Cuba’s ‘first lady’ dies at 77

By Marc Frank in Havana

Vilma Espin Guillois, the wife of Cuba’s acting president, and one of the country’s few remaining historic revolutionary figures, died in Havana on Monday at the age of 77, reportedly from cancer. She had not been seen in public for several years.

Espin, who had four children with Raúl Castro, is the most important Cuban political figure to pass away since Celia Sanchez, Fidel Castro’s confidant and advisor, died in the early 1980s and perhaps since Che Guevara perished in Bolivia in 1967.

A government statement declared Tuesday a day of mourning. Her cremated remains will be placed for public viewing at the Jose Marti monument in Havana’s Revolution square, before being taken to Santiago de Cuba where she fought.

A memorial service will take place on Tuesday night in Havana, which may be attended by Fidel Castro, not seen in public since undergoing various abdominal surgeries last year.

Espin’s death was sure to serve as a reminder to Cubans at home and abroad that the lives of the handful of remaining leaders of the Cuban revolution, including Fidel Castro, 80 and Raúl Castro, 76, are coming to an end, and with them a unique and controversial epoch in the Caribbean island’s history.

Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother on July 31 when he underwent the first of several intestinal surgeries. He has yet to return to power or be seen in public though he has become more active in recent months, writing opinion pieces for the government media and holding longer and more frequent meetings with foreign guests.

Espin often represented Cuba abroad. She attended international women’s conferences and summits attended by Fidel Castro, where the wives of participating heads of state also gathered. She had suffered from cancer for a number of years.

The daughter of a wealthy family from eastern Santiago de Cuba, Espin was a chemical engineer who spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming a leader of the underground in 1956 during the right-wing dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Ms Espin joined the Castro brothers in the mountains in the late 1950s, becoming Raul Castro’s fiancée and one of the first woman guerilla fighters in the final push that brought Mr Batista down in 1959. She married Raúl Castro a few months later and they had four daughters, all currently living in Cuba.

She was one of few people who have held Fidel Castro’s confidence over the years, providing him with unconditional public support through all the twists and turns of his rule. He named her head of the women’s federation in 1960. She was a member of the Communist party central committee from its founding in 1965 until her death, and served on the Politburo from 1980 -1991.

But it was as the leader of the women’s federation for decades that Espin made her mark, organising women to both support the Castro government and push for equality without breaking “revolutionary unity,” a difficult task in a machista society.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007