HAVANA: Taking to the streets to make your voice heard on International Women’s Day is a right that most people take for granted but not in Cuba.
According to the Red Feminina women’s group, three activists who attempted to obtain permission for demonstrations in various parts of the communist-run island were arrested on January 13, interrogated, and had their phones checked. Cuba’s new constitution, adopted in 2019, recognizes the right to assemble and protest. Anti-government marches, however, are generally prohibited in the absence of a rulebook.
The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) organizes activities, primarily in businesses and schools, but it is closely associated with the government. On February 20, Red Femina wrote on Twitter, inviting Cubans to instead join a “Virtual March” that demonstrated publicly to demand for transformative policies from a gender perspective, which is the focus worldwide every March 8, except in Cuba.
Other groups, such as “Alas Tensas,” and “I believe you” were formed in 2019 to monitor violence based on gender, shortly after the arrival of services of Internet on mobile phones on the island in 2018. Journalist and feminism activist Kianay Anandra, 24, told AFP that the Internet “is our only place of struggle. We are unable to have a physical space because that is not allowed in our country.
These two groups counted 15 femicides on the communist island, which has a population of about 11 million people, in the first two months of this year. This compares to slightly more than 30 in each of the previous three years. There have been no gender-based violence’s official figures since 2016, and in the new criminal code of 2022, femicide was not included as a separate crime, despite activist groups’ requests. The organizations work to ensure that the names and faces of victims who have been murdered or disappeared are not forgotten. Isis Rodriguez told AFP that she wants her daughter, Madeleisis Rosales, who went missing in central Havana in May 2021 at the age of 16, to appear, alive or dead.
The groups also brought up the case of 17-year-old Leydi Bacallao, who was killed with a machete in mid-February by her 49-year-old ex-partner. The crime, which outraged Cuban society, took place inside a police station in the country’s east, where she had gone to report her assailant. That murder sparked such outrage that it elicited a rare response from the FMC. To avoid such incidents, FMC Secretary General Teresa Boue stated on Twitter that there will be no impunity. To avoid these occurrences, we must intensify our efforts.
Women’s Day and women of Cuba
Women have long been highly active in all aspects of public life in Cuba, which was the first Latin American country to legalize abortion in 1965, and the country has one of the highest rates of female legislative participation (53.4 percent) in the world. However, the State must “renew itself” in the fight for women’s rights, according to Anandra, who is critical of the government’s programme for women’s advancement, which was launched in 2021.
Red Feminina demands “a gender law,” on their websites which would require official records and to create policies against violence based on gender. According to the group, this is the only way to implement “effective” policies. — APP
