Why Women Now Lead The Dissident Fight In Cuba

Why Women Now Lead The Dissident Fight In Cuba

By Matthew Clark and Sara miller Llana
Thu Jul 24, 5:00 AM ET

Campo de Florido, Cuba - In the past year, Nereida Rodriguez Rivero says she has been punched in the mouth, almost thrown from a moving bus, and stabbed on the street in her otherwise sleepy rural hometown.

In May, government agents took all the books out of the independent library that she continues to restock and run out of her humble home.

But – as is often the case in Cuba – the punishment for her dissent isn't limited to her alone.

Her feisty daughter Yuricel Perez Rodriguez was summarily fired from her position at a state-run children's library last year. "They said I wasn't safe for children, because I took books to [political] prisoners," says Ms. Rodriguez.

But this mother-daughter duo won't being backing down.

"If you show fear, they will eat you," says Ms. Rivero, a regional head of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR), a Cuban group dedicated to pushing for political rights. "They won't swallow me whole."

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