Espín de Castro, Vilma (1934—)

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Espín de Castro, Vilma (1934—)

Cuban revolutionary and women's activist who was the long-time president of the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women). Name variations: Vilma Espín Guillois; Vilma Espín or Espin; Deborah. Pronunciation: VEEL-mah Ess-PEEN dav KAH-strow. Born Vilma Espín Guillois in 1934 in Santiago de Cuba; daughter of a lawyer for the Bacardi Rum Company and a mother of French extraction; spent two years in a secular school and two years in a religious school; earned a degree in chemical engineering at the Universidad de Oriente; attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied architecture; married Raúl Castro, on January 26, 1959; children: four sons.

Was a founding member and leader of the 26th of July Movement in Oriente Province, Cuba (1955–59); was a founder and president of the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women, 1960); made an alternate member of the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party (1980) and a full member (1986); retired from the Politburo (1991).

The Cuban middle class produced most of the leaders of the revolutionary movement that toppled President Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959. Students were especially prominent. In this respect, Vilma Espín seems a "typical" revolutionary. Born to an upper-middle-class family in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba in 1934, she enjoyed the comfortable lifestyle of her class. According to John Dorschner and Roberto Fabricio, she grew up "in the liberal Rotarian-Lions Club milieu that permeated the city's upper class." And even though her father had essentially traditional ideas, he saw "no harm in giving his daughter an education as good as man received." Two years of secular instruction were followed by two years in a religious school, although Vilma later insisted that "naturally I had no religious beliefs." All her primary and secondary education took place in Santiago. It was also here that she earned a degree in chemical engineering at the Universidad de Oriente. Her knowledge of chemistry would be put to use in the coming struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

If we use the term "help" we are accepting that [child care and household duties] are women's responsibilities and such is not the case: we say "share" because they are a family responsibility.
—Vilma Espín de Castro

On March 10, 1952, Cubans who tuned in their radios to confirm the rumors of a coup heard only the same uninterrupted music up and down the dial. Fulgencio Batista had not only ousted the corrupt and discredited Auténtico government of President Prío but he also ended constitutional rule in Cuba. The little opposition to Batista was not well organized and was, for the most part, outside of normal political channels. Vilma Espín, at the time a university student, began her political education with the coup. An anti-Batista movement at the University of Havana led by Rafael García Bárcenas, a philosophy professor, journalist, and founder of the ousted Auténtico Party, captured the imaginations of professors and students at the University of Oriente.

Espín remembered that she and others grew concerned with Cuba's social problems. As she told interviewer Margaret Randall : "Why are there beggars in the streets? How could this be resolved? There were no answers." The questions raised for Vilma could not be answered in a Marxist context, as would be the case later in her life, because she had not read Marx, and Marxism was not taught in the schools. But the strong presence of the United States in Cuba did impress her, and in her own mind she began to link "yankee imperialism" with the Batista dictatorship. The fundamental problem for Espín was how to free Cuba from the twin tyranny of Batista and imperialism: she drew inspiration from the late-19th-century struggle for independence led by José Marti.

A professor at Oriente radicalized the romantic. He spoke of the need for a political uprising against Batista, and, in Espin's words, "we felt very enthusiastic about the idea of rebellion." While Vilma entertained idealistic notions, her younger sister Nilsa was already working with political activist Frank País who would establish an anti-Batista movement in Santiago. Shortly, Vilma herself joined an action group, and "we set up an organization like the one that would become the 26th of July Movement (Fidel Castro's organization)." She told diarist Carlos Franqui: "I was working on finances, collecting money. Can you imagine, they gave us five cents only now and then. It was awful in the beginning." For the rest of 1952, the rebellion in Santiago consisted of protests, manifestos, proclamations, marches, and confrontations with the police.

Violence exploded in Santiago on July 26, 1953, when Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada military barracks. Espín and her friends were caught unawares: "We knew nothing of what had happened. Castro was little known in Santiago—only as the young leader of the Ortodoxos (a political party). But his actions in Santiago won him the sympathy and admiration of many." The attack was disastrous, and those rebels who were not killed outright were tortured to death or jailed. "When they attacked Moncada," Espín told Franqui, "I wanted to go to the hospital to see who was there…. [We] were very worried, because we could hear shots, which meant they were still killing our men." What amounted to a slaughter in essence radicalized Santiago, whose population became protective of young rebels like Espín. As the revolution against Batista deepened in the mid-and-late 1950s, a fairly effective network of "watchers" and safe-houses was established. "The people were really fantastic," Espín remembered.

At his trial, Fidel Castro delivered an electric defense of the Moncada attack, entitled "History Will Absolve Me." Espín noted that Castro's impassioned speech redirected the youth of Santiago. "We began to see things differently and Fidel took over his position as leader of all who took up the struggle all over the island." But Castro was jailed, and Batista was confident that rebellion had been stilled. Perhaps, in the wake of these events, Espín was unsure of her career as an activist. At any rate, she enrolled in graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she studied architecture. She told Randall that it was in the United States that she learned about the oppression of the poor and of blacks; at the MIT library, she dabbled in Marx. Espín felt "asphyxiated" in the United States, isolated; no one would speak to her about politics. It was also the era of McCarthyism.

In the meantime in Cuba, when Batista in 1955 granted an amnesty to Castro and the survivors of the Moncada attack, Castro fled to Mexico where he established the 26th of July Movement and plotted the overthrow of the Cuban dictator. Espín, frustrated by her experiences in the United States, made contact with the 26th of July people in Mexico. When she returned home to Cuba, she did so via Mexico "in case Fidel's people wanted me to carry something into the country." She was given an oral message that she delivered to Frank País in Santiago—from that point, she was wholly engaged in the struggle.

In Santiago, Espín began to build an infrastructure for the 26th of July Movement. Medical facilities and personnel were in place when Castro's forces landed near Santiago in November 1956. The invasion was a disaster, and Castro and a handful of survivors barely escaped into the Sierra Maestre of Oriente Province. País was killed, and Espín narrowly evaded capture. She continued to work in Santiago in 1957. Her parents, whom she did not see, were sympathetic to the struggle, and her father probably played a role in the Civic Resistance. When the under-ground in Santiago needed rest, they were sent into the Sierra to carry messages to Castro. On one occasion, in April 1957, she used her education as a chemical engineer to construct a napalm bomb for mission A-001 of the Rebel Air Force, which consisted of a single plane. It was in the mountains that she first met Fidel and later his brother, Raúl. There was an immediate, mutual attraction between Raúl and Vilma.

Raúl had established a "second front," the Segundo Frente 'Frank Pais,' in the Sierra Cristal of northern Oriente Province. During that period, Espín was convinced after one of her visits that it would be "absurd" for her to return to Santiago, "where they were actively searching for me." She remained in the Sierra with the second front until the triumph of the revolution. Espín worked hard to create, among other duties, an administrative network responsible for the maintenance of 11 hospitals and dispensaries, and 100 schools staffed by 26th of July Movement personnel.

Even in the Sierra, Espín clung to what some might call vestiges of her middle-class roots. According to Dorschner and Fabricio, Vilma "never abandoned the fastidiousness of her girls' school upbringing. She kept her long black hair clean and pulled back in a ponytail. Her rebel uniform was tailor-made and she managed, even during bombing attacks, to brush her teeth and put on lipstick each morning."

Ideologically, Vilma was still largely uninformed and ambivalent. Undoubtedly, she wanted the destruction of Batista and wanted to avoid the failures of previous governments. "She was not certain what kind of government that meant, but whatever it was, it had to herald a new era, something that would wipe out the past and eliminate completely the American dominance of Cuban affairs." While in the Sierra, she was most likely not a Marxist. Marxism was a theory that at best was ancillary to Cuban nationalism. When Raúl asked her to teach a course on Communist principles at the rebel political school, she objected. In Dorschner and Fabricio's account, she said: "I don't know anything about Marxism." Raúl reportedly assured her that it was a logical extension of what they were fighting for. Be that as it may, she eventually focused her teaching on the sayings of José Marti into which she injected a little Marx. In the Sierra, however, political theory was always subordinate to the day-to-day struggle.

During 1958, Vilma became Raúl's secretary and served as a translator, following the capture of American and Canadian citizens and some U.S. Marines who had been on leave in Guantánamo City. The hostages were taken to protect Raúl Castro's forces from persistent strafing and bombing attacks by Batista's planes. It was also in 1958 that many journalists made their way into the Sierra to interview the rebels. One, a Spaniard named Enrique Meneses, spoke with Espín at length about religion. She stated that she was a "passionate atheist." Said Meneses, "I'd met very few people with so much faith, but this made her furious, because faith reminded her of religion, and her only religion was un-belief." Not surprisingly, her marriage to Raúl Castro on January 26, 1959, just after Batista fled and Fidel came to power, was a civil affair at the Rancho Country Club in Santiago.

Espín found an important niche in the new revolutionary government. In November 1959, she planned to lead a Cuban delegation to the Chilean Congress on the Rights of Women and Children. As Vilma prepared for the task, she quickly became aware of the "limited organized opportunities that existed for women in Cuba." She told Randall that there were small groups of women whose focus was politics while others were devoted to social action. For the most part, these small organizations were found among upper-class women or within the Catholic Church. But there was no strong feminist organization in Cuba. Preparation for the Congress laid the groundwork for the creation of the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC; Federation of Cuban Women) which occurred on August 26, 1960.

The FMC combined the various women's affiliates of the 26th of July Movement, groups associated with the Socialist, later Communist, Party, and a Catholic organization known as Con la cruz y con la patria (With the Cross and the Homeland). Marifeli Pérez-Stable noted that the FMC was largely free of conflict, in part because of the secondary role ascribed to it by the leaders of Cuba's revolution. They "did not consider gender to be central to the revolution, as class was …. Born with and for the revolution, the FMC gave many women their first opportunity to have a life outside the home." Vilma Espín de Castro was appointed the FMC's first and to date only president.

Cuban women were mobilized for the revolution under the auspices of the FMC. As noted by Pérez-Stable, household servants were retrained for meaningful jobs, thousands of rural women were trained as seamstresses, women received first-aid instruction and were provided with day-care centers. The FMC worked through the Public Health Ministry to promote a greater awareness of personal hygiene and pre- and postnatal care. As Espín stated in 1962: "The ideal new woman is a healthy woman, mother of the future generations who will grow up under communism." In 1963, the FMC reached out to women workers in Cuba's factories.

In addition to her duties as president of the FMC, Vilma also worked as chemical engineer for the Ministerio de la Industria Alimenticia (Food Industry Ministry), met with visiting delegations of foreign women, and gave birth to four sons. On occasion, she participated in international congresses devoted to women.

Cuban women suffered a blow in 1976 when the Labor Ministry passed a resolution that prohibited women from nearly 300 job categories. Pérez-Stable notes that while health hazards were claimed as the issue, male unemployment was the root cause for the decision. Espín fought hard to undercut the resolution, and by the mid-1980s the original 1976 list of 300 had been cut to 25. Even though a blow had been struck to end job discrimination on the basis of gender, the 1976 legislation, with its implied discrimination, remained on the books. Espín's position on employment for women was clear: "The establishment of prohibitions for women in general is indeed negative, because they constitute a violation of the principle of equality." The battle for equality was hard fought in other areas. Although a Family Code enacted in 1975 spelled out equality of the sexes at home and at work, in 1984 Espín still had to insist that child care and household duties were to be shared: "If we use the term 'help' we are accepting that these are women's responsibilities and such is not the case: we say 'share' because they are a family responsibility." Similar complaints were heard from the FMC as late as 1990.

In the highest ranks of the revolutionary government, women were conspicuous for their absence. Espín was promoted to an alternate in the Politburo in 1980 and was made a full Politburo member at the Party Congress in 1986. At that time, two other women were named as alternates. Though women have made inroads, the pace has been slow.

In October 1991, at the Fourth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, some "old-time" Politburo members retired. Included on the list was Vilma Espín de Castro. Mirroring Espín's retirement was the increasing marginalization of the FMC. At its height in the mid-1980s, by 1994 it appeared increasingly as a relic of the revolutionary past. But Vilma Espín had left her mark on the revolution and had struck several blows for women's rights in Cuba and in the world.