Ladies in White
Cuban women opposition movement
Ladies in White (Spanish: Damas de Blanco) is an opposition movement in Cuba founded in 2003 by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents and those who have been made to disappear by the government. The women protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets dressed in white clothing. The color white is chosen to symbolize peace.
The movement received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.
Origins
During the Black Spring in 2003, the Cuban government arrested and summarily tried and sentenced 75 human rights activists, independent journalists, and independent librarians to terms of up to 28 years in prison, for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S diplomats.
For its part, the Cuban government accused the 75 individuals of "acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state", including belonging to "illegal organizations", accepting money from the United States Interests Section in Havana and of "hijacking", "terrorist activities", and collaborating with foreign media. In the view of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Black Spring violated the most basic norms of international law, including Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees everyone the right to "seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of their choice."
Under the leadership of Laura Pollán, the Ladies in White group was formed two weeks after the arrests. Relatives of the prisoners began gathering on Sundays at St. Rita's Church in Havana to pray for their relatives. After each Mass, they began a ritual procession from the church to a nearby park.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ladies in White” as cuban women opposition movement. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1158351. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ladies in White” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.