Vol. 79/No. 22      June 15, 2015

Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. It contains interviews with Vilma Espín, Asela de Los Santos and Yolanda Ferrer, describing the participation of women in the fight to overthrow the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista in the early years of the Cuban Revolution, where ordinary women transformed themselves as they transformed their world and the men they fought alongside. The excerpt is from an interview with Espín, president and central leader of the Federation of Cuban Women from its founding in 1960. Copyright © 2012 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

In January 1961 the first of what would eventually be more than twenty-one thousand peasant women enrolled in the Ana Betancourt School, established at Fidel’s initiative. Both the federation and the revolutionary leadership understood the importance of women becoming fully conscious of what the revolution was, of what women could become as a political force. By the time counterrevolutionary actions began in some mountainous areas, it was evident that many campesinas had already begun to see what the revolution could do to benefit their families and children.

The leaders of the counterrevolutionaries in the mountains were generally landlords. They counted on ignorance to get people to follow their orders or accept their arguments. So it’s no accident the counterrevolutionary bands chose to focus on areas with a higher rate of illiteracy, and where people had the least knowledge about what the revolution meant.

When Fidel saw what was happening in some of the most undeveloped mountain areas, we began the work to recruit young women from there to come to the campesina schools. As Fidel suggested, the federation worked together with the National Association of Small Farmers, which was preparing its founding meeting. We began to encourage peasant families to bring their daughters to Havana to learn how to sew.

Women all over the country were interested in taking these classes. Most families were poor, and there was little financial leeway to buy clothes of any quality in a store. Even before the victory of the revolution, Cuban women wanted to learn how to sew, how to cut material for an attractive dress. It was something they were excited about and could learn quickly.

The offer of the classes met an enthusiastic response. By January 1961, the first of thousands of young women from the countryside had arrived in Havana by train. Most were housed in the Hotel Nacional. Others stayed in abandoned homes of bourgeois families who had left the country.

These young peasant women often arrived with health problems. Many had intestinal parasites and little knowledge of nutrition. The first thing we did was take them to dentists and doctors. They received medical examinations and treatment to eliminate parasites. Many had lost teeth due to cavities, so they got dental restoration work. After the first month of their stay in Havana, they had begun to change. Their physical condition improved. They learned new habits of hygiene. And they overcame a series of taboos previously accepted through ignorance.

The counterrevolutionaries saw how dangerous it was for these daughters of peasants to learn the truth about the revolution. So they organized campaigns to scare the parents. The girls were going to be turned into prostitutes, the counterrevolutionaries said. Or they were going to be sent to Russia and returned to their families as canned meat!

These were horror stories, but many peasants were frightened by them and came to Havana to take their daughters back. When they got there, they found their daughters in school. They saw young women who had changed. They looked healthier. They were happy. They were all learning to sew. Those who had been illiterate were beginning to read and write.

So when parents came to find their daughters who had spent two or three months in Havana and take them home, the young women started to cry. Nothing in the world could make them leave before they finished their courses, they said. They were going to fulfill their promise to Fidel. And, they added, Fidel was going to give every one of them a sewing machine, so each of them could give classes to ten more campesinas when they went home.

That was the plan, and it was carried out very quickly. It was another reason the first political cadres who emerged in these mountain areas were women. I remember the comments of many of the parents when, later, we’d run into them in the mountains.

“Just imagine,” they’d say. “It used to be that when visitors came, my daughter would hide behind the door. Nobody could get her to come out. But after she returned from those courses, she’d grab a table, put it in the middle of the batey [sugar mill housing complex], and begin to call all the campesinos together to explain what the revolution was.”

The young women hadn’t just learned to read and write. They hadn’t just learned to sew. They had also learned about the revolution. They had come to Havana and seen all the possibilities that existed here, things that were eventually going to be brought to their own communities. They’d learned about the programs for health care, for education, how schools were being built in areas that never had them before. They’d become aware of what the revolution meant.

So no one was going to “pull the wool over their eyes,” as the saying goes.

“No one can fool my daughter,” parents would say. “When she came back, she was very clear about everything. And the very first thing she did was to begin to convert me!” …

The Ana Betancourt School sessions lasted until secondary schools reached the mountains, when they were no longer needed. They made it possible for these young women to receive an education and become politically active. Many of those first “Anitas,” as people called them, are today doctors, teachers, technicians, and political leaders. They had all the opportunities the sons and daughters of our people can have.  
 
 
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