Interviews with Berta Soler

The prisoners’ living conditions are subhuman. Cuban prisons are overcrowded. Not just for the political prisoners. But I have to note that the political prisoners are held with murderers and rapists, with prisoners who are rewarded with extra visits, a permit or a conjugal visit, in exchange for collaborating [with those in charge] by attacking, or beating the political prisoners, just to provoke them.

The food is awful. It is fit for pigs. The jailers take the same food to fatten their pigs. The water is not drinkable.

Sometimes it is water that is stored in tanks. They get both their drinking water and latrine water from the same short pipes. To drink water they cut off the mouth of a bottle of a liter and a half to collect water from the same pipe used for the latrine. They are crammed in.

Medical attention is nonexistent or not adequate. Visiting family members and prisoners are treated like dogs. Just like they treat the prisoners. We have to take food each visit. For example, we were allowed to visit every three to five months.

We had to take huge duffle bags full of food that had to be approved. We would take plastic bottles and fill them with oil and garlic and then we would insert hot dogs. They say they are made of pork or chicken, but we do not know how they are made.

Getting milk was difficult. We had to get it through the black market. It is expensive at the markets that operate with dollars. Everywhere else in the world, prisoners get balanced meals. It is not food for pigs like the Cuban government gives its prisoners.

Berta Soler Fernández was born in Cuba in 1963. She studied microbiology and became a hospital technician in Havana. In 1988, Berta married Angel Moya Acosta, an opposition activist who became one of 75 nonviolent dissidents arrested during the March 2003 crackdown known as the Black Spring.

Berta’s activism began after Cuban authorities imprisoned her husband in 2003. Joining with other spouses and family members of the Black Spring prisoners, she became a founding member of an organization called the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) that demanded the release of their loved ones and advocated for greater civil liberties in Cuba.

In October 2004, the Ladies in White staged protests in front of the Communist Party’s headquarters in Revolution Square, pressuring the government to allow Berta’s husband to undergo surgery for a herniated disc. The protest went on for two days until the regime permitted Angel’s operation.

Berta was a central figure in orchestrating the release of her husband and other Black Spring political prisoners. The Ladies in White lobbied Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the leading representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, and convinced him to negotiate for the release of the prisoners. By 2011, after years of protests, the Black Spring dissidents, including Berta’s husband, were released. While the majority of the prisoners went into exile, Berta and Angel chose to remain in Cuba.

In 2005, the European Parliament awarded the Ladies in White its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Berta, along with the other representatives of the organization, planned to receive the honor in person. However, the Cuban government denied them passports and they were unable to attend the ceremony. In 2013, after the regime had relaxed its repressive travel restrictions, Berta received permission to leave the island and led a delegation to accept the 2005 Sakharov Prize on behalf of the Ladies in White.

In 2011, Berta assumed the leadership of the Ladies in White following the death of the organization’s co-founder, Laura Pollan. She continues the struggle for a free and democratic Cuba.