One day last March, the Ladies in White—a group of wives, mothers, and other female relatives of Cuban political prisoners—prepared to march from St. Rita of Cascia Church in Havana to a nearby park. The Ladies, who wear white as a symbol of peace, had made that walk every week since 2003.
In March of that year, Cuban government agents arrested and imprisoned 75 journalists and human rights and democracy activists in a crackdown on nonviolent political dissent that became known as Cuba’s Black Spring. The Cuban government had rarely interrupted the Ladies’ peaceful protests. (My brother, doing research in Cuba for a documentary, observed one of the marches in Havana two years ago, and saw that several policemen were present but didn’t intrude, even when he began recording the march with a hand-held video camera.)
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