Every Sunday, between 12.30pm and 1pm, Berta Soler Fernández prepares herself. She is dressed all in white.
Berta and her husband, Ángel Moya Acosta, step outside their home: a square, two storey building painted red, with a light green porch. They have every intention of making their way to a Roman Catholic church in the Miramar section of Havana, Cuba, where they hope to attend Mass and offer up prayers.
But like a dark version of the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, Berta relives same Sunday over and over and over again.
Between 12:30pm and 1pm, Berta and Ángel open the door of their home and are met by National Revolutionary Police (NRP) officers and Department of State Security (DSS) agents. Mobs of paramilitary members – some holding signs with offensive and insulting messages – hold up mobile phones as they record the couple’s movements. Instead of going to Mass, the two are forced into DSS cars with private license plates and taken to a National Revolutionary Police station.
Sometimes they are taken in the same vehicle; sometimes forced into separate cars.
They are ordered to undergo an intrusive medical examination. They refuse because they have not asked for an examination, and know that they will not be provided with the results anyway. (Those will go to the Department of State Security.)
Berta and Ángel are sent to semi-dark prison cells where they will be held until the following morning. Berta has been released as early as 5:45am, or as late as 11:50am.
This happens every week with small differences:
Some Sundays Berta is given a bed bug infested mattress; other Sundays she is given nothing at all.
Sometimes Berta is denied water; other times she is only permitted to quench her thirst at the discretion of the prison guards.
On one occasion, she was forced to disrobe and squat. She refused.
Ángel has been ordered to remove his flip-flops, exposing his feet to the filth of the prison cell floor. On one occasion, a DSS officer ordered guards to knock him down onto the floor. One of the guards pushed his knee into Ángel’s back while another bent Ángel’s right leg and painfully twisted his ankle. They pulled his arms tight behind his back, causing lacerations and inflammation in his wrists.
Some Sundays, Berta and Ángel are ordered to sign an Acta de Advertencia – a kind of pre-arrest warrant – for the future crimes of disrespect, disobedience, and disturbing the public order. They always refuse.
Berta and Ángel are never allowed a Bible or anything else to read.
Berta is not alone in experiencing the same series of events every Sunday. There are others like her in Havana, as well as in Matanzas, Villa Clara and Holguin; other women dressed in white, detained through the hours of Sunday morning Mass.
The Ladies in White, or Las Damas de Blanco, are a dissident group across Cuba. They have been holding peaceful protests in support of political prisoners since 2003, and Berta and Ángel’s home serves as their national headquarters.
For the past 20 years, the Cuban government has invested significant resources – especially in terms of manpower and time – to stop women affiliated with the Ladies in White from stepping inside a church; to prevent them from praying there, and to make sure they are not allowed to participate in the fellowship of Sunday services. The details may change in small ways, but the days are the same.
The Cuban government still erroneously believes that brute force and intimidation can destroy a woman’s understanding – rooted in her faith – of what is right and true.
The Cuban government is relentless, but so is Berta.
By CSW’s Head of Advocacy and Americas Team Leader Anna Lee Stangl
Pray for the Ladies in White on p.23 of Response & Prayer Diary (October 2024)