Profile: Vilma Espín Guillois |
Prior to the news of her recent (June 18) death, many American women had probably never heard of Vilma Espín Guillois, or heard of her only in passing as “Cuba’s first lady” or “Raúl Castro’s wife.” These descriptions, however, only barely scratch the surface of Vilma’s remarkable life.
Vilma was born in Santiago, Cuba, in 1930. Her Spanish-Cuban father was a lawyer for the Bacardi rum distillery; her mother was a French immigrant. Vilma grew up in relative luxury. She went to college and graduated in 1954 with a degree in industrial chemical engineering. She then left Cuba to attend graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. While attending graduate school in the U.S., Vilma grew increasingly interested in revolutionary Cuban politics. In early 1956, she went to Mexico City to meet Fidel Castro, who was in exile there after attempting to overthrow Cuban dictator General Fulgencio Batista. On this same trip, Vilma met Che Guevara and Fidel’s brother Raúl Castro.
After her visit to Mexico City, Vilma quickly became more involved in the Cuban revolutionary underground. She served as a messenger between exiled Fidel and Frank País, who was still working in Cuba, smuggled ammunition and weapons, offered her home as revolutionary headquarters, and was instrumental in planning the Santiago uprising of December 1956. Though the uprising was a failure, it put the lives of all involved in serious danger, and in 1958, after the execution of Frank País, Vilma fled to the mountains above Santiago, where the Castros were hiding out. Reports of how involved Vilma was in the months that followed differ, but some insist that it was she who was behind the increasingly dramatic progress of the revolution, including the kidnapping of American and Canadian servicemen from the Guantánamo naval base in June 1958.
In the first days if 1959, Vilma and the Castros saw their revolution come to fruition. Batista fled Cuba and the revolutionaries marched triumphantly into Santiago, then Havana. Days later, Vilma married Raúl Castro. Once again, she was rumored to be a driving force behind the hard-line policies of the new revolutionary government, including the executions of many of Batista’s officers and friends.
From then 1959 take-over until her death, Vilma served as Cuba’s “first lady.” This was at first due to Fidel’s unmarried state, then to the spotlight shunning of his second wife, Dalia Soto del Valle. In 1960, Vilma founded the Federation of the Cuban Woman (FCW), for which she served as president for over four decades. Nearly every female member of Cuban society is listed as a member of the FCW, a total of over 3.5 million. In 1975, Vilma wrote the Cuban Family Code, outlining a plan of unprecedented equality for Cuban women, not only in civil life, but in family life as well. Vilma also served as a member of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba and a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the communist Party of Cuba. She also led the Cuban delegation to the Conferences on Women held in Mexico, Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing. Finally, she authored several books, including “Women and the Cuban Revolution” (1981), “Cuban Women Confront the Future” (1991), and “Unforgettable Frank” (about Frank País, 2006).
Vilma died on June 18, 2007, after battling an undisclosed illness. Her ashes are to be interred in a mausoleum in the Sierra Maestra mountains, along with those of other rebel fighters.
Sources:
Summit of the America’s Information Network
International Herald Tribune
The Independent
NPR |
Grace Mitchell |
| About the author: |
| Grace Mitchell lives in Austin, Texas with her partner, dogs, and cats. She is heavily involved in dog rescue. She is a university number cruncher, nearly-finished graduate student, and intermittent junk seller. |
| Read More >> |
|
|
|
|
