The portion that follows is from a speech by Espín on the contributions by women in the revolutionary struggles on the island from its conquest by the Spanish colonizers and the struggle for independence to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista through a popular revolution by workers and farmers in 1959. Copyright © 1981 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
 

Our women, as was true of our people in general, lacked an adequate ideological and cultural level. But, as with the rest of the people, they expressed their rejection of the dictatorship that tried to drown the growing popular rebellion in blood, that unleashed a ferocious repression, and that murdered our best sons and daughters while trying to rob our nation of its last vestige of dignity and fighting spirit.

How many mothers lost their sons and daughters? Twenty thousand martyrs gave their lives to make Cuba the first free territory in America!

That’s why Cuban women joyously and enthusiastically came out to cheer the march of the victorious Rebel Army through towns and cities on that glorious day in January 1959. It was an army of peasants and workers symbolizing the revolutionary victory and the end of more than a half century of pain.

What did the triumphant revolution offer our women? A new life, filled with possibilities and prospects, in which their deepest dreams might become reality. A society in which that which is most precious to us all—our children’s future—would be assured. A different society, where the people would be masters and mistresses of their own destiny, where they would exert their rights fully, where new values would come into being. The triumph offered our women the opportunity to study and to work, it offered them economic security, thereby putting an end to oppression and hardship. It opened prospects of health care, of social security. For women, the revolution meant the opportunity to attain human dignity.

At the triumph of our revolution there were women’s groups of a social nature in our country, and others that belonged to different political movements. Throughout the first months of 1959 new groups appeared, in support of the different revolutionary laws or coming out for women’s rights….

At first our grouping was called the Congress of Cuban Women for the Liberation of Latin America. By August 23, 1960, with nearly 70,000 women integrated into revolutionary tasks, the single, all-encompassing women’s organization was founded and Fidel provided the name: Federation of Cuban Women.

Those were the first steps, steps which established unity, got the women’s organization off the ground, and gave women a consciousness of their force in numbers.

The revolutionary government had already begun the process of radically transforming our country’s economic, political, and social structure. The Agrarian Reform Law had been passed as well as the nationalization of the country’s sugar mills, the Urban Reform Law, the nationalization of banks, foreign industry, and capital.

Women were firm in their support of these laws that granted the people the benefits of their own wealth, a wealth which for so long had been plundered by the capitalists. The clash with imperialism was to become even sharper with the passage of measures. From the very triumph of the revolution, we began to feel imperialism’s aggressions and threats. Women, along with all our people, demanded the right to prepare themselves to be useful in defending their homeland.

Everyone’s contribution was necessary. We had to organize and train the enthusiastic, firm, and powerful mass that our women made up. Thus the importance of our work aimed at winning over more and more women, uniting them, and with them, building a conscious force for the cause of the revolution.

The federation initiated first-aid courses. Through our work at the delegation level we incorporated tens of thousands of comrades into the National Revolutionary Militia.

The organization put all its efforts into raising the ideological, political, and cultural level of our women, in order to obtain, in the shortest possible time, their incorporation, their participation in the great tasks our country was already carrying out.

We had to change women’s mentality—accustomed as they were to playing a secondary role in society. Our women had endured years of discrimination. We had to show her her own possibilities, her ability to do all kinds of work. We had to make her feel the urgent needs of our revolution in the construction of a new life. We had to change both woman’s image of herself and society’s image of women.

We started our work by means of simple tasks that allowed us to reach out to women, to get them out of the narrow, limited framework they moved in. To explain the revolution’s purpose to them, and the part they would have to play in the process.  
 
 
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