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Vilma Espin Guillois, the wife of Acting President Raul Castro and a former rebel fighter who served for decades as first lady of the Cuban revolution, has died aged 77.
Cubans remembered Espin both as a guerrilla fighter who helped to bring her future husband, Raul, and brother-in-law Fidel to power half a century ago, and as the driving force for Cuban women's equality in the decades since then.
Originally trained as a chemical engineer in Cuba and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Espin joined street protests after Fulgencio Batista's 1952 coup and quickly became involved in the revolutionary underground, assuming leadership of the clandestine urban rebel movement in eastern Cuba. In 1958, she sought refuge in the mountains above Santiago, where the Castro brothers commanded their uniformed rebel fighters. She and Raul Castro were married in April 1959, four months after Batista fled the island.
After the revolution, when Fidel was divorced, she became Cuba's low-key first lady, a role she maintained for more than 45 years, even after Fidel reportedly married Dalia Soto del Valle. Espin founded the Federation of Cuban Women in 1960 and served as its president for four decades, with virtually every woman and adolescent girl on the island listed as a member.
