Interviews with Fidel Suarez Cruz

The Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco]… One of them is my wife, along with Yaraí, the wife of Normando Hernandez and many others. Those women [began] in March and April 2003 and founded the Ladies in White Foundation in 2004. There were 12 to 14 that started the group. They really have played a central role.

That role has been significant in helping the Cuban opposition become more recognized than ever before. It goes without saying that since 1959, the opposition has always had support, more or less. But we are living in 2013, not in other times or decades. The Ladies in White, simply because they are women, are special for being able to take to the streets to defend their children’s, husbands’, and brothers’ liberty. For being able to free those men and women – because Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello was the only woman [in the Group of 75].

Their role has been key. The surest setback they have given to the Castro regime has not necessarily been the forced release of the remaining prisoners of the Group of 75. It was that they said, “No! This is not over!” when the 75 were released. The Ladies in White, by achieving our release, release of the prisoners, now declare they are a political organization. That declaration led to great repression of the Ladies in White because they caught the regime by surprise. The regime expected them to dissolve and they did not.

Fidel Suarez Cruz was born in 1970 in the small village of Manuel Lazo in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio Province. As a young man, he began to question the policies of Cuba’s communist government. In 1994, Fidel became active in the nonviolent opposition, including the Máximo Gómez Human Rights Front and the Human Rights Front Affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. He also established and ran an independent library in his hometown. Fidel was detained on numerous occasions and was branded a violent criminal by the state.

On March 19, 2003, Fidel was arrested, along with 74 other nonviolent opposition activists (the Group of 75) in the crackdown known as the Black Spring. In a summary judicial proceeding, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He served time with common criminals in maximum security prisons in Matanzas and Pinar del Río. Like other prisoners of conscience, he suffered brutal treatment and was physically and psychologically tortured, including long periods of solitary confinement. In 2005, he was subjected to nineteen beatings within a four month period, causing him many permanent health problems.

Fidel’s family also suffered during his imprisonment. The regime sent many of the Group of 75 to prisons that were distant from their hometowns and families. Fidel’s relatives would travel hundreds of kilometers to visit him in prison, but were sometimes denied permission to see him. When Fidel was first imprisoned his son was only fourteen days old. Fidel’s wife joined other female relatives of the Group of 75 prisoners of conscience in establishing the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), conducting vigils and other activities to raise awareness of the Group of 75 and press for their release.

After more than seven years in prison, Fidel Suarez and the other Group of 75 prisoners were released in an agreement negotiated between the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of Cuba and Spain. On October 6, 2010, Fidel was released from prison and exiled to Spain with his son Jeferson (named for the American president), his mother Candelaria Cruz, and his wife Aniley Puentes, a member of the Ladies in White movement.

In 2011, he moved to the United States, where he and his family live in the city of Hialeah, Florida. He currently works in landscaping and remains active in the movement for Cuban freedom.