The late Laura Pollán
Laura Pollán, a human rights activist who founded the Ladies in White, a Cuba-based group of female relatives of political prisoners, was posthumously honored in mid-December by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Pollán, who died in October 2011, had been a high school teacher with no involvement in politics until her husband, Héctor Maseda, became one of 75 anti-regime activists arrested by Cuban authorities in 2003 as part of a crackdown on dissidents. Pollán’s husband was released from prison in February 2011 – he was among one of the last of the Group of 75, as it came to be known, to be set free.
Her initial small gatherings in her home with the wives, mothers and daughters of other political prisoners became the Ladies in White – so called because of the all-white attire of the women – and held weekly marches in Havana. In Spanish, they are called Las Damas de Blanco.
Pollán became one of the best-known and most vocal opposition figures in Cuba, risking arrest herself, and reprisals of others acting on behalf of the Communist regime.
She was honored with NED’s Democracy Service Medal, which was first awarded in 1999 to two people: Lech Walesa, former Polish president and founder of the Solidarity trade union movement, and Lane Kirkland, the former president of the AFL-CIO. Other winners include Vaclav Havel, Congressman Tom Lantos and the Dalai Lama.
The ceremony was held in the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Room. The medal was accepted on behalf of the Ladies in White by Yolanda Huerga, a representative of the group who is based in Miami. Ms. Pollán’s husband and daughter were able to watch the ceremony in Havana in the U.S. Interests Section (USINT) in the former United States Embassy building.