Cuba's Lady Of Valor
Freedom:
Laura Pollan Toledo was a humble schoolteacher who
led Cuba's defiant Ladies in White. She died Friday
in Havana. But she left a legacy of untold courage
that terrified Cuba's long-communist dictatorship.
As surely as the sun will rise, a day will come when
Cuba is free of its 52-year Marxist nightmare. And
when its history is written, it's likely to begin
with the story of Laura Pollan Toledo, the wife of
an arrested dissident who shined a light on the
totalitarian nature of the regime for all the world
to see.
Pollan was a founder of the Ladies in White, the
noted group of dissidents' wives who silently walked
in procession, wearing white and carrying gladiolus
flowers. They attended Mass together at St. Rita's
Church to pray for their husbands' return.
They never made public statements, but the Castro
regime understood the power of their silent protest
and its global impact. For that, they considered
Pollan a threat.
Pollan and the others, mostly wives of 75 dissidents
arrested in the Black Spring of 2003, were followed,
insulted, harassed, threatened, beaten by mobs and
menaced for silently witnessing to the truth about
Cuba's lack of human freedom.
Pollan died in a Cuban hospital of dengue fever and
a viral infection, in the end at the mercy of Cuba's
collapsing state health system, refusing transfer to
an elite medical facility as the publicity-nervous
regime offered.
It's hard to imagine the courage that Pollan's
simple act of witness took, in a regime that
considers going to church a threat to the state.
In Castro's island hellhole, praised by the
Hollywood and congressional left, free speech is
forbidden. Calling for elections brings a knock on
the door at midnight. Trying to leave the island
brings prison — even death.
Yet amid this island prison just 90 miles from our
shores, Pollan and her friends stood up for truth.
She died without seeing the free Cuba she longed
for. Still, the pure flame of her courage changed
Cuba in ways large and small, and helped set it on a
path of ultimate liberation. RIP.