he showed to those women, more and more women decided to become involved in

the revolution. Che Guevara highly regarded the women, though he focused on the feminine

roles they played in the mountains more than their willingness and ability to participate in

combat. “In the rigorous combatant life, the woman is a companion who brings the qualities

appropriate to her sex, but she can work the same as a man and she can fight.” 53

Che goes on to

say that women should take part in the “important” tasks that the men are constantly trying to get

out of so that they can be active in combat: cooking, teaching and playing nurse.

But just because Fidel and some of the rebels held the women in esteem, it did not mean

that the soldiers who fought alongside them and the soldiers who captured and imprisoned them

showed them the same amount of respect. “When militia women went out to drill, they were

sometimes greeted with rocks.” 54

Women were fair game to their captors and were put through

the same kinds of torture and harassment that men were, sometimes worse: “For those caught,

the penalties were beatings, head shavings, sometimes rape, and death by torture.”55

As was

shown in Fidel’s History Will Absolve Me defense, the women involved in the revolution were

tough, strong and willing to fight for their country and for what they thought was right,

regardless of what might happen to them, or to their families as a result.

52

“The Hemisphere:Women of the Rebellion,” Time, January 19, 1959, http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,868978,00.html (accessed April 3, 2011). 53

Ernesto Guevara, “Women in the Guerilla,” Cuba Heritage, http://www.cubaheritage.org/articles.asp?IID=1&artID=265 (accessed April 2, 2011). 54

Stone, 12. 55

“The Hemisphere: Women of the Rebellion.”

15

The passion of the women involved in the revolution has not been met by blind eyes. In

fact, the women who dared stand up for their country are idolized by their countrymen:

Throughout modern Cuban history the patriotism of the mambisas (female

warriors of independence wars) secured them national recognition as heroines

who abandoned the comforts of their home to fight for Cuba’s sovereignty. These

women of humble origins occupy a special place in the nation’s history, and the

revolutionary government has taken the task of keeping their memory alive very

seriously.56

Tete Puebla, who came from the very humble background of a poor peasant, can be

considered one of those mambisas for the effort she put forth during the Cuban Revolution.

Richard Haney, author of Celia Sanchez: The Legend of Cuba’s Revolutionary Heart wrote that

“…[Tete] is the prime reason the revolution was victorious and…she is the prime reason it has

not been overturned.”57

That is a hefty statement considering the male heavyweights involved in

the Cuban Revolution: Fidel and Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and the hundreds, if not thousands,

of male rebel forces that fought to take Batista out of power. Though they did not come from the

same background, Haydee Santamaria and Vilma Espin could also be considered part of the

mambisas in Cuba. They certainly sacrificed much in order to fight for something greater.

Like most women’s history, the history of women in the Cuban Revolution is overlooked

and underreported. Most well-regarded history texts have only blips and blurbs about the women

involved, containing more about the important men they may have married and glossing over

their own acts of bravery. In fact, Hugh Thomas, aforementioned as the historian considered to

have written the standard in Cuban history, mentions Vilma Espin in footnotes more often than

56

Moya Fabregas, 62. 57

Haney, 47.

16

he does in the actual text of his book, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom.58

Thomas does the same

thing with Haydee Santamaria, who is mentioned in the text five times and in the footnotes ten

times, mostly by name only.59

Tete Puebla is not mentioned at all by the author and there is little

information in the book that would elaborate on the stories of the three women presented in this

paper. However, in the last fifteen years, biographies of the women involved in the Cuban

Revolution and those who fought as guerillas have been coming out, bringing some of their

actions to light for the first time.

Central American University surveyed 675 cases of revolutionary activities in Cuba that

involved women. According to that survey, the women involved “were predominately white,

under 30, single, with secondary or university education, middle class children of working

families who were more socially and politically aware than their mothers and were willing to risk

everything, conscious of the changes that Cuba, and Cuban women, desperately needed.”60

After

the revolution, women who were involved in the movement in different ways were polled, and of

the women polled, 77% of them were not aware that women’s organizations even existed in

Cuba for them to be a part of and 94% of them said that they were fighting for all Cuban people,

not just for the rights of Cuban women, “believing that the fight ‘for democracy, freedom,

respect for human rights and human dignity’ mattered. It was worth the jail time, worth even

their lives.”61

Women in the Cuban Revolution did all they could do to help the cause. Their roles ran

from the menial to the extraordinary. The women did “feminine” work and sometimes those

tasks were the same things that men could do themselves, like cooking and cleaning, and other

58

Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 1634. 59

Thomas, 1676. 60

Maria Lopez Vigil, “Cuban Women’s History-Jottings and Voices,’ Revista Envio (November 1998): 208, http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/1391 (accessed April 3, 2011). 61

Lopez Vigil.

17

times they donned the fatigues of those men and took to shooting at incoming soldiers and

protecting their leader. The women who were involved in the revolution also did things that men

would not necessarily be able to do. They were excellent in disguising themselves and what they

were doing. Although rebel men like Che Guevara were able to do this as well, they would not

have been able to pretend that they were pregnant in order to smuggle weapons out of the areas

where Batista’s soldiers were. In most cases, they would not have been able to flirt with the

soldiers in order to find safe passage through the city without being stopped at every checkpoint.

Nor would they have been kept alive if imprisoned by Batista’s forces. Women played very

important roles in the Cuban Revolution, and though they might seem small, the tasks they

performed were vital in helping Fidel Castro win the revolutionary war to overthrow Batista and

try to create a better country in which all Cuban people could live.

The fight for democracy, freedom, respect for human rights and human dignity mattered

to the women who fought in the revolution. It was worth jail time, and to them it was worth their

lives. The women who joined the struggle to overthrow Batista not only had the courage to face

the repression and torture of Batista’s police, but they also overcame the prevailing prejudice

against women’s involvement in politics. Haydee Santamaria commented, “My own mother was

the kind of woman who thought that men were the only ones who had the right to make

revolutions.”62

Though Haydee’s mother was unimpressed by her will to participate in the Cuban

Revolution, Fidel Castro, on the other hand, was ecstatic about it. Fidel said, “This phenomenon

of women’s participation in the revolution was a revolution within a revolution.”63

The

revolution not only helped Cuba, it helped the women who lived there procure an advanced

station in their world, a movement that thrives today.

62

Stone, 11. 63

Stone, 64.

18

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